The Association Renewal Blog

The Myth of Limited Options

One of our complaints about strategic planning is that it generates weak strategy. How many associations out there could sum up their current strategy as “last year plus three percent.” Too many.

Of course, we’ve also actually heard an association exec say “Yeah, but how much innovation do we need in the association community? We know what our work is: meetings, education, advocacy, etc.”

This lack of creativity is criminal!

I was reminded of this in reading a post on the Signals v. Noise blog. Their post was about web design, and the frustration they have with people who copy their designs (and then give a similar excuse: “well, there are only so many ways to design a web page.”).

They debunk that myth with the following image.

View this photo

The wristwatch is a very simple thing to design, with very specific limitations and parameters. But design flourishes. As Jason says in the post:

As a web designer you have a lot more options and variables and possibilities than a watch designer. Build something that’s yours. Make something you can call your own. Make your own mark. Cut the excuses and be a designer.

Feel free to substitute the word “leader” for “designer” in that last sentence.

Why do associations still embrace strategic planning? (COMMENT THREAD)

This is an open comment thread on a fundamental question:  why do associations still embrace strategic planning? 

Is the profound disconnect between strategic planning's flawed assumptions and the world in which associations operate today unclear?

Has it escaped our attention that few, if any, associations have achieved breakthrough success as a consequence of their strategic planning work?

Why are some leaders still committed to defending an approach that so many find ordinary at best, and painfully frustrating and useless at worst? 

Please share your insights and help us shed some light on this critical issue for our community.

Three reasons why strategic planning is killing us

Let me follow up on Jamie's post from Monday, with a few reasons why I believe strategic planning is killing our organizations, and doing serious damage to our community in the process:

1. It induces us to believe that the form and process of planning are more important than the content of strategy.

One of my great frustrations with strategic planning is how much time is involved in laying out very elaborate processes to create more flexible and adaptable plans, without devoting anywhere near as much attention to deep strategic thought around the content of those documents, and whether they embrace bold and intelligent choices backed by appropriate investments.  The problem for knowledge-creating, synthesizing and brokering enterprises such as associations is that today, strategy is no longer simply the means by which we manage and measure disparate organizational activities.  In the hypercompetitive, Web-enabled world, strategy is about something truly non-trivial:  the ability to leverage the full range of available and accessible resources and relationships to create new and distinctive value for members and customers.  So while process does matter, it is what our strategy proposes to achieve and what we can learn from it that will make the critical difference for our organizations in the long run.

2. It does not encourage us to carefully examine the sustainability of current business models. 

It is a rare strategic plan that actually codifies the elements of a sustainable association business model for the future.  In fact, I don't think I've ever seen such a document!  Instead, we use strategic planning to dutifully go about the business of developing goals, objectives, strategies and tactics without stepping back and asking difficult questions, such as when we will exhaust our current strategy and business model, what will replace it and what capabilities will we require in order to make that shift and how will we develop them?  Strategic planning values continuity over creativity, hindsight over foresight and the ordinary over the radical.  It is small wonder, then, that so few strategic plans actually stretch organizations in our community to reach their full potential.

3.  It does not challenge leaders to accept personal responsibility for creating organizations of the future

Right now, I suspect that many people under the age of 35 (and certainly under the age of 30) view associations as organizations better suited to meeting the needs of their parents' or grandparents' generations than their own.  Among many people, young and old alike, associations enjoy a reputation for being rigid, highly centralized bureaucracies with a deeper commitment to defending the past and preserving the status quo than to creating the future.  Strategic planning doesn't help the situation.  Indeed, it exacerbates it by virtually eliminating the possibility of intelligent risk taking and genuine innovation, in favor of "doing what we've always done, because that's what the members want!"  Sadly, too many senior volunteer leaders buy in to this way of thinking, and operate unapologetically yet myopically as obstacles to meaningful progress.  Strategic planning offers nothing to either incent or require such leaders to accept personal responsibility for creating organizations that will thrive in a new world already in its early stages of formation.

