Picture the scene. It’s Valentine’s Day morning. Martha and I have been married 20 years; we’re no longer newlyweds. Today, though, something felt different. My wife, in her casual morning wear, looked different – relaxed, at ease. Our normal morning banter, familiar to any married couple, took on a different air, a certain je ne sais quoi.
An unspoken tension had developed out of our conversation. I decided to shoot my shot. I asked the question I’m sure most husbands wanted to ask on Valentine’s Day.
“Sweetie, what was the big regulatory change caused by Sarbanes-Oxley?”
You see, fine reader, both my wife and I are consultants. She specializes in financial regulatory strategy as a managing director for PwC. I have worked in policy and politics for 40 years. Our careers in consulting have paralleled each other over the years. The only difference is that she is successful at hers.
Regardless, discussing policy and its implications is our love language.
Topics that morning included, but of course were not restricted to, the following.
- Sarbanes-Oxley and its impact on the banking sector
- Evolving changes in financial services regulation and compliance from the Trump Administration
- Changing strategy impacting vaccine policy
- The impact of special interest groups on policy
- The history and long-term implications of the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care).
The common theme, though, was how changes in any or all these areas were being considered “unprecedented” by so many people. People who apparently did not realize a world existed before today.
Sadly, she and I are both old enough to remember a “Time Before Now”. A time with its own issues, problems, controversies, joys, and successes.
In Martha’s world, she remembers the financial regulatory environment before the Financial Crisis. For me, it’s a time before the Affordable Care Act.
We were both frustrated by the over-the-top responses from people who didn’t realize history exists.
You are not living in chaotic times; you are stuck in a static set of assumptions.
A common topic among many leaders today is how “chaotic” or “unprecedented” the world is. “Woe is me”, cry so many leaders, “It’s all so hard”. OMG, the headlines are different today. No hardship, war, or disease has ever struck humanity before today. Nobody has ever disliked a political leader before me.
Waa, Waa, Waa.
When you dive a bit deeper, you see the problem: something different is happening. There is no examination of whether the change is better, worse, or simply different.
For many people, “different” is defined as “worse”. No critical thinking. No consideration of history or precedent. No assessment as to whether the current thing is working.
When something lasts long enough, people build business models around it. They build professions around it. They build lives around it.
So many people today are upset because while they stay the same, the world changes around them.
When your association has built its strategy around a set of assumptions, you are naturally, sometimes aggressively resistant to anything different.
But consider this:
- Sometimes returning to the past is better.
- Sometimes doing something different is better.
Clinging to the current is a recipe for failure. Too many association leaders are clinging to the past. As their assumptions become less relevant, they freeze – unable to decide.
To make things worse, once you decide the world is a particular way, you ignore information to the contrary and inhale information that confirms your bias like a diver coming to the ocean’s surface.
Association CEOs and board members need to embrace objective, independent, and future-focused assessments of the environment facing their members and use this knowledge to identify emerging needs.
You are out of breath because you are falling behind, reacting to external forces.
When you are constantly rushing to catch up, you feel breathless.
82% of CEOs in Association Laboratory’s industry-leading sector research cite “general economic pressures and financial uncertainty” as a factor affecting members. When members are uncertain about the future, they are less likely to invest or allocate resources to discretionary activities. Like you.
Increasingly, associations are viewed as optional. Competition for education, advocacy, and community is increasing, particularly by for-profit organizations. The relationship between associations and policymakers is shifting. Employers are less supportive of association engagement. Artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact are growing across professions and industries.
Association CEOs and Board members need to quickly examine how their association is a solution to uncertainty, not an optional expense. The more an association is an expense rather than an investment, the less likely people and companies are to see it as a relevant platform for their success.
The faster the pace of change, the more quickly you fall behind.
The longer and more deeply you cling to the past, the more likely you are to fall behind – forever. The world isn’t going to stand still and wait for you to catch up.
48% of respondents to Looking Forward® Impact, the nation’s leading environmental scan of the association sector, cite “for-profit organizations” as their primary source of competition. The difference between for-profits and associations – speed.
You are competing for the finite time, money, and energy of your members. They can give this to anyone, why you?
Too many associations take months to make decisions that their competitors make in days. These decisions are frequently made using information that is not months, but years old. In what world does slow and poorly informed describe the winner?
Association CEOs and Board members need to abandon out-of-date governance systems designed for horse-and-buggy days and work on developing systematic, future-focused mechanisms to make informed decisions.
Last Call From My Seat at the Bar– Rip off the Rearview Mirror
My first “R-rated” movie was Cannonball Run, a comedy about an illegal cross-country car race. In one scene, the actor playing an Italian driver in a Ferrari reaches up and rips off the rearview mirror.
He calmly turns to his navigator and says, “What is behind us does not matter.”
The principal ethical responsibility of association CEOs is to help volunteer leaders (and staff) understand that the world is (and will always be) a different place and that there is no going back to get to the future.
Unfortunately, too many leaders treat the association as their personal platform. A mechanism for their personal, political, or frankly, just old-fashioned beliefs. It’s time for leaders to stop heeding the caustic shouts of a tiny, vocal minority bent on twisting the association to their own ends.
Uncertainty is unavoidable. This isn’t about predicting the future. It’s about building a shared story that your Board and staff can use to make decisions.
Just some thoughts from My Seat at the Bar.