Latest / The Human Factor: Exploring the Intersection of Humanity, Technology, and Transformation / S2 Episode 10 (023) | The Pattern Spotter: What You See When You Are Inside Thirty Organizations at Once

Transcript

S2 Episode 10 (023) | The Pattern Spotter: What You See When You Are Inside Thirty Organizations at Once · The Human Factor: Exploring the Intersection of Humanity, Technology, and Transformation

• 0:04
  Here's a question I would want you to sit with for a moment.
• 0:08
  What would you see if you could be inside 30 organizations at
• 0:12
  the same time? You're reading about them in a
• 0:16
  case study, not consulting from the outside looking in, but
• 0:20
  actually embedded in the daily operations, the governance
• 0:24
  conversations, the strategic planning sessions, the staff
• 0:28
  meetings, the board dynamics, the membership crisis, use of 30
• 0:32
  different organizations simultaneously.
• 0:36
  Because that's the vantage point that would show you something
• 0:39
  that no single organization leader can see from where they
• 0:42
  sit. It would show you the patterns,
• 0:46
  the recurring human dynamics, that repeat across organizations
• 0:51
  of different sizes, different industries, and different
• 0:55
  missions. It would show you the same
• 0:58
  resistance behaviors, the same governance traps, the same
• 1:02
  identity crises, the same structural silences.
• 1:07
  And it would force you to confront a deeply uncomfortable
• 1:10
  possibility that the transformation challenges you
• 1:15
  believe are unique to your organization are unique at all.
• 1:20
  They are systemic, they're predictable, and they're being
• 1:24
  misdiagnosed in the same ways by well-intentioned leaders in
• 1:30
  organization after organization after organization.
• 1:35
  I'm Kevin Novak, CEO of 2040, Digital professor of the
• 1:39
  University of Maryland and author of the book The Truth
• 1:43
  about Transformation. Leading in the Age of AI,
• 1:46
  Uncertainty and Human Complexity along with the ideas and
• 1:50
  innovations Weekly newsletter. Welcome to the Human Factor
• 1:54
  Podcast, the show that explores the intersection of humanity,
• 1:58
  technology, and transformation, along with the psychology behind
• 2:03
  transformation success. This is Season 2, Episode 10,
• 2:09
  and today's guest occupies a position that almost no one in
• 2:13
  organizational leadership occupies.
• 2:15
  Most leaders experience transformation from inside a
• 2:19
  single organization. They draw conclusions from that
• 2:22
  experience, and those conclusions feel authoritative
• 2:26
  because they were earned through years of effort.
• 2:30
  But those conclusions are also drawn from the sample size of 1.
• 2:35
  Aaron Fuller is the global head of association solutions and
• 2:39
  chief strategy officer at MCI, where she and her team work
• 2:43
  across more than 30 associations simultaneously, spanning
• 2:48
  different industries, different sizes, different missions in
• 2:51
  different stages of transformation.
• 2:54
  She has spent more than 20 years inside the association and
• 2:57
  nonprofit world. She holds both the FASAE and CAE
• 3:02
  credential, which represents the highest levels of professional
• 3:06
  recognition in association management.
• 3:10
  What makes Aaron's perspective uniquely valuable to for this
• 3:13
  conversation is not just the breadth of our experience, it is
• 3:18
  the pattern recognition that that breath enables.
• 3:21
  When you are inside one organization going through
• 3:25
  transformation, you see the specifics.
• 3:29
  When you were inside 30, you start to see the structures.
• 3:33
  You start to notice that the same governance dynamics that
• 3:37
  block change in a medical society also block change in a
• 3:41
  technology trade association. You start to see that the same
• 3:45
  psychological contract between an organization and its members
• 3:49
  creates the same resistance patterns whether the
• 3:52
  organization has 5000 members or 500,000 members.
• 3:57
  You start to see what the research predicts, what most
• 4:01
  leaders never get the vantage point to confirm the
• 4:05
  transformation failure is not an organizational problem.
• 4:09
  It's a human system problem. It happens to play out in an
• 4:14
  organizational setting. Aaron, welcome to the show.
• 4:18
  Thanks so much, Kevin. I'm so happy to be here.
• 4:22
  Aaron, I want to start with what you see that most people do not
• 4:25
  get to see. Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell
• 4:28
  published a landmark paper in 1983 called The Iron Cage
• 4:32
  Revisited. It was where they introduced the
• 4:35
  concept of institutional isomorphism.