Associations must break free of strategic planning's death grip on our community.  We need a new approach to the work of strategy and, as Jamie pointed out in his post, we are working on one that we look forward to sharing here in the near future.

Reckoning the Future

More from Roger Martin on Design in Fast Company. He said the way successful businesses “reckon the future” distinguishes themselves in the way they think. Amen.

Specifically, he notes that most “business as usual” shops focus on inductive and deductive logic. With inductive, you observe what happens and decide what to do. With deductive, you come up with a principle that guides what you do. Both are fine.

“Business as design” shops add “abductive” reasoning: the logic of what might be.

From the article:

A.G. Lafley, the chief executive of Procter & Gamble, understands the need to braid all three forms of creative thinking. While he is a true data hound, Lafley also pores over anecdotal research and allows customer comments to influence him even if they are not rigorously collected or statistically significant. Lafley was relying on that kind of anecdotal evidence when he championed the conversion from big box to compact detergents—one of P&G’s most important decisions over the past 15 years, and one that flew in the face of the available hard data. That decision opened a multibillion-dollar market for P&G and demonstrated that simply regressing the past isn’t enough to bust a daunting challenge.

I think this ties right in with some recent blogoclump postings (here and here) about research and also about intuition. Personally, I don’t think the research “guides” the intuition. I think intuition is a source of data in itself and both impact decision making (or should).

Research is a Measure of Success...Maybe

Another article in Fast Company's "Design" issue is about the CEO of Puma, the sneaker company that has moved from performance shoes to fashion apparel with great success. The CEO challenges the notion that research is necessarily the ticket to "greatness":

But if you want to change the industry and do something completely new and innovate, research is a bad tool because all you will get fed back is perception today and not tomorrow.

To be clear: research is not evil, but it has limitations.

More on Design

Here are some more thoughts about the “design” article (subscription required) from Fast Company that I mentioned earlier.

Roger Martin points out that “design” has become cool now (as evidenced by his article in Fast Company, frankly). But it’s more than that. It’s not just actual design of cool things. It’s design as a philosophy, or way of doing business. He puts “business as design” in contrast with “business as usual.” The two ways of doing business want very different things, which he frames in terms of “reliable” versus “valid.”

Business as usual wants reliable: quantifiable, measurable, and provable. Business as design wants valid: deep understanding of user and context leading to ideas you believe in but can’t prove. Less about replicating a successful process than about producing a spectacular solution.

Associations tend to focus on reliable and are somewhat skeptical about valid. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with reliable. Reliable can generate growth. Reliable brings you McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Dell. That’s billions of dollars of wealth created, he points out.

But valid generates growth too. Valid brings you design leaders like Panasonic, Timberland, and Bombardier that have grown exponentially, yet each “continues to put a premium on judgment, experience, and gut instinct.”

Success requires a both-and approach. As Martin says:

The challenge is to manage the chronic push and pull between a value system premised on what’s valid and one based on what’s reliable. As the management theorist James March has argued, by focusing on the intuitive and experiential, organizations explore new sources of competitive advantage. By looking to the provable and replicable, organizations better exploit the innovations they’ve brought to market. To prosper of the long run, a company needs to succeed at both. It must mesh the classical workings of a traditional organization with the prototypical features of a design shop, especially in three key areas: reckoning the future, organizing the work, and establishing status and rewards.

More later.

Strategy is a commodity

In my last post here, I wrote, "strategy itself is in danger of being commoditized and strategic planning is already there."  Let me take that thought one step further:  the association community's overall thinking about and approach to strategy has been commoditized by an excessive reliance on traditional strategic planning.  Let me explain.

One definition of a commodity is "a mass-produced unspecialized product," and that is precisely the way that strategic planning is packaged and practiced in the association community today.  Many consultants offer strategic planning services and many associations avail themselves of those services.  But there is precious little distinction in the approaches that most associations and their advisors bring to the work of strategic planning, creating the deep-seated yet wholly inaccurate belief among many association leaders that there is only one way to pursue the work of strategy.  A complicating factor that reinforces this narrow perspective is the past strategic planning experiences brought to the table by volunteers.  Although there may be slight variations across the whole volunteer group, most board members and other senior volunteers are invested in the same basic set of activities as their associations' staff leaders.

