For Immediate Release
Association Laboratory Launches Governance and Leadership Practice Built on a Performance Rubric
New Practice Pairs Four Veteran Association CEOs with a Research-Based Assessment Tool to Help CEOs and their Boards Close the Gap Between Good Intentions and Good Governance
Most association boards lack a reliable way to measure the gap between the governance they practice and the governance they deliver. That is the finding at the center of Association Laboratory’s newest white paper, Current Association Governance was Built for a Different World, and the reason the firm is launching an expanded Governance and Leadership Practice.
Association leaders today are governing at a pace of change their board structures were never designed for — shifting generational expectations, technology moving faster than policy can keep up with, economic and competitive pressures testing the business model itself, and members far less willing to simply take good governance on faith.
The associations that will thrive are not the ones facing fewer of these pressures, but those whose boards and staff teams have built governance and leadership strategies to turn that pressure into better decisions.
A Measurement Tool, Not Just a Framework
What distinguishes the new Practice is a proprietary assessment rubric, organized across three domains — board governance performance, senior staff leadership performance, and the interface between the two — that gives clients a score for each category rather than a vague impression or opinion of how governance is going.
The rubric is fielded simultaneously to board members, senior staff, and other key stakeholders, which surfaces not just a score but the degree of agreement between groups on that score — diagnostic information Association Laboratory’s research identifies as critical to informing strategy, governance, and leadership questions.
A category where board and staff agree can generally be acted on directly; a category where they diverge identifies a perception gap that needs to be resolved before any recommendation will be credible to everyone at the table.
From Diagnosis to a Full Line of Services
The rubric functions as a governance maturity model and the measurement foundation beneath six service functions clients can engage individually or as an integrated, strategic approach:
- Assess — a confidential, multi-stakeholder diagnostic establishing a baseline score and divergence reading for every rubric category.
- Align — focused engagements that bring boards and staff together around specific perception-gap data, rather than generic facilitated conversation.
- Design — structural work on bylaws, committees, or representative bodies where the assessment shows the current structure no longer matches what the organization needs.
- Develop — competency-based nominating processes, succession planning, and association capacity and capability building tied directly to the gaps the assessment identifies.
- Benchmark — a growing, proprietary benchmarking dataset built as the rubric is fielded across engagements, supporting an annual state-of-governance study.
- Lead — comprehensive engagements that combine all five functions into a single, sustained partnership.
An Experienced Team of Association Executives
The Practice brings together four senior association executives who have each led associations from the chief executive chair, applying the rubric to the specific governance challenge each has spent a career solving:
- Diana Ewert CAE — former association CEO applying the rubric within healthcare, physician-led, and accreditation-driven governance environments.
- Mark McSweeney CAE — former association CEO specializing in governance implementation, organizational change, and strategic execution.
- Mary Power ACC, FASAE, CAE — former association CEO and executive coach focused on board-staff alignment, CEO transitions, and governance interface performance.
- Jim Thompson CAE, IOM — former association CEO bringing a chief staff executive’s perspective to board-staff accountability and partnership.
This team’s field experience is built on a research base the firm has developed since its founding nearly three decades ago, including its prior white papers Creating and Sustaining a Strategic Board and Leading Strategic Change in Associations (both updated in 2024), and is supported on every engagement by Association Laboratory’s Looking Forward® environmental scanning studies.
Start with a Diagnostic, Not a Proposal
Associations interested in seeing where their own board and staff team score against the 13-criteria rubric can request a scoped diagnostic assessment — typically the entry point for a new governance relationship — rather than a general conversation. To schedule a diagnostic scoping call or request a copy of Current Association Governance Was Built for a Different World, contact:
Dean West | [email protected]
Association Laboratory | 35 East Wacker Drive, Suite 850 | Chicago, IL 60601
312-224-2626 | www.associationlaboratory.com