Leadership

September 26, 2008

Working Long Hours for Low Pay Doesn’t Make You a Better Person

Posted by Kevin | (1) Comments | Print This Article

While I can kind of see Cindy’s point here — hearing about benefits that you can’t afford to offer can be a little discouraging — I’m going to have to disagree with her a little as well.

I agree that the “top” perks can sometimes seem a little out of touch with many of us who work in smaller organizations, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a responsibility to stay competitive. (For determining your competitiveness, ASAE’s compensation and benefits surveys are more useful, if less interesting, than the report Cindy mentions, which is actually from CEO Update and not ASAE).

Cindy wrote, “As an association community we HAVE to figure out how to change the lack or minimal benefits in MANY associations and nonprofits …”

I don’t think that we “as an association community” need to do any such thing. I think associations who “lack” or have “minimal” benefits certainly need to figure out how to change that fact. But it’s their individual responsibility to do so, if they are going to compete (with other associations) for talent. Very small businesses, whatever their tax status, all have the same challenge.

I agree that there’s a LOT more to being a “great place to work” than the perks you provide. There’s freedom, there’s growth, there’s personal accomplishment, there’s managerial flexibility, there’s camaraderie and humor — in fact, while much harder to measure, I find those things to be much more important.

But I think it’s foolish to deny that benefits (and salary) play a significant role in getting good people to work for you, and keeping them there. Associations that “can’t afford” to stay competitive need to do some serious re-evaluation of their operations. If you can’t afford the right talent, then you can’t afford to provide first-class service to your membership, because that’s what talent does. And if you can’t afford to provide first-class service to your membership, then you’re either not charging enough or, frankly, you’re spending too much money on things you could do without.

The fact is: In any organization, priorities get funded.

September 12, 2008

A Few Random Posts I’ve Been Meaning to Expand Upon, But, Really, Who Has Time?

Posted by Kevin | (0) Comments | Print This Article

Most of my little posts go in the “asides” here on the blog, and most of them are fairly inconsequential (okay, okay, I know that all my posts are inconsequential, but roll with me here).

Then there are other thoughts that I jot down on occasion in draft form because they’re small but I think they merit some fleshing out. Of course, when I’m totally honest with myself, I have to concede that most of them probably won’t get fleshed out because I just don’t have that much time to spend on this blog.

So, here are a few of them — I may revisit them in longer form at some point, but here they are anyway:

Time shifting. The DVR hasn’t just changed television, it’s changed everything. (Well, really it’s just one aspect of a larger change.) People expect their consumption of media to revolve around their own schedule. But I wonder, should this mean more than just offering recordings of live events? What does “live” mean anymore? (And speaking of DVRs, I need to remember to set mine because It’s Always Sunny is coming back next Thursday.)

There are no legacies. Call it a paradox: the nature of associations are such that they tend to attract leaders who are very interested in grand gestures, big footprints, and lasting legacies; and it is also the nature of associations and their rapidly-shifting structures that such things are often quickly forgotten.

It’s okay to have an agenda. Why do so many people pretend that they don’t have one? Partnerships, collaborations, and organizations of all stripes at all levels would work much better if everyone was just honest about what they want, in my opinion.

Meet the We Bees. Around the country, former proponents of term limits are seeking to overturn (or at least lengthen) them, in part because, according to the NYT on Wednesday, they believe they “leave too much power in the hands of civil servants.” One elected official said, “We call those folks the We Bees, as in, ‘We be here when he’s gone.’” Does that make staff the We Bees of the association world, and what are the implications of that kind of sentiment?

True “ownership.” Staff don’t and can’t “own” an association, but the associations that are the most innovative and fastest-growing are those whose staff feel like they have a personal stake in its success. They “take ownership,” so to speak. But the successful association executive learns to feel like an owner without losing sight of who the real owners are. Sometimes that means letting go of strategies or tactics that you feel very strongly about, and sometimes it means doing something that you might not personally think is the best way to go. All without letting it impact your ability to keep creating, innovating, and “owning.” It’s a hard lesson to learn but probably the most important one in association management.

There are some more, but I’ll save them for another rainy day. (Oh, earlier I’d promised some news from the Event Technology Expo this week — unfortunately, something came up and I wasn’t able to make it.)