There are myriad problems with adopting this kind of undifferentiated approach to strategy, and the most significant among them is the extraordinary difficulty it creates for associations that are trying to be different and innovate in an increasingly competitive, complex and uncertain environment.  But this emphasis on sameness in the work of association strategy should not come as a complete surprise since associations themselves are all about a focus on what makes individuals and organizations the same.  Unfortunately, the work of strategy does not benefit from this kind of convergent mindset. 

If associations are going to make real breakthroughs in creating new value for their members in the years ahead, they will need to abandon any assumption that the discipline of strategy is something that can be ordered up and delivered in a box in a matter of a few months at a discount.  Going forward, I believe three critical factors are going to be the driver of genuine strategic success for all associations:  creativity, simplicity and execution.  I will expand on these ideas in my next post.

Design and Business

If you don’t subscribe to Fast Company magazine, then I suggest you head out to a newsstand and buy the October issue. The theme is design, which is something Jeff and I think about a lot, and there is an outstanding article by Roger Martin that (finally!) shows in a clear way how the spirit of design can be integrated into the spirit of everyday business. It is a very powerful article.

Really. Go out there and read the article. If you are a subscriber, you can read it online.

I’ll post about it later.

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.

It's not about buckets...

Jamie and I are a bit frustrated with how the generational shift conversation is unfolding in association community.  Ben writes about this in a recent post on his blog:

Jeff De Cagna and Jamie Notter have both expressed disappointment about Cam Marston's session on generational differences at ASAE & The Center's Membership & Marketing Conference. I've been somewhat biased against generational research for some time now. I can draw as many conclusions about someone's disposition from their generation as I can draw from their astrological sign. And after hearing Cam's speech, I've now decided that knowledge about generational differences is overrated. Grouping people into buckets with tens of millions of others and calling it "segmentation" is sounding pretty ridiculous to me right now. (Bold emphasis added)

I both agree and disagree with Ben's post.  On the one hand, there is actually considerable value in understanding how different generations make sense of the world in different ways.  There can be no doubt that Silents/Matures, Boomers, Xers and Millennials hold vastly divergent perspectives on a wide variety of issues.  What's more, this full spectrum of ideas and opinions influences our society in ways that go far beyond the deeper meaning of the Zodiac.  (Except perhaps when Reagan was president...;>)  Getting inside the story of how and where generations disagree--as well as agree--must be a central theme of our national and organizational discourse in the coming years if we are to identify solutions to the profound problems we face.

On the other hand, Ben's last sentence shines a light on a big problem:  we are trying feverishly to put people into "buckets" for marketing and messaging purposes and it won't work.  While some brands may occasionally crack the code of generational understanding and enjoy spectacular, if short-lived, financial success as a result, the overwhelming majority of organizations will experience the same kind of frustration and disappointment we're describing in our posts.

If I may propose a different metaphor, true generational understanding isn't about buckets, but shot glasses.  Everyone is an individual and has his or her own shot glass, but because we can more easily move the glasses around, we can see the relevant patterns more clearly.  Achieving this depth of understanding, however, depends on our ability to think and talk differently about generational shift.

Which brings me to three guides I'd like to propose to shape a new generational conversation in associations:

• Use broad generalizations to ask better questions--Big and broad assumptions, even those based on survey data, can be dangerous, so test their meaning and validity by asking probing questions that help you get inside the story of individual members and stakeholders. 
  
• Use the answers to frame better conversations--Listen carefully to the nuances and textures of the responses to build your capacity for shaping conversations that move beyond the level of assumption, generalization and stereotype.
• Use your learning to craft better ways of connecting and connecting with your members--Developing an organizational strategy for generational renewal isn't about mass production or even mass customization.  It's about honoring the uniqueness of individuals by supporting their efforts to build new relationships and create new opportunities.