Are for-profits muscling in on association events?

A cartoon of two people in business suits walking towards each other in front of a conference venue displaying a banner "The Association Conference". The woman on the left is smiling and carrying a briefcase labeled "Revenue Opportunities". The man on the right is nervously clutching a folder labeled "Community Mission".Are for-profits stepping into territory traditionally held by associations? Lately, I’ve seen signs that they might be. Recently, I’ve received inquiries from suppliers of products and services wanting to hold events for the communities they serve.  In fact, I’m currently designing an event for a for-profit client that directly competes with association conferences in their profession.

Suppliers have held client events for their customers for many years. However, the for-profit supplier event I’m designing includes a small tradeshow with many suppliers of interest to potential professional attendees.

I’m flattered by my client’s belief that the participant-driven and participation-rich meetings I design provide a better experience than competing traditional association events. But, as someone who values the communities that well-functioning associations offer, I can’t help but feel concerned.

Read the rest of this entry »

A calendar of peer conferences

Since 2009 I’ve maintained an informal calendar of peer conferences (aka unconferences) on this site. It’s informal because I only list events I hear about, a minuscule fraction of the unconferences people hold every day. Even so, the calendar lists hundreds of events.

Currently, I add a few peer conferences a month. For example, as I write this the May 2024 listing includes an online peer conference and in-person events in Vienna, Austria; Raleigh, North Carolina; and two in Nepal.

For fun, I extracted a sampling of geographic locations from the calendar and plotted them on a Google map. Click the image below to view the detailed map.

As you can see, peer conferences take place all over the world!

World map of major geographic locations of some of the tens of thousands of peer conferences
World map of some major geographic locations of peer conferences listed in the Conferences That Work peer conference calendar. Click on the map for details.

Who holds peer conferences?

Look at the calendar to see the fascinating variety of communities that hold peer conferences. Some groups, like software developers and testers, are big fans and it’s interesting to see how often finance, healthcare, and food industry professionals, as well as religious groups, universities, and small businesses hold unconferences.

It’s also amusing to see groups you might not even know about who hold peer conferences. Associations for casino security, veterinarians, voiceover coaches, independent gardening stores, makers, builders, attorneys, teachers and education, sports commissions, product managers, cybersecurity, transportation, and many other communities of interest are listed. And then there are plenty of unconferences focussed on social and cultural issues, like leadership, DEI, the environment, peace work, political movements, good government, animal welfare, veterans rights—the list goes on!

Why I do this work

The incredible diversity of communities, organizations, and businesses that use participant-driven and participation-rich event formats is astounding. This calendar provides strong evidence that any group with something in common who wants to connect and learn can benefit from peer conference designs. As a perpetually curious person, I love the hundreds of opportunities I’ve had over the last few decades to learn about many kinds of communities, topics, and issues and the people who grapple with them.

Seeing how peer conference designs benefit these folks when they come together warms my heart.

That’s why I keep doing this work.

P.S. Do you want to let me know about an upcoming peer conference? You can submit information about it here. [Please note: This is not a calendar for conventional meetings or events that are marketed as an “unconference” but consist of prescheduled sessions. Don’t waste your time, or mine, submitting such meetings; they will not be listed!]

You’re right! (About trade show appointments.)

Reading two recent MeetingsNet articles about the value of trade show appointments reminds me of a story attributed to the wry 13th-century Sufi philosopher Nasreddin.

A woman demonstrates the American Sign Language for "You're right!"
American Sign Language for “You’re right!”

Two men who were quarreling came to Nasreddin and asked him to adjudicate their argument. The first man presented his case, and when he was done, Nasreddin exclaimed, “You’re right!” The second man shouted, “You haven’t even listened to my side of the story!” He then presented his case and when he was done, Nasreddin exclaimed again, “You’re right!”

Nasreddin’s wife, who had listened to the whole thing, remarked, “They can’t both be right.”

Nasreddin looked at his wife and exclaimed with a smile, “You’re right too!”

