The Association Renewal Blog

Strategic Planning Fights Back

As I said in my other blog, this month’s Forum Magazine from the Association Forum of Chicagoland is really pushing my buttons! In terms of Association Renewal, they push one of the biggest buttons of all when they start to defend traditional strategic planning.

The article on strategic planning doesn’t say a whole lot, and that is what bugs me. It restates the basic tenets of strategic planning. Get a facilitator. Involve key stakeholders. Get consensus (really? Do you mean that? Every single person has the right to veto your plan?), put your mission and goals in there, identify an audacious goal, plan, budget, metrics…are you asleep yet?

We already know this stuff. It is called traditional strategic planning, and more and more people realize that it’s not working. The title of this article was “A Dust-Free Strategic Plan,” but the author described the exact process people use to create those plans that sit on shelves gathering dust!

I understand that planning is important. I agree that you need to measure effectiveness (how else would you know when to change your plan?). Of course you need to engage external stakeholders—interdependence is a given in today’s world.

But we need much more discipline in distinguishing between the work of strategy and the work of planning. I object to strategic planning primarily because it merges these two very different activities. They aren’t the same thing. Doing them at the same time is what leads to these dusty plans!

What frustrates me is that the conversation is not moving forward on this. We (and others) say that strategic planning is dead, with the goal of advancing the way associations think about and do the work of strategy. But the response to “strategic planning is dead,” is usually, “no it’s not.” End of conversation. I’d like to come up with some language that advances the conversation.

Chat About the Long Tail

I'm still getting caught up on my blog reading after putting it off during the annual meeting last week.

One post I read that is worthy of attention was a "fireside chat" two of the people from 37 signals hosted with Chris Anderson and others, talking about the Long Tail. It's worth a read. Here's a quote that I think Jeff will like:

Chris: “It’s okay that the Long Tail is full of crap! Just filter the bad stuff so I don’t have to see it.”

Leadership is not the same as Authority

The ASAE & The Center Annual Meeting was great (and exhausting!). Between the events, hanging around with friends, meeting new people, and blogging on the event blog, it is no surprise that I didn’t post about the interesting things I learned over here.

But I will!

I’ll start with something that relates to one of the sessions I attended. I went to a session during every time slot, and in the end, I had only one session that was disappointing. It was about a leadership development program that an association was implementing. The presentation was a bit dry, but the most upsetting part of it was their approach to leadership development.

The program took “emerging” leaders among the members and gave them a training program and connected them with a mentor to show them the ropes around the association. At the end of the program, the new “fellows” get to serve on a committee, with the hope, one day, of serving on the Board. People in the program love it, because it helps them better understand how the leadership structure really works.

My problem: leadership is not the same thing as authority. The program they described is not leadership development—it is “position of authority orientation.” Of course, it’s fine to orient people to how to wield power in the system, but it is not the same as leadership. When someone asked if they had evaluated the impact of the program, they explained that they couldn’t, because the people in the program wouldn’t have a leadership impact for many more years, when they eventually made it to the board.

Sigh.

Blue Ribbon Blog?

Mike Sansone does a blog called “Converstations,” that focuses on business blogging. He has recently been awarding his own “blue ribbons” to blogs in various categories (tech stuff, PR/Communications, writing/journalism, etc.), and this week he did “Associations/Networking.”

Jeff and I are proud to have received the blue ribbon in this category. He also liked the individual blogs Jeff and I do. The Blogoclump got special mention, of course, being compared to a “loaded pizza,” but without the anchovies or the need for tums.

Thanks Mike!

Silent Auction Prize

Sorry for the sparse postings lately, but Jeff and I are gearing up for the ASAE & The Center Annual Meeting in Boston—not an easy task. We both are presenting (Jeff twice), and we will also be releasing our new book at the meeting. The “We Have Always Done It That Way” book that we’ve been writing with David Gammel, Mickie Rops, and Amy Smith will finally be complete when we arrive in Boston. We are very excited about it (and you know I’ll post again once it’s out!).

We’re also offering a prize at the Silent Auction. We are putting up a focused, three-month consulting effort designed to help an association develop a strategy for dealing with the generational shift among staff and members. This is a big issue these days (one of the “super sessions” at the meeting will be by Claire Raines, who is a well-known speaker and author on this topic), but honestly, we see more conversations focused on hype and stereotypes than on real strategies for dealing with generational differences. The winner of this auction prize will get our assistance in developing a real strategy.

You can see ours and all the auction prizes online. Check it out.

Power of Blogs

What a fun blog conversation this Long Tail thread has been! I agree with Jeff's points in the previous post, and I had a point of my own to make about giving up control, which I added as a comment under Ben's Acronym post.

But his whole conversation reminds me of the power of blogs.

