Management

September 30, 2008

The Last Thing I’m Worried About Offending Is Your Delicate Sensibility

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Lisa Junker wrote a great response to a Seth Godin post on asking questions (or, really, “challenging assumptions”). It’s a good example of the value of blog commenting because I wrote a response, but then Lindy Dreyer wrote a great response, including this:

“A lot of times, game-changing questions get asked by people who are least in the position to change the game. How a manager responds when the question is asked is very important. Is it a valid question that can be revisited at a more appropriate time, or is it a question that will never have the answer your staff person wants to hear? Can you answer your staff’s concerns without shutting down their creativity and problem solving skills?”

To which I thought: Good point. But then Lisa responded to Lindy’s comment, with what I thought was an even better point:

“Sometimes you do have to say no to an idea, and it’s the idea-generating person’s job to take a breath and not let the word ‘no’ stop them from suggesting their next idea or asking their next question.”

Here’s the thing: it’s the nature of what we do (perhaps, indeed, the nature of life in general) that every day most of us are going to have a few ideas. Frankly, it’s the nature of ideas that most of them are bad. This doesn’t mean that one should stop having ideas or that one should stop sharing them. In fact, the most successful people are those who never take personally a statement like, “No, that probably wouldn’t work.”

And yet — over the years, I’ve known more than a few people whose biggest complaints about their jobs were, “Nobody ever listens to me.” In a few of those cases, those people worked for jerks (by which I mean, bona fide jerks, not just people they disagreed with). But in most cases, they were people who had offered an idea or two that for whatever reason weren’t feasible, and then promptly decided they would be better off to just think ideas instead and complain at happy hour about how no one can read their minds.

In a post I wrote last spring about growing your association career, I wrote, “Opening your mouth for its own sake and stating the obvious is not a way to endear yourself to leadership. At the same time, opening your mouth with ideas for other people to implement is even worse. It’s not enough to throw out ideas — throw out the plans. ‘I think we should do X it would offer Y benefits in fact, here’s a plan, and it won’t really cost us any money [key point there] and I can take charge of this RIGHT NOW.’ Then do it.”

If you are, as Lindy wrote, “least in the position to change the game,” that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be coming up with great ideas (and “good questions”) on a regular basis. You should. Remember: 9 times out of 10, your manager wants you to succeed, because your success is her success.

But that doesn’t change the fact that ultimately, only you are responsible for your own career.

If you stop asking questions or offering ideas just because your manager doesn’t have time to devote two hours to dissect your every gem of insight, then you will be hurt more in the long run than either your manager or your organization. Keep asking questions, keep offering ideas — but (and here’s the thing) get better at it, every day, by learning more about your position, your organization, life in general — and yes, by learning more about your manager and how he or she wants ideas to be presented.

This is how life works. You can complain about how nobody takes you seriously, or you can get taken seriously. It’s your choice.

September 26, 2008

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

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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 23, 2008

The Most Important Question to Ask Any Vendor

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The most important question to ask any vendor is not, “How much do you charge?” It’s not, “How do you compare with your competitors?” It’s not, “How do you handle client relationships?” It’s not even, “What do you offer?”

Oh, those are all good questions, and they should be asked. But in my opinion the most important question to ask any vendor is:

“Are you profitable?”

I’m not talking about someone you buy one thing from or hire for some quick, short-term project. But to me, if I’m going to enter any sort of a long-term relationship, I need to feel comfortable that the vendor (no matter if it’s a big company or a one-man band) is making money and doing well and is not likely to vanish at 11:59pm tonight.

I wrote a couple years ago about how I can be a demanding customer, but I hope no one took that to mean that I’m a cheap customer. Quite the opposite. I’m perfectly willing to pay more for quality work and the comfort of knowing that a vendor is more likely than not to be here tomorrow.

There are never any guarantees, of course, and no one really knows what tomorrow will bring. (Imagine if you had a vendor you relied on that was based in downtown Houston and the impact that Ike would have had on that vendor, for example.) But it’s one thing to accept the random nature of our universe, and quite another to encourage it.

Many of the vendors we work with in the association community are private companies, and most of those don’t feel any great need to share the intricacies of their balance sheets. I don’t expect them to. (And of course, we’ve all learned by now that it’s difficult to gauge the soundness of big public companies, as well.) But while I understand the unwillingness of private firms to share their financial specifics (I would feel the same way), I hope they understand that providing some sense of their financial well-being (beyond a vague “we’re doing very well”) can be a way to secure a client who is more interested in long-term success than short-term savings.

I work with a few vendors that I worry about, because they do a fantastic job and I dread having to replace them. When I talk with them, I usually ask something like, “How’s business?” I’m not engaging in idle chitchat when I do; I want them to succeed. I want them to make money. I want them to be there tomorrow if at all possible.

Oh, and I would be very careful and very cautious before making a “big” vendor decision that involves a company that is still dependent on angel investing or that hasn’t quite yet figured out its business model. You can hire them, but assume that they could go away at any time. Like 11:59pm tonight. And be ready if they do.

September 12, 2008

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

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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

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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 29, 2008

The Biggest Myth About Online Publishing

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No, I don’t mean those myths you can debunk on snopes.com. I mean one of the most common myths that I hear, often from otherwise very smart people.

It’s this: “People aren’t willing to pay for content on the Internet.” I have no idea why this myth is still propagated when it’s so obviously untrue.

Just a few examples:

• CooksIllustrated.com has over 150,000 online subscribers at around 20 bucks a year — that’s $3 million for essentially recycled, “repurposed” magazine content.
• Consumer Reports has over 3 million online-only subscribers paying either annually or monthly.
• MarketingSherpa sells access to thousands of reports, surveys, case studies and samples for a little under $400 a year. Couldn’t find a number of subscribers but they’ve been going strong for years (with events, publications, workshops, even a certification program, they are similar to a lot of associations except slightly more useful than some).
• Speaking of MarketingSherpa, yesterday they reported that consumer review site Angieslist.com has 330,000 paid members (the site lists fees ranging from around $9/mo or $82/year plus signup fees).
• Lynda.com offers online training on a huge number of subjects, mostly related to software and technology, for fees ranging from $25/mo basic memberships to $375/year premium memberships. They claim “tens of thousands of subscribers” and have been around for 13 years.

What we’ve learned in online media during the last several years is that big “general interest” websites of any kind — those aimed at huge consumer audiences, like newspapers, networks, etc. — are not able (or at least have not been able) to charge successfully for content. But more targeted, niche websites can be very successful in charging for different types of content aimed at a specialized audience — and even small subscriber bases can be very profitable.

The good thing is that associations are the definition of niche. Are you taking advantage of that fact?