Yes, although the articles express seemingly very different points of view, I think they’re both right!

Desirée Knight on trade show appointments

Let’s start with Desirée Knight, senior director of meetings at the American Psychological Association (APA), who shares a pessimistic view of the future of prescheduled appointments at her association events.

MeetingsNet: Five years from now, what won’t we be doing on the trade-show floor that we’re doing today?

Knight: We will not be doing appointments on the trade-show floor. We must rethink this concept and find new approaches to customer engagement. This will require the industry to develop new approaches to KPIs and different measurement tools. In the end, we are responsible for creating engaging events for our stakeholders. Setting appointments within the trade-show environment is not engaging and, quite frankly, for some, not a good use of time. Creating collaborative spaces with AI gadgets or open forums to discuss current trends and issues will help vendors and buyers reset their views on developing business. The next generation of trade-show attendees are looking for engaging content and not just 15-minute appointments.
Two Minutes with Desirée Knight, CAE, CMP, DES • MeetingsNet, Mar 07, 2023

Carina Bauer’s point of view

Two weeks later, Carina Bauer, CEO of the IMEX Group, parent company to two leading trade shows in the business events industry, defended the value of trade show appointments:

“Let’s start with trade shows essentially being marketplaces (they’ve performed this role for hundreds of years) where the primary motivation for showing up is to do business. When planned and managed carefully, appointments are an efficient use of everyone’s time. A prescheduled appointment tells a business-hungry exhibitor that a motivated buyer is interested in them. A pre-agreed appointment allows time for sound preparation on both sides of the deal—a detailed RFP is often met by an exhibitor who’s done in-depth and detailed research. That instantly becomes an ROI win-win.

ROI and ROE (return on experience) are clearly now more important than ever, and buyers are more discerning about which events they attend. However, our experience shows that once committed, 21st-century planners don’t want to leave their schedules to chance. In fact, what they want—demand—is flexible scheduling and to be treated with respect, e.g. no forced matchmaking or quotas. That means trusting them to do business; encouraging them to make appointments when they have firm business to place but also valuing their time spent in other ways such as learning or networking.”
In Defense of Buyer-Seller Appointments on the Trade-Show Floor by Carina Bauer • MeetingsNet, Mar 20, 2023

So, who’s right?

Associations’ needs vary

First of all, it’s important to note that Desirée is talking about the specific needs of her association. I have designed and facilitated events for hundreds of associations, and seen a large variation in the importance and positioning of trade shows at their meetings. Some associations do not even want a trade show component, while for others it’s a primary draw for members. Though I don’t know the specific objectives of the APA, reading between the lines gives the impression that the association wants its events to focus primarily on education and connection between participants, rather than creating and supporting supplier relationships.

Trade show organizers have a wider perspective

Second, it’s clear that Carina is coming from a wider perspective than that of an association meeting director. IMEX trade shows act as a marketplace for meeting industry suppliers and planners. Planners choose to attend because they see value in the convenience and efficiency of shopping for services and venues at one event. The ongoing popularity of IMEX trade shows, despite the significant impact of COVID, shows that trade show appointments meet genuine needs of both planners and suppliers.

Money, money, money

Finally, trade shows are the public face of a reality that few in the meeting industry discuss publicly. (It’s not mentioned in either of these articles, though it often influences decisions made by planners, suppliers, and trade show organizers.) The reality is that trade shows involve significant amounts of money. In many cases, they are the biggest event revenue sources for associations and the largest expense for participating suppliers. Some associations derive the bulk of their operating budget from trade show receipts and can charge low, sometimes no, fees to attendees. On the other side, the selling opportunities supplied by trade show appointments are perhaps the most compelling reason for suppliers to pay high fees to exhibit.

If APA (or any association) eliminates trade show appointments, they may see reduced revenue from suppliers that will need to be made up in some other area. (For example, by increasing participant fees to attend.) This is an issue that is discussed extensively internally by both:

  • Associations that are trying to optimize member satisfaction without sacrificing revenue; and
  • Suppliers that have to determine the value of exhibiting with or without secured and prescheduled appointments with potential or existing customers.