September 8, 2008

The Problem with Advertising

Posted by Kevin | (1) Comments | Print This Article

Associations have always sought supplemental revenue, sometimes in significant amounts, from advertising and sponsorship. And there’s nothing wrong with that. By providing access to their markets, be it through magazine advertising or online advertising or event sponsorship, associations are able to add to their ability to provide services to their industry in a cost-effective way.

But what if advertising ceases to be a supplemental revenue stream and becomes the primary revenue stream?

Some folks have suggested that, as the online world evolves and associations begin to reevaluate their business models, advertising may be an attractive model. Create a community and sell advertising around it. It’s Facebook’s model; it’s Google’s model; why can’t it be an association’s model?

Setting aside the obvious fact that many associations simply don’t generate that kind of traffic, the biggest problem I see with this suggestion is that it is naive about its true implications.

When an association turns to advertising as its primary business model, the advertisers become its customer — not the market it exists to serve. Don’t believe me? Spend some quality time with the publishers of trade publications in your industry. You’ll hear them freely use the word “customer.” They are not referencing the same people as you when you use the term.

It’s not a bad thing; it’s the way human nature and business works. Your customers are the people who pay you. And as a result, they’re the ones you listen to, and they’re the ones you try and keep happy. If advertisers are your customers, then your “members” become merely a means to an end, no matter what your governance structure says or what your best intentions are.

I would argue that our members should not be a means to an end. They are the end. Our job is to promote them, make their lives better, make their industry/profession more successful.

I would also argue that associations are in very exciting times right now. There are tremendous opportunities surrounding us. We have access to a number of new tools and resources that make it easier for us to help our markets grow.

But as we try new things, and experiment with new business models, we must never lose sight of who our customers really are. In the end, I believe that the money the association generates should come primarily from those we seek to serve, not from those who seek their business.

August 17, 2008

Around the World, Everybody’s Got an Agenda (Just Like In the USA)

Posted by Kevin | (0) Comments | Print This Article

Good workshop today on “International Partnerships” from the CEO of the Society of Petroleum Engineers assisted by the manager of the association’s Dubai office. Primarily focused on case studies of SPE’s activities co-presenting conferences and events on various continents. I attended and took note because we may be looking at some international partnerships down the road. A few key points:

• Choose partners wisely. You need to know their real motivation, their real agenda — and as one audience member noted, you can’t just come out and ask them.
• Of course, in some parts of the world, you may not have a choice — in order to access the nation and the appropriate market, you’re going to have to use a particular partner (either because the government wants it that way or because the organization has a lock in some other way)
• Know your exit strategy and make sure you have a way to get out of the partnership should you need to. SPE CEO used example of one agreement they have that is only for three events, so to continue, agreement will need to be renegotiated.
• Make sure management responsibilities are clearly define and allocated — shared responsibilities difficult if impossible to make work.
• In agreement, spell out clear performance benchmarks and tie them to revenue sharing — for example, if three groups partner on an event, make sure they are each responsible for 1/3 programming to ensure 1/3 share of any surplus.

Interesting that more than half of SPE’s board is from outside the US but they are still sometimes perceived as a US organization.

Finally, speaker got a good laugh from the audience with the line, “We may be not-for-profit, but we’re also not-for-loss.”

August 12, 2008

Nobody Is Representative

Posted by Kevin | (1) Comments | Print This Article

An interesting conversation in the comments at Acronym on their “blog backlash” case study, and then continued in Lisa Junker’s post on reaction to criticism. I said my piece in both comment threads, but there are some very interesting concepts here that merit further exploration.

First, going back to my original comment on the case study, in which I said it was patently ridiculous to suggest that bloggers are representative of majority viewpoints. That’s because I think it’s absurd to suggest that any one individual member is “representative” — be they a blogger, a listserve participant, a committee member, a past chairman, an officer, or whatever. She might be insightful, she might be wise, she might have good ideas, she might have found an issue that no one else had considered, she might be cranky and contrary — but none of that makes her representative.