• 4:38
  The research demonstrated that organizations within the same
• 4:41
  field tend to develop strikingly similar structures, behaviors,
• 4:46
  and blind spots over time through three different
• 4:49
  mechanisms coercive pressures from regulation and compliance,
• 4:53
  memetic pressures where organizations imitate what
• 4:57
  appears to work elsewhere, and normative pressures from
• 5:00
  professionalization and share training.
• 5:03
  The research predicted that organizations in the same field
• 5:07
  would converge on similar practices even when those
• 5:10
  practices weren't optimal, simply because the institutional
• 5:15
  pressures push towards conformity rather than
• 5:19
  effectiveness. You are in a position to test
• 5:21
  that prediction empirically. Everyday, you're inside more
• 5:25
  than 30 associations across different industries with
• 5:28
  different missions. When you look across all of
• 5:31
  them, what patterns do you see and how these organizations
• 5:35
  respond to the need for transformation?
• 5:38
  Are there recurring human behaviors, resistance patterns,
• 5:42
  or cultural dynamics that repeat regardless of the specific
• 5:45
  organization? Got it.
• 5:48
  All right, Kevin, that was, that's quite a setup.
• 5:51
  I feel, I feel I'm like getting flashbacks to defending my
• 5:55
  capstone project in grad school or something like that.
• 5:57
  And it's been a minute, but I think, you know, I'm lucky
• 6:00
  enough within MCI, we actually work with more than 100
• 6:05
  associations in the US and then globally a lot more than that.
• 6:09
  So I'm able to kind of really be at that really delicious kind of
• 6:13
  35,000 foot view of a lot of what they do.
• 6:16
  And I think to me, the simplest headline from working across all
• 6:20
  of those organizations is that transformation fails or succeeds
• 6:25
  not based on the plan. Because every business and every
• 6:28
  organization has a business plan, a strategic plan, a growth
• 6:31
  plan, etcetera, doesn't feel because of the plan, it fails or
• 6:34
  succeeds based on identity and decision making.
• 6:37
  So the thing that always jumps out to me is it's not a strategy
• 6:41
  pattern as much as an identity pattern.
• 6:44
  And so most organizations say they want transformation, but
• 6:49
  what they're actually protecting is a story about who they are
• 6:54
  and what they stand for and who gets to define that story.
• 6:57
  And I think once you see that a lot of the resistance like that
• 7:01
  you were just talking about to the either the, the push towards
• 7:04
  conformity or the resistance to change, all of that stops
• 7:08
  feeling irrational because it's not people being difficult, it's
• 7:12
  people trying to protect meaning.
• 7:15
  And then the other pattern I see is that I think that governance
• 7:20
  often behaves like an immune system and whether it's in
• 7:26
  nonprofit organizations in terms of boards of directors or its
• 7:30
  companies with advisory boards, investor boards, etcetera.
• 7:35
  But the moment that any change feels like a threat to precedent
• 7:40
  or status or decision rights, all of the antibodies show up,
• 7:43
  right? So like, we need more data, we
• 7:45
  need a committee, we've done it this way, or we tried that
• 7:48
  didn't work, you know, all that stuff.
• 7:50
  And I think that honestly, these moves make sense inside the
• 7:53
  system because they're all protective.
• 7:55
  And a lot of times my job is to come in and name that overall
• 7:59
  dynamic without shaming it, and then help the leaders redesign
• 8:04
  the conditions so that the organization can better tolerate
• 8:07
  change. So one of the most freeing
• 8:09
  reframes is realizing that most human resistance is rational.
• 8:14
  Once you look at the incentives they all have to think so
• 8:17
  pleasant to what you were saying.
• 8:18
  So volunteers protect legacy programs because they built them
• 8:23
  or they were honored by them or they got status as a result of
• 8:26
  leading them. Staff protects bandwidth because
• 8:29
  they're already at capacity. Like show me an organization
• 8:32
  where the staff's like, I'd love somewhere to do right, you know,
• 8:35
  that that piece is there. And then I think members or
• 8:38
  customers protect price or value assumption because it feels
• 8:42
  personal, especially working with associations, membership
• 8:46
  organizations, which is my area of focus.
• 8:49
  You know, it's, it's not just they're not buying a service or
• 8:52
  a product, they're buying a part of their identity.
