The Association Renewal Blog

Silent Auction: Coping with "SD"

ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership put on a silent auction each year, which closes during the Annual Meeting. Once again Jeff and I have donated a consulting package to be auctioned off, benefiting the Center. This year we are donating a one-day workshop on Strategy for an Association’s Board and/or staff. This is NOT a strategic planning session (but you knew that)! Jeff and I will work with the winner to explore their strategic capacity and discuss what it takes to design and execute a great strategy in today’s changing environment.

You can read about the prize at the auction site (I encourage you to read the description—if nothing else it will remind you that everyone needs to laugh now and again).

There are lots of great prizes in the auction. David Gammel is giving away some consulting, Jeff is donating one on behalf of Principled Innovation LLC, and I have one under Notter Consulting as well.

Do Great Ideas Stick?

When I posted last week about Chip and Dan Heath's brief piece in Harvard Business Review, I wasn't aware that I would get a chance to meet them! Okay, one of them, at least. Dan Heath is speaking at ASAE & The Center's Great Ideas conference in January. I have a session at Great Ideas, as does Jeff (actually he has two: an innovation boot camp before the conference, as well as a session during), so we will be there to hear the keynote speech by Dan (and maybe get a book signed).

Continuing to make the case

As Jamie and I continue to make our case against strategic planning, please check out this post I made to the Principled Innovation Blog today.  It is Part II of the three-part series I am writing on that blog about strategy and innovation.  Part I can be found here.  Part III will be up before Christmas.

Check out my post...

Jamie thought it would be a good idea for me to point all of you to my post on strategy and innovation over at the P.I. Blog.  Let us know what you think!

A Small Request

At this point, we assume that most of our "loyal" readers have now read our book: We Have Always Done It That Way. We have been very pleased with the feedback we have been getting, and were also happy to see someone actually rate the book and write a brief review on Lulu.com, the publisher's website.

We would love to get some more of those reviews and ratings. If you have read the book (and like it), then we would be grateful if you would go to the Lulu site and post a review. It doesn't have to be lengthy or even terribly well written! Just talk about what you liked about the book. To post a review, you have to sign up with Lulu, but don't worry, that's painless. Name and email address is all they need. Go to the book's site (here) and click on the "log in or sign up to rate this item" link.

We appreciate your support.

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.

Book Nearing Completion

In case you haven't been to the "We've Always Done It That Way" blog recently, please check it out, because we've passed the 100 post mark! We promised 101 things about associations that we must change, and we've delivered. Actually, I think we're up to 104 things on the blog.

We're now in the process of putting together the printed book, which should be available within the next month, but check out the new posts on the blog, and keep the blog bookmarked, because we are not stopping our postings just because we reached 101 things (what, you thought there are ONLY 101 things that need changing?!).

Thanks to ASAE & The Center!

We want to offer our thanks to ASAE & The Center for mentioning our article on The Long Tail in their most recent newsletter.  The article, Associations in the Age of the Long Tail, appeared in the February 2006 issue of Associations Now.  We think it is quite timely for you to go back and read it, especially with Wired editor Chris Anderson's book on The Long Tail coming out next month.  I've been reading an advance copy of the book and I think it definitely should be included on the must-read list of every association executive interested in new business models for their organizations.   

PI Skypecast tomorrow

I don't usually cross-promote events pertaining to Principled Innovation LLC, my other consulting practice, on this blog.  But I thought I'd make an exception this time since what I am doing tomorrow is both new and extremely cool!

You may have heard that Skype, the VOIP provider that is now a part of EBay, is making it possible for any of its users to schedule a  Skypecast, which is a real-time VOIP and chat conversation with up to 100 people around the world.  So, in the spirit of trying something new, I am doing my first Skypecast tomorrow, May 31 at 2 pm EDT.  (Click the "my first Skypecast" link to get more information.)  The subject will be on the necessity of freedom and discipline in innovation.

Anyway, I just wanted to make readers of the A.R. Blog aware of this learning opportunity, which will be the first in a continuing series of PI Skypecasts I'll be holding at regular intervals.  I hope you will consider participating; to access any Skypecast, you must be using Skype on your computer.

Whether you are able to participate or not, please submit any questions about the topic to me by 1:30 pm tomorrow.  I do hope to hear and see you online!