You’re both right!

Desirée and Carina are both right about the value of trade show appointments. The APA plans to move away from appointments, replacing them with increased opportunities for suppliers and participants to connect and learn in open forums that involve both groups. That’s what they and their members want. Meanwhile, IMEX has strong evidence that many association planners find trade show appointments valuable and are happy to attend them, especially with the sweetener of low or no attendance fees (and sometimes even subsidized travel and accommodations).

While trade show appointments may lead to tensions between the needs of suppliers and association members at meetings, it’s clear that they work for many though not all associations.

Sometimes, despite disagreement, everyone’s right!

Animated gif attribution: Clip from Learn ASL: Right, wrong, and more in American Sign Language for beginners

The highest meaning of a social group

Photographs of Jim Ralston and Barbara Kingsolver and their thoughts on the highest meaning of a social group

Over the years, I’ve written frequently about associations, which are just one kind of social group. Our lives are defined by myriads of social groups, some self-chosen, some completely beyond our control. These groups have many origins and purposes, some beneficial and some destructive. Although individual value systems vary, I think it’s worth asking the question: What’s the highest meaning or purpose of a social group?

Columnist, essayist, and poet Jim Ralston offers this answer:

“The highest meaning of the social group is to foster the development of individual potential, for the community’s own well-being depends on it. When the goal of the group ceases to be the individual, that group goes into decline.”
Jim Ralston, July 1991 correspondence with The Sun

I agree with this, perhaps controversial, answer. There are plenty of social groups—including many (but not all) political movements, companies, and religions—that champion their collective interests over those of other groups or individuals. Someone who believes in these groups’ goals, is likely to give them a higher meaning than the development of group members’ individual potential.

From the point of view of associations, however, I think this answer stands. I’ve seen many examples of associations’ tails wagging their memberships’ dog., i.e. staff running an association for their own benefit or organizational survival at the expense of the development of individual members. A classic example is the National Rifle Association, which journalist Tim Mak described in his book Misfire: Inside the Downfall of the NRA as having “a ‘Field & Stream’ membership with a ‘Fox & Friends’ leadership”. In my experience, such associations eventually either implode or—often reluctantly—radically restructure their administration or mission.

Barbara Kingsolver on altruism and self-interest

Novelist, essayist, and poet Barbara Kingsolver highlights a different perspective on the highest meaning of a social group: the tension between altruism and self-interest.

“Altruism was also part of our evolution, but, again, it was a very constrained altruism that would benefit our own descendants and nobody else’s. That’s the wiring we’ve inherited. And on this razor-thin leading edge of history, we’ve developed a civilization in which we generally acknowledge the benefits of cooperation beyond our immediate group. So we have charitable organizations and adoptions and nonprofits, and also international trade and NAFTA. But our nature is still pulling us back.”
Barbara KingsolverThe Moral Universe: Barbara Kingsolver On Writing, Politics, And Human Nature, interview by Jeanne Supin, March 2014

This is the same tension that plays out between association staff and membership wants and needs. Over time, if staff self-interest significantly outweighs altruistic motivations, association culture is likely to become increasingly introspective, rather than continuing to evolve to satisfy individual members’ wants and needs.

Ending a group

Some groups evolve to a point where they no longer serve the development of their members but concentrate on the survival of themselves as an institution. Such groups do little to benefit anyone but their staff. It’s likely that they served their purpose well at some point in their history, but that period is over. The best outcome is to close them down.

Conclusion

Jim Ralston and Barbara Kingsolver illustrate the importance of deciding the highest meaning of any social group, especially ones you manage. Your choice will determine the health and future of the group.

What do you think is the highest meaning of a social group? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Image attributions: Jim Ralston from The Sun; Barbara Kingsolver (2023, January 10) from Wikipedia.

When association leadership loses its way

leadership: a caricature model of a greedy businessman with a large grinIs it OK for a U.S. 501(c)(3) non-profit association to:

  • Make large profits;
  • Pay its four top executives well over $1M per year; and yet
  • Do little for its members?