• 8:55
  And so we're able to succeed with transformation when we make
• 8:58
  it, you know, executable, We've got a sequence to work.
• 9:01
  We've got to make sure people know who owns things that can
• 9:05
  make decisions and then run it at a good cadence, A discipline
• 9:09
  cadence. And so, you know, those are kind
• 9:12
  of some of the things that I see.
• 9:13
  I'll stop there. I've got like lots more to say
• 9:15
  about that. But I loved, I did love what you
• 9:17
  said about kind of these, but the push towards conformity and
• 9:23
  then just also our own inherent biases of once we see something,
• 9:26
  whether we attribute that consciously to another
• 9:31
  organization or product, right, we still project that onto to
• 9:33
  whatever we're create. Well, yeah, an interesting that
• 9:35
  I just did last week's episode, which went out today is looking
• 9:42
  at the different symptoms within an organization.
• 9:46
  And several episodes ago did an episode called the Algorithmic
• 9:51
  Mirror. And where there's of course
• 9:54
  everything these days is AI conversation.
• 9:59
  But the challenge for organizations, particularly on
• 10:02
  the governance side, to your point, when they're asking for
• 10:06
  that data, that data is coming easier because of AI, but that
• 10:12
  data also itself has the bias, it has the history.
• 10:16
  And so it's it's not necessarily indicative of future.
• 10:21
  It really is. If there are errors in it, if
• 10:23
  there are biases in it, it's reflecting back the organization
• 10:26
  and itself acting as a hindrance to identify the symptomology of
• 10:34
  what in transformation can work to help the organization move
• 10:40
  itself forward. Well, they're great sage Oprah
• 10:42
  Winfrey. I'm sure if she's one of the
• 10:44
  scholars you often quote on this program.
• 10:46
  But one of my favorite Oprah isn't right as we teach people
• 10:50
  how to treat us and what you just, you know, right?
• 10:53
  So if if you've always had someone who registered, you know
• 10:58
  who buys things and returns half of them, right?
• 11:01
  Or get something at the last minute, but is willing to pay a
• 11:04
  premium for rush shipping or, you know, whatever it is, right.
• 11:07
  We then all of that data, rather than correcting that problem,
• 11:10
  how do we get information in front of someone so they can
• 11:13
  make a non rushed informed decision?
• 11:15
  We just end up honoring kind of like the last minute nature of
• 11:19
  that person because that's how the data would train us.
• 11:21
  I think within organizations that I work with, there's,
• 11:25
  there's certainly an expectation shift that mirrors what you were
• 11:28
  just talking about because everyone gets really smart very
• 11:32
  quickly and and so they now expect choice and how they
• 11:36
  participate. People want kind of this Omni
• 11:40
  channel experience that makes them feel connected and a pretty
• 11:45
  high level of customization and what organizations don't design
• 11:49
  for that, they end up overestimating how clear the
• 11:51
  value is because the value, the value proposition is implicit.
• 11:55
  Like you should just know, right, or there's a lot of
• 11:57
  organizations that are like we're the best kept secret and
• 12:00
  the people who need us find us right, which is awful, right,
• 12:03
  like E minus in terms of marketing.
• 12:05
  So the organizations that are really thriving, they make the
• 12:10
  value tangible in this, the experience so that the promise
• 12:13
  and the reality match. That's I think that's really
• 12:16
  hard for organizations to do and even harder given that now we're
• 12:21
  doing such a good job marketing to people.
• 12:23
  So I could send you that this amazing e-mail, Kevin, right?
• 12:26
  Like I could design an organization now that would
• 12:28
  cater. It would be like, it would cater
• 12:30
  to your very Kevin Ness. And you'd be like, yeah, sign me
• 12:34
  up. Like money's no object.
• 12:35
  This is exactly what I want. But then you're in it and it's
• 12:39
  kind of vanilla and you're wondering like, like, where did
• 12:42
  all this magic go? I think that that's the biggest
• 12:45
  danger we have with AI for a lot of organizations that provide
• 12:48
  services is how do you actually deliver upon the promise that
• 12:52
  you've given based on all this really amazing customized
• 12:55
  marketing communication you can do.
• 12:57
  Yeah, for over the years, all the organizations, all the
• 13:01
  association clients I have worked with, that has been my
• 13:07
  own frustration at times is whether it's helping them in
• 13:10
  marketing communications, transforming that, relating that
• 13:15
  within the membership value proposition and the emulation of
• 13:19
  that. I think it's the, to your point
• 13:23
  on the plain vanilla, there's challenges there, right?
