"Finding the Courage to Change"

The Cowardly Lion had a big advantage over many association boards and their chief staff officers as well: He knew he didn't have the nerve! Despite a decade's worth of articles and association discussions on "innovation" "deconstruction" and "risk tolerance", little really changed about how most associations do their business. The reason: A critical lack of the courage needed to anticipating the future, rather than waiting to react to it. That didn't serve us well in the last century...and for this one....it's a death knell.

For the chief staff officer, courage to say to your board what they really need to hear... the kinds of things you might say every morning to your shaving or make-up mirror. Oh those words are sweet on your tongue, but they seldom get air-time. Why? It is perceived to be too dangerous. We share our thoughts with peers and we repeat our speech dozens of times in our heads, in magnificent words to an appreciative audience that responds with thunderous applause. How many of us will have the courage to actually deliver that message to our boards, especially while we are still gainfully employed? Not too many, and that equals a century of missed opportunity to take the association and ourselves to new levels of performance.

It takes courage to break a tradition of imperial presidents, who bring to the association a new agenda, and of course a new initiative, with each election. These dramatic shifts in focus and resource allocation, often without giving up what the last seven sovereigns put in place, drown staff in yesterday's work. Defining a consistent image and message for your profession, industry or cause becomes impossible. It takes courage for association leaders, volunteers or staff, to promote a stewardship role for the chief elected officer as a reasonable, appropriate and satisfying alternative. Only a past leader who still has clout might do that with impunity, or an executive still on honeymoon, very secure, or very brave. For many executives, it often takes another job offer before the courage to tell the truth is worth the potential repercussions. The successful association shouldn't have to wait for an independent, informed outsider to tell them that the emperor has no clothes. The association will need to self-assess honestly, based on pre-established, broadly disseminated defensible criteria.

It will take honest introspection to recognize that an organization may have obsolesced, that it is now an organization in search of a mission. Members generally know that first...but do we hear what members say, even when they speak through their non-renewal of membership dues? Instead, we blame them for not caring enough about their organization, or being too busy. If they are under thirty, we blame them for being young and self-absorbed. If they are over sixty, we blame them for aging. The courageous association will read the omens honestly.

Many have spent years and endless amounts of consultant dollars studying how to add "value to the membership dues dollar" at the same time as they have been devaluing that need by hiring other consultants to help them build their non-dues revenues. The courageous association will spend more time wooing members than wooing sponsors. It will depend on members and perspective members to identify what constitutes value, and then act upon what they hear, e.g., if members want more networking time and less talking heads time at conventions, give it to them. If done right, the reward will be members who will be unable to afford not belonging.

Even more courage may be required to forget everything we now know about membership, and declare everyone who attends anything, purchases anything, subscribes to a publication, or is part of the industry or profession, a member. And then have a pay as you go approach, much as for-profit retailers do. That would certainly change how the association is both staffed and governed, putting an increased emphasis on marketing a competitive product. After accepting its role as a business whose assets are soft goods and services, it will take an entrepreneur to lead it, whether for-profit or not, and a board that will assure both the setting of a strategic direction and accountability to customers. That brings us to some 21st century words that have yet to be fully demonstrated: transparency and ethics. And those shouldn't require courage at all. Anything less should not be acceptable.

Even after several attempts at reinvention, how many associations put themselves on the merger block? Or even better, celebrate past history with a great gala, give their net worth to a deserving charity, and then go quietly into that good night? It takes ultimate courage to approach merger as a legitimate organizational strategy instead of the path of last resort. It takes ultimate courage to say out loud that maybe we have too many associations vying for the same market share, wasting their resources competing with each other rather than pooling their resources and their voices for the common good. From all current indicators, that kind of selflessness, and the crush of mergers that would ensue, may have to wait for the twenty-second century, and that's more than a pity, it's an outrage.

The field of courageous staff leaders is narrow, because the number of courageous boards is even narrower. How many boards instruct their search committees to seek the maverick, the independent thinker, the explorer? Not too many. Most want a "proven track record of successful achievement". Résumés proudly list "growing the staff from three to ten", and then of course the corollary, "growing the budget." Neither is a stand-alone indicator of organizational success.

The real question needs to be: Are your members (and/or customers) battering down the doors to enter?

The relevant association of the near future will probably not be radically different from what the relevant association of the past should have been, or in many cases was: It met a proscribed need effectively. The major differences are that it will demand less time to get there and more attention to keeping it there, using new and often unproven tools. All of that takes courage.

Perhaps the most courage is required when it is time for an executive to step down, when she/he no longer has passion for the work. It takes courage to abandon or totally reconfigure a job......or maybe even an association. Add your own items to the list of things that need courage in your association or your life. Then rush off to see your own wizard .......pin a medal on your chest......and roar like a lion!

Reprinted with permission from The Center for Association Leadership.

First printed in Journal of Association Leadership, summer 2003 issue. The Journal of Association Leadership is published by the Center for Association Leadership in Washington, D.C.

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Dadie Perlov, CAE