As I said in my comment on the second post, we cling to comments from active or vocal members all too often because we don’t have anything else on which to rely. This is because many associations fall into a structure along the following lines:

• We answer to a Board, comprised of volunteers who by the very virtue of their self-selection as board members have proven that they are unlike most of the members
• We work with committees, comprised of volunteers who by the very virtue of their self-selection as committee members have proven that they are unlike most of the members
• We do a survey of the full membership every year or two that by its very nature is outdated by the time the results are compiled

So when we hear from real, actual members, we enthusiastically embrace what they say as “representative” because we don’t really know anything else about what our members think. (Lisa’s story about an association taking a year to revise a program because one member wrote a letter — this is NOT unusual, I’ve seen very similar things happen.)

BUT, now we have lots of tools and data available to determine what our members really “think” (I’ve written about this before), and so we should be a lot more clued in and able to respond to criticism in an appropriate way (when it’s merited, fix the problem; when it’s not, explain why it’s not). HOWEVER — when I refer to what members “think,” I’m really referring to what large percentages of them “do” (actual behavior) coupled with some ongoing qualitative queries.

I will use ASAE as an example. I did a search of old Blogoclump posts to find someone saying something about ASAE that I didn’t agree with. It wasn’t hard; Ben Martin apparently wrote a post saying that he’d decided ASAE’s listservers were no longer valuable and he dropped out of them.

I, however, find the listserves to be very valuable, and in fact the only tangible benefit to my ASAE membership (except maybe the magazine), and if I were to drop out of the listserves, dropping out of membership altogether wouldn’t be far behind (though I agree the software could use an upgrade).

So, the question is –

Is Ben representative of ASAE members?

Or am I representative of ASAE members?

I would posit that NEITHER OF US is representative, we’re just two individuals with blogs, and ASAE should no more base its decisions on what Ben thinks, or what I think, than on what the man in the moon thinks. What matters is the actual behavior of the actual members on a large scale.

How many subscribe, and to how many listserves, and is it growing or shrinking? What’s the percentage of lurkers versus active participants, and is it growing or shrinking? How many people are “dropping out” and how does that compare to prior years? And very important from the quality side of it, are the number of “frustrated” emails sent to the listserves (me-toos, complaints about repeats, people asking how to unsubscribe) growing or shrinking? This sort of data (both the numbers and considered quality reviews of the listserve conversations), reviewed on an ONGOING basis, could easily tell you if the software needs revamping (and, I’m willing to bet, would have revealed that the listserves needed some tweaking a long time ago) or if more drastic changes should be considered.

This is just one example — but it’s an important example of the type of analysis that associations should be doing about all their programs, all the time. Weighing programs and analyzing member behavior is not something to do once in a while, or when you get some complaints, but a regular part of what you do. Kill the programs that aren’t working (or change them). Create new ones. But if something is working, you should know it’s working, and not go all frantic when a small number of people don’t like it. You should be doing enough that there are other things you offer that they DO like … and if they don’t like anything, well, then why are they members at all?

(Oh, and I know the case study actually detailed a complaint about a board meeting, not a program, which I think may have warranted all of a thirty-second response rather than a day of hand-wringing … but I enjoyed where the comments took us.)

August 8, 2008

How to Grow in a (Shrinking?) Economy

Posted by Kevin | (4) Comments | Print This Article

I’ll leave it up to the so-called “experts” on what the economy is really doing at the macro level, but it’s only stating the obvious to point out that the last year has been a hard one for certain industries. So the question is, How can an association achieve revenue growth in a year when its members are facing economic challenges?

With the recent closing of our most recent fiscal year, I finally feel comfortable addressing this question with a few tips and thoughts based on our own experience doing so.

Create new products for your core market that meet a real need. Our core products are the standards and technical manuals that lay out how our industry is supposed to do its work. One of the things we hear most often from members and non-members is that the standards are very difficult to understand and require outside training. In late 2007 I worked with an industry trainer and launched a new series of computer-based training sessions that take the concepts and explain them in plain English in bite-sized, self-directed segments. The first three packages in this series produced a brand new six-figure revenue stream. My tips:

Make sure you are listening to members and exploit what they are telling you about your products, and about potential new products.

Look at your bestselling products and create ancillary products around them. For example, if you sell books, create training programs that explain them or demonstrate how to use them, or create audio versions if they lend themselves to that sort of treatment. The key is to look at what’s working and build on it.