Jeff and I both like to point out to people that soon after he and I started working together, he had to cajole me into starting a blog. He actually bought the domain name of my “Get Me Jamie Notter” blog just to push me into blogging. Well, it worked, and now, of course, I’m hooked. And one reason I love it is blogs are so good at making instant and broad connections. This Long Tail conversation is a case in point.

The background, of course, is that Chris Anderson has written a book (and a blog, by the way) about the Long Tail. Jeff and I also wrote an article about the application of that concept to associations. Then the following happened:

Lee Gomes writes a Wall Street Journal article critical of Chris Anderson’s Long Tail concept.

A reader of the Acronym blog alerts Scott Briscoe to the article. Scott knows Jeff and I wrote an article on the Long Tail and associations for Associations now, so he invites us to respond on the Acronym blog. Jeff’s response is here.

Ben Martin, who had originally responded with a few thoughts about our article on his blog, thinks about it some more and posts another response to the Acronym blog.

Jeff considers that and makes his response below, here on our blog.

I agree with Jeff’s points, but on the Acronym blog, under the comments to Ben's post, I noticed what Jason Della Rocca said about his association wanting to delete posts from a member forum, and it reminded me of another point about “control” that I wanted to add to the discussion, so I posted that as a comment to Ben’s post.

This is a rich conversation, engaging a diverse group of people, and generating some creative and useful thinking—and it simply wouldn’t have happened without blogs.

Why The Long Tail Matters to Associations (LONG POST)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Let me reiterate that this is a long post.  I apologize in advance for causing any undue eye strain.

In his recent Acronym post about the Long Tail, Ben Martin moves me with his very kind compliment and words of support for my argument that association leaders should not dismiss new but untested ideas, such as the Long Tail, out of hand. He also offers a very thoughtful explanation of his view that the Long Tail theory will not work for most associations. It is entirely possible Ben is right, but then again, Jamie and I also may be right. In truth, we don’t know, and won’t know, until a handful of strategically-aware and highly capable associations begin to put some of these ideas into practice. We hope that will happen in the near future, but until we have some learning laboratories willing to experiment, let me offer a few comments on the specifics of Ben’s excellent post.

Good to Great, Without Traditional Strategic Plans

This month’s Associations Now has a sneak peak at some of the findings of the “Measures of Success” project that ASAE & The Center have been working on for several years (under the tutelage of Jim Collins). The article provide an excerpt from one of the chapters of the study (to be released at the Annual Meeting in Boston). Check out the first paragraph from the excerpt:

Textbook strategic plans—complete with clearly outlined goals, objectives, and strategies that were reviewed and adjusted on a consistent basis—were present in many of the associations that participated in the Measures project. Interestingly, associations where this was most commonly the case were found in the comparison group.

The “comparison group” are the associations in this matched-pair methodology that…um…didn’t do so well (that is, they weren’t the superstars of the matched pair; the superstars were in the “study group”). They go on:

Associations in the study group may not have had as well-crafted or well-documented plans, but everyone—volunteers and staff alike—understood what the plan and goals were and lived them.

The comprehensive strategic plans of the associations in the comparison group, in contrast, often ran contrary to their eventual actions (or inactions)…. That is, their magnificently crafted, comprehensive e strategic plans may result in little real change in the organization or the extent to which it serves its members.

It’s nice to see research validating what we have been saying: strategic planning is not as powerful as building strategic capacity.

Long Tail comments

Scott Briscoe invited us to submit comments to the Acronym Blog about a recent Wall Street Journal critique of Chris Anderson's Long Tail argument.  I shared some of my thoughts and I hope you will check them out and let us know what you think.

From Strategic Planning to Budgeting

By the way, if you’re not reading ASAE & The Center’s Acronym blog, you should, because it has good stuff. As a follow up to my last post about Scott Briscoe’s rant on strategy, let me point you to HIS follow up post which gets at another sacred cow: budgeting.

He points out that after you do a budget and get part of the way into that year, you invariably have to do some adjusting:

We adjust. And we do this, usually, with the forecast. The forecast is essentially a new budget, but in terms of the planning, we don't treat it that way. We're not actively seeking new opportunities and questioning what we're doing. Flashback to the development of the annual budget. Sadly, it is a time when people gear up to defend their programs. We defend, we justify -- we desperately search for data to bolster our claim for the need of new staff or to keep doing what we're doing. And, unfortunately, we win a whole lot of the time. We made it. Our program is in the budget. We don't have to defend it like that again until next year. There are a number of problems there, the biggest being a cultural problem. But the annual cycle helps perpetuate that culture.

In addition to calling out the problems with specific practices around budgeting, I think his points are critical, because they illustrate that you cannot separate your strategy and planning work from the rest of your organization. The way you create strategy (or budgets) has an impact on the culture, which will have an impact on everything you do. I know it’s hard to come up with a new way to do strategy or budgets, but depending on the impact those practices have on your culture, can you afford not to?