In an astonishing article, Professor Dorothy Vera Margaret Bishop, FRS FBA FMedSci, who is Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford shares an example of an association that’s guilty of all of the above.

“The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) makes humongous amounts of money from its journal and meetings, but spends very little on helping its members, while treating overseas researchers with indifference bordering on disdain.”
—Dorothy Vera Margaret Bishop, Has the Society for Neuroscience lost its way?

Why the SfN lost its way

Bishop’s article gives the financial details, also available from the association’s 2016 (latest) IRS Form 990. To summarize, the Society for Neuroscience:

  1. Makes millions of dollars in profit from its journal submission fees. But claims these fees only cover “a portion of the costs associated with peer review.”
  2. Makes millions of dollars profit from its annual meeting.
  3. Despite its stated claim of wanting to support neuroscience globally, uses little of its enormous reserves (more than $100M at the end of 2016) to “offer grants for scientists in resource-poor countries to buy equipment, pay for research assistants or attend meetings. Quite small sums could be transformational in such a context. As far as I can see, SfN currently offers a few awards, but some of these are paid for by external donations, and, in relation to their huge reserves, the sums are paltry.”

This is a classic example of a non-profit whose leadership lost its way. It created an association whose commitment to membership is secondary to leadership’s focus on pursuing profit (and, presumably their own consequently generous salaries). As Bishop says:

“…instead of being an organisation that exists to promote neuroscience and help their members, the members are rather regarded as nothing but a source of income, which is then stashed away in investments.”

The Plan and The Reality

Reading the Society’s lofty Mission and Strategic Plan, I’m struck by how little it reflects the Society’s actual operational decisions that Bishop and I describe. In 2016 alone, the association stashed away $6M out of $33M of revenues. Yet the 8,000-word document spends far more time describing how diversity and equity issues will be handled (worthy goals for sure) and the importance of seeking funding from external sources, than providing any kind of cold hard cash support to its less well-off members.

Founded in 1969, the Society for Neuroscience began — as every association does — as a group of people wanting to further a particular profession, the interests of those engaged in the profession, and the public interest. Half a century later the Society’s leadership has apparently forgotten its founders’ reasons for existence. Instead, it concentrates on self-perpetuation and expansion over fully supporting the community of practice.

Remembering that an association is, at its core, a set of agreements in people’s minds about supporting a community that is important to them is key to keeping the association relevant to the community it serves. Sadly, the Society for Neuroscience leadership has lost its way.

I wish the Society for Neuroscience was the only association whose leadership has forgotten that the core purpose of an association is to serve its members. Unfortunately, in my experience, such associations are common these days. Do you have other examples to share? Feel free to do so in the comments below.

Create memorable learning experiences and connections at simple workshops

simple workshops: a group interacting intensely while sitting around a table during a Solution Room sessionI often design and facilitate workshops for association members most of whom haven’t met before. The desired outcomes are for each participant to gain useful and relevant professional insights, and to make significant new connections.

During the workshops, each participant shares and receives consulting from a small peer group on a current professional challenge. The only technologies used are printed cards, paper-covered round tables, and colored pens.

Here’s what you might see on a stroll through a typical workshop:

An example

At one workshop, association staffers noted that no one touched a cell phone, and intense conversations with frequent bursts of laughter filled the entire two-hour event.

A participant started crying and his group members rushed to console and support him. (We learned later that he had been unfairly fired earlier in the day.) Afterward, we saw many people swapping business cards and making arrangements to meet up again. Before leaving, the fired man told me that, despite his dire circumstances, he had had a very positive experience and made several good new friends in his group. Other participants shared during post-workshop conversations that the experience would be memorable because of their personal learning and the new connections made.

Follow-up evaluations confirmed that participants obtained meaningful peer support and advice, and began new friendships with other workshop participants.

Such workshops routinely meet the outcomes they’re designed to achieve: creating useful and memorable learning experiences and connections.