Now is not the time to cut back on marketing. In addition to our usual product catalog and email marketing, we upped the ante with new monthly product mailings and an even more aggressive but targeted series of promotional emails. We experimented with landing pages, fax broadcasts, telemarketing, and even Google advertising. By being smart about how we spent our money, we were able to do “more” marketing (with significantly better results) at less expense. My tips:

It’s very possible to reduce printing and mailing expenses significantly while still producing high quality product through such things as paper choice, printing technologies, layout and “fold” (for example, take advantage of the new postal regulations and avoid flats).

You must have a way to easily segment and target emails. If you send emails to everyone, or even if you send emails to certain broad channels (”newsletters” or “product specials”), then you are not getting the most out of email marketing. You must have a way to send emails, for example, to everyone who opted into receiving product specials, *AND* who also purchased a particular product, registered for an event, etc. (and just as importantly, who *DIDN’T* purchase, register, etc.)

Do not rely on one marketing channel! Hit your markets in multiple ways.

Repeat, repeat, repeat! I think it’s a waste of time, for example, to mail a promotional flyer once. It’s more effective if you mail it twice, or three times, to the same audience. I also have decided it’s a waste of time to send “building” campaigns (for example, a series of postcards that “build” on a particular theme), unless the campaign is REALLY clever. Send the same thing, repeated.

Retention is always important, but especially so when an industry is facing economic turmoil. Many associations think the key to improving retention is to remind members of the value that membership offers. However, we have found that the key to improving retention is to remind members that they owe money. With members expiring throughout the year, we begin our dues renewal process (both paper and email) five months out from expiration. Our retention rate held at around 90% this year. My tips:

The number one reason given for not renewing is “I didn’t realize I had expired.” Take away this excuse! Don’t be afraid to be persistent, almost annoying. Do not wait until the last minute to begin the renewal invoicing process.

Reach deeper into your core marketplace to find new audiences. I’ve talked ad nauseam about my belief that successful associations focus their efforts on expanding products and services for their core market, rather than take what they’re already doing and seek new markets. Part of exploiting the core market, though, is finding new decision makers within that marketplace. For example, we are launching a little two-day conference this October aimed specifically at a common lower-level management position among our members (as opposed to the owner or top-level position who is our usual audience). By early July we’d already surpassed our budgeted attendance expectations for this new conference, and added an overflow hotel; now we expect the event to completely sell out. My tips:

Look at your membership base (particularly if you are a trade association) and find new audiences within that base who may be interested in new educational or product offerings. First, you have to know what (and who) they are. This means being very familiar with typical member operations and being aggressive about collecting names and email addresses. (For example, our member “primary contacts” can login through our website at any time and add other employees to their account, giving us access to these valuable contacts and their job titles.)

Add niche events and mini-conferences to your schedule. Some associations try to bring in new people from their market by constantly adding new “tracks” to their annual meeting or coming up with alternate marketing approaches. I’ve found this to have mixed results. People in specific operational or professional segments will be drawn more to a an event that is specifically for them than they will by a new workshop series at a bigger event. And the niche event can bring in new sponsorship and exhibitor dollars at a higher price since the audience is so targeted.

Don’t stop experimenting, and take risks. Not everything will work; for example, we tried a regional one-day marketing seminar this year that was not successful enough to try again. This doesn’t stop us from innovating and experimenting. This fall we will be launching some new subscription-based online applications quite different from anything we’ve tried before. And we are building on the series of CDs mentioned above, with four new packages slated to be released in September and October. Another niche event will be launched next spring. My tips:

Stop thinking that you are in the business of doing whatever it is you happen to do now. Move in new directions.

Embrace a “guerilla” approach to media and technology for producing these new products and programs. None of the things we did this year that brought in high revenue cost us very much at all.

As you can tell by now, I believe strongly in product, product, product. Products are key to growing an association and making it possible for it to continually enhance services and advocacy for the industry it represents, no matter what the economy is doing (and none of the things we did this year were done specifically in response to the economy).

If the only things you sell are membership and meetings, then you’ve focused your model around two things that are most likely to be scrutinized, and possibly abandoned, by companies and people whose confidence in the economy is shaken.