Stop Designing Your Association for Retired People

At the Hotel Bar

During a recent conversation with a client, she noted, in a more than exasperated tone, “We need to stop designing our benefits for retired people.”

Their leadership is, shall we say, “senior,” and their decisions are often informed by their historical perspective. They enjoyed the association of their youth and hope to duplicate the experience for their younger colleagues. Positive motivations?  Check. Waste of time and money? Also, check.

The result? Benefits designed by and for retired people.

Too many associations and their leaders are following this path.

Consider the following.

You are designing your association for the future, not today.

You don’t plan on whether to take an umbrella by looking at yesterday’s weather forecast. Yet, too often, associations look at their current programs, services, and initiatives as the only solution to members’ problems. Back to the Future is a movie, not a strategy.

In addition, volunteer leaders who enjoyed historical activities are often overly supportive of their continuation. “I loved it, so others will love it.” they think.

The world within which your association will need to be successful will be very different in the future. The audiences may be different. Their needs may be different. The solutions you will need to provide will be different. See the pattern?

Wayne Gretzky, widely regarded as one of the greatest ice hockey players of all time, credited his father with the famous quote, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”

This quote captures the mindset our staff teams and volunteer leaders need to embrace.

Don’t invest in a failed strategy.

The sunk cost fallacy is a cognitive bias in which individuals continue to invest in a project or make decisions based on the cumulative prior investment (time, money, resources) despite facing negative outcomes.

More simply, it’s good money (or time) after bad, despite the lack of success, because you refuse to give up.

This occurs because they feel that abandoning the effort would mean wasting the already invested resources, even when stopping and redirecting efforts elsewhere would be more rational.

Kinda like marriage, amiright honey?!

Huh. My lovely bride doesn’t seem to want to hi-five me on that.

Anyhoo. Too often, we continue programs that have lost their value and relevance to the market.

For example, years ago, when running a small account at an AMC, I discontinued a monthly program due to very small or nonexistent attendance.

The volunteer President insisted it be added back because he liked it and thought it was important. The result was continued staff time and money after bad. The organization eventually went bankrupt and out of business after more than 125 years of operation.

Association Laboratory’s client research routinely shows that many programs are not substantively meeting members’ needs, yet they are continued and continue to consume resources that could be better used elsewhere.

Don’t use generational cliches to inform strategy.

Years ago, making money as a consultant was easy.

  1. You wrote a book titled “Engaging the Next Generation” or “Not Your Father’s Association.”
  2. You scared people with generalizations about Millennials.
  3. You told people they needed to change because of “known” facts (really cliches) about the entirety of a generation.
  4. Sell books, make speeches, and laugh all the way to the bank. #winning
  5. Repeat but change Millennial to Z-Generation.

This “advice” was founded on the solid principle of generational cliches.  For example,

  • We all “know” our Boomer friends can’t use technology – despite all evidence.
  • We all “know” our X-generation friends are a mix of inspirational leaders and Eisenhower-like strategists with the tactical skills and competence of business ninjas—okay, that’s true.
  • We all “know” that Millennials job hop because nobody has ever changed jobs in their 20s—30s.
  • We all “know” how the Z-generation will act because everyone knows how you act at 27 years old and younger defines your work and professional behaviors for the rest of your life.

Many people (not me, to be clear) found this an easy path to “understand” complex, dynamic, and pluralistic audiences. Recommendations ensued.

Generational clichés often exaggerate differences that, while sometimes significant (in studies), have little impact in practice. You can find anything you want in the research if you look hard enough.

Ronald H. Coase, a renowned British Economist, said, “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.” Nothing describes generational research more eloquently.

The younger the audience you design for, the greater the ROI.

Return on member investment is an underutilized metric for associations. It basically asks, “What return does my association get if I invest $1 in a person?”

Like money, the greater the time, the more the return.

When you invest $1 in a 25-year-old, you have the entirety of their career to get the benefits. Investing $1 in a 60-year-old means you have substantially less time to recover your investment. 35 years less for you math dunces (or marketing majors).

Too many associations default to programs designed to serve existing audiences they know instead of learning about and serving future audiences that will be the heart of their industry or profession.

This puts your association behind the ROI curve in perpetuity. Or, as Peter Dinklage’s character, Tyrion Lannister, in Game of Thrones would say, “Forever.”

Last Call

Change is hard. So is failure.

Presiding over the gradual decline of your association isn’t what you’ll brag about on LinkedIn.

You have never had more tools at your disposal. You have never had a better group of colleagues to help you.

You will not be successful overnight, but if you don’t shift your focus to the future of your association from its past, you will never succeed.

Just some thoughts from My Seat at the Bar.