Why are these workshops successful?

These workshops are not successful because of the:

  • excellence of a speaker;
  • beauty/novelty of the venue/F&B/entertainment; or
  • extraordinary facilitation.

(Full disclosure:  the facilitation needs to be competent!)

They are successful because of the process design that supports participants learning from each other while simultaneously enjoying a positive emotional connection together.

Adult professional peers can learn much from each other, and when they meet they are hungry to find solutions to current problems, explore issues, and make connections with others who work in the same sphere.

The successful workshops I’ve described above do not have a single expert sharing content. (Rather, it’s fair to say, they tap the expertise and experience of everyone present.) All they need for success is good process, competent facilitation, and a few low-tech items.

They are also simple. Every process element is a strategic ingredient of the workshop design. Running these workshops helps me continually refine the design, stripping away components that distract focus from the desired outcomes.

Many organizations focus on getting the “best” experts to speak at their meetings. Ironically, in my experience it’s almost always easier to create memorable learning and valuable connection for attendees by employing participatory workshop formats. Why? Because they take full advantage of the group’s combined expertise, hone in on what people actually want and need to learn, and build lasting relationships in the process.

How to become one with your association’s strategic goals

association's strategic goals: an animated gif of a person meditating by a rushing streamHow to become one with your association’s strategic goals

No, I’m not suggesting you rise at 5 a.m. and recite your association’s strategic plan as your daily morning mantra. But I’d like you to answer this simple question. How many of your association’s strategic goals can you recall right now?

(No cheating! And not the easy bits about your vision, mission, who you serve, or your programs and services — just your goals!)

I’ll wait…

Was that a little embarrassing? You’re not alone — when I tried this recently, I was pretty embarrassed too!

association's strategic goals

Last month I joined the board of a local non-profit, just in time to take part in the third and final board meeting to update our strategic plan. It was a productive and well-run meeting, expertly facilitated by non-profit consultant Lizann Peyton, and ten minutes before the scheduled end we had agreed on a list of five major goals, each with several subgoals.

Then Lizann asked us to avert our eyes from our notes and recall the goals we had just spent two hours formulating.

Oh my goodness! My mind went blank. We’d just been talking about our goals, but at that moment it became clear to me (and I suspect to most if not all board members) that we hadn’t internalized them.

That’s upsetting because, Dilbert jokes aside, organizational strategic plan goals need to be top of mind for board members and staff if there’s going to be a reasonable chance that they’ll actually be met. (Otherwise, what’s the point of having them?)

Lizann had clearly seen this movie before. She smoothly suggested three ways for us to become more familiar with our strategic goals at our board meetings.

Three suggestions on how to assist board members become one with your strategic goals

1) Add your list of strategic plan goals to each board meeting agenda. (Print them on the back if you’re still using paper agendas.)

2) At each board meeting, organize the agenda to reflect the structure of your strategic goals. Also, include a short discussion about some part of your strategic direction. For example, if one of your goals is to assess opportunities for the use of new space, include an agenda item at each meeting for a progress update from the new space committee.

3) Have the executive director’s reports to the board be organized around the strategic goals too.  After all, the director’s job is to help move the organization in the direction set by the board.

Lessons learned

My inability to recall conclusions that we’d just spent two hours creating clearly indicates the limitations of learning models that rely on one-time exposure to information (e.g. lecturing). Learning research tells us that “repeat to remember” is key to encoding learning in long-term memory. Although the monthly interval between our meetings is longer than optimum, following Lizann’s recommendations over time should help us internalize our strategic goals, reducing future potential embarrassment and, more importantly, improving our ability to achieve them.

Perhaps these recommendations will help your association’s staff and board members too!

Have you found other ways to help internalize your organization’s strategic goals? Share them in the comments below.

Associations exist only in the mind

associations exist only in the mind: A 1979 Visa credit card advertisementProfessional, trade, and public interest associations are significant businesses. In the United States alone, associations employ more than 1.6 million people and generate an annual payroll of ~$50 billion. Yet, ultimately, associations exist only in the mind.

Stay with me! Here’s a story that may convince you of this point of view.

Once upon a time…

Fifty years ago, every business wanting to offer credit to its customers needed its own independent system. Individual banks were trying to encourage merchants and customers to adopt newfangled things called “credit cards”, but they failed to solve the chicken-and-egg problem that consumers did not want to use a card that few merchants would accept and merchants did not want to accept a card that few consumers used.

Then in 1966, a man named Dee Hock had the vision, determination, resources, and a little luck to break this logjam. Dee described his journey in a fascinating book he wrote after his retirement in 1984, intriguingly titled: Birth of The Chaordic AgeDee was the first CEO of what became the mammoth multinational financial services corporation VISA, a company with a current market capitalization of over $200B.

What has this to do with associations? Well, VISA has never issued cards, extended credit, or set rates and fees for consumers. The company is, in structure if not in capitalist terms, an association of tens of thousands of member banks. They offer VISA-branded credit, debit, prepaid, and cash-access programs to their hundreds of millions of customers. While competing with each other for customers, these banks agree to honor each other’s trillions of dollars in transactions annually across borders and currencies.

A set of agreements

At its core, VISA is a set of agreements between its members. The company’s value to its owners and customers is created from its members’ mutual agreements. Without those agreements, VISA would not exist. We would return to the pre-VISA world when every financial entity needed its own system of offering customer credit.

VISA is an atypical kind of for-profit organization. However, its core purpose is essentially identical to that of trade and professional associations. Associations are society’s instantiations of communities of practice, groups of people who share a common interest, profession, or passion and agree to actively engage around what they have in common. That leads us to Dee Hock’s (and my) view of organizations like VISA and associations:

“…organizations exist only in the mind; they are no more than the conceptual embodiments of the ancient idea of community.”
—Dee Hock, Birth of The Chaordic Age

When associations go astray

This perspective is extremely important because it’s easy for associations to forget their initial and continued reasons for existence. Every association is created when at some moment in time a group of people with something in common wants to further a particular profession and/or the interests of those engaged in a profession and/or the public interest. Typically, the community already exists informally. Its “members” want to create a formal, legal structure to support, deepen, and widen its reach.

Associations can, however, lose sight of this primal and ongoing purpose. When this happens, they concentrate on self-perpetuation and/or expansion at the expense of supporting the community of practice for which they were created. Remembering that an association is, at its core, a set of agreements in people’s minds about the instantiation of a community that is important to them is key to keeping the association relevant to the community it serves.

So remember that associations exist only in the mind. Keeping an association’s purpose foremost is critical to maintaining its community of practice’s core reasons for being.

Image attribution: CNBC

Lessons from my association leadership transitions

association leadership transitions: a photograph in distorted colors of a person walking toward the camera down a subterranean flight of stepsIn June 2016 I stepped down as President and Executive Director of edACCESS, an association I co-founded 25 years ago. This was the third time I’ve left an association leadership position. Here are some valuable lessons learned from these association leadership transitions.

The Solar Association of Vermont

Although the rapid growth of the solar energy industry may appear to be a recent phenomenon, North American boomers will remember the late 70s and early 80s when the 1979 “oil crisis” hit and interest in alternative energy generation soared. I moved to Vermont in 1978 and joined the management of a fledging solar hot water manufacturing business. After a couple of years, I helped to found the Solar Association of Southern Vermont. Eventually, we became the Solar Association of Vermont (SAVE!) We’d hold monthly meetings in the tiny rural town of Brattleboro and sixty people would show up. SAVE went on to produce many of the earliest alternative energy conferences in the United States.

But in the 80s Reagan was elected. He removed the solar collectors that a colleague of mine had installed on the White House. By the mid-80’s oil prices had returned to pre-crisis levels. Interest in solar energy dried up and SAVE meeting attendance shrank to a few people.

What did we do?

We shut SAVE down.

We held a big end-of-the-association party, inviting everyone who had been part of this brief flowering of community interest. Little did we know that our work would set the stage for the meteoric rise of solar photovoltaic systems today.

Lessons

As time passes, the key motivations for an association’s existence can transmute, or even disappear. I’ve worked with hundreds of associations, and seen some continue to struggle on long after their mission has become irrelevant. Check regularly that your association’s mission remains congruent with its circumstances. If not, change your mission or your operations to stay relevant. Or, if necessary, close up shop (not forgetting to celebrate all your good work if you do!)

A local association

After a number of years serving as a board member of a local chapter of a national association, the board offered me the presidency. The national was recommending that chapters fundamentally change the way they operated, a change I agreed with. I told the board that I would happily accept the presidency if we allocated the resources needed to make this transformation happen, arguing that the change would improve our financial resources by allowing us to significantly increase our community fundraising.

Unfortunately, the board refused to allocate the resources I requested.

Consequently, I reluctantly turned down the presidency and left the board, as I did not want to lead an association whose board did not support the vision I had for its future.

Looking back on the subsequent evolution of the association, I don’t regret my decision, though I wish I’d been better able to convince the board that my approach was a better alternative to staying with the status quo.

Lessons

Before taking an association leadership role, share your vision for the future and make sure the rest of the association buys into it. If they don’t, don’t take the job!

edACCESS

In 1991 I co-founded edACCESS, a 501(c)6 that supports information technology staff at small schools. Initially, I had a professional interest in the organization’s mission for many years and served for free. As my consulting focus shifted increasingly towards meeting design, I moved into a paid part-time executive director role.

In May, 2016, I decided to give up the position, with the goal of making the handover to new leadership as smooth as possible. I announced my intent at the June annual conference and offered to stay for a year in a supervisory role, coaching new leadership as needed.

The existing leadership handled my announcement very well. I told them I would provide any desired assistance and advice around leadership changes, but felt it was important not to be intimately involved in ongoing decisions. I was gratified by the response, which to me reflects the fundamental health of the association I helped to create.

The transition went well. The full year’s notice allowed me to take new and existing leadership through an entire life cycle of the core association process. The association stayed in good shape after I left.

Lessons

I have seen (and experienced) a number of associations that were severely stressed by the sudden departure of leadership and the total lack of any leadership succession planning. To be honest, edACCESS is small enough that we did not have a formal plan in place. I am glad I have the flexibility to offer what will hopefully be sufficient time and support to allow the association to continue effectively carrying out its mission. Don’t assume that key association staff or board members, will stay with the organization forever, or give you ample warning before they depart! Pre-emergency planning for leadership, staffing, and succession will minimize the turmoil that can be generated without warning when key personnel leave unexpectedly.

Association leadership transitions

Have you made association leadership transitions? What lessons have you learned that others may value? Share in the comments!

Photo attribution: Flickr user by_andy

Tip: Simple inexpensive effective appreciation of your volunteers

inexpensive appreciation poster: photograph of a poster for a conference I designed and facilitated, covered with written appreciations by participants and now posted proudly in my officeHere’s a great inexpensive appreciation to provide powerful personal feedback in permanent form to meeting volunteers and staff that complements giving them public appreciations during the event. Event planning committee members and I were delighted recipients during a recent national peer conference for medical research lab managers.

Simply print copies of your event’s marketing poster, logo, or website main page on white poster stock (see illustration above). Post one copy for each person to receive appreciations, matched with a name card, on noticeboards or tables located in a prominent spot in your venue, and provide some pens nearby. Then, publicize the posters a few times throughout the event and ask attendees to write appreciations for the people posted.

You can see the heartwarming poster I received above. I’ve permanently posted it on my office wall. Every time I look at this poster, I’m reminded of the meeting and the kind plaudits and thanks I received.

At the end of the meeting, remind recipients to pick up their posters before they go!

One more suggestion. Supply cardboard tubes so that recipients can bring their inexpensive appreciation poster safely home. As you can see, mine got a little wrinkled in my suitcase—but I’ll treasure it nevertheless!