• 13:25
  You can. I can write the best stuff.
• 13:27
  My team can write the best stuff and really energize people, but
• 13:31
  the delivery is the critical element of that.
• 13:34
  And that has to be continuous and consistent for those people
• 13:38
  to stay engaged. Right.
• 13:42
  Absolutely. So follow up to some of the the
• 13:46
  patterns that you see. When you see those patterns
• 13:49
  repeating, do the the leaders, those within the governance,
• 13:53
  inside the organizations recognize that their experience
• 13:57
  isn't unique? Or is there a tendency to
• 14:00
  believe that there's specific transformation challenges
• 14:03
  somehow different from what every other similar organization
• 14:07
  is going through? Yeah, I definitely think that
• 14:10
  governance is where transformation goes to live or
• 14:14
  die because it determines who decides how fast that decision
• 14:18
  is and who has the accountability.
• 14:22
  Everybody wants to decide and nobody wants the accountability
• 14:25
  for the decision. So in some ways we talked about
• 14:28
  governance like it's almost this kind of academic, you know, and
• 14:32
  to teeny, right? But it's actually one of the
• 14:34
  most human dynamics in any association because it's really
• 14:36
  about power, which is a word nobody likes to say in an
• 14:40
  organization, right? Nobody wants to say that they're
• 14:42
  in it for power, they have power, but who gets to decide
• 14:47
  that? The cadence, how quick things
• 14:50
  are decided and they actually pop in, and then what you
• 14:52
  protect. And so when governance is well
• 14:54
  designed, it should ideally create clarity, right direction
• 14:58
  from the board, this the execution responsibilities of
• 15:01
  the staff and a shared understanding of what success
• 15:03
  looks like. But when it's poorly designed,
• 15:06
  it creates real drag on the association because the decision
• 15:10
  rights get fuzzy. Everything then becomes a debate
• 15:13
  if you don't know who owns or who gets to decide something.
• 15:16
  And everything becomes a discussion, not just about the
• 15:19
  choice, but who gets to make the choice.
• 15:21
  And like we've all been on boards like that and it is so
• 15:24
  exhausting. And so then transformation turns
• 15:27
  into the never ending listening tour.
• 15:29
  And we've all seen that with organizations, right?
• 15:30
  It's the first thing, new board chair, new CEO comes in.
• 15:33
  Oh, I'm going on a listening tour, which is great, right?
• 15:36
  We want to be responsive, but a lot of times when you see that
• 15:39
  happen and there's no action, I always wonder what's happening
• 15:42
  behind the scenes, right? I know the people doing this are
• 15:45
  probably action oriented leaders, right?
• 15:47
  So what's kind of blocking that? So I'd said earlier that I think
• 15:51
  that that governance is kind of the immune system and I think it
• 15:55
  is it really functions like that when it's over built.
• 15:58
  So when there's too many committees, too many
• 16:01
  representative structures, a culture where consensus kind of
• 16:05
  quietly becomes unanimity. So that's that's when you have a
• 16:10
  system that protects itself instead of serving mission.
• 16:13
  And I wish I had, you know, super sexy fixes to that, but I
• 16:17
  don't have a lot of glamorous ideas, but they work, right.
• 16:20
  You got to simplify the structures.
• 16:22
  You have to clarify what is an advisory role versus decision
• 16:26
  making, right? We think about the committee
• 16:28
  structure, etcetera within a lot of organizations tighten the
• 16:32
  cadence. It takes too damn long for these
• 16:36
  groups to make a decision about something, right?
• 16:39
  And we've seen this. I mean, AI is such a great
• 16:42
  example just because it's happening now and we all are
• 16:44
  familiar with the speed at which AI has evolved and learned and
• 16:49
  become better. You still have organizations
• 16:51
  that two years ago we should really have an AI policy in
• 16:54
  place then they still don't have one, right?
• 16:56
  And, and, you know, or I work with groups that will have an
• 17:00
  agreement. You can't use any AI like so
• 17:04
  like Google's powered by AI, you know, like anybody you know.
• 17:07
  So there's, you know, that that piece.
• 17:09
  And so really taking a board and driving them towards outcomes
• 17:14
  while the staff executes. We say that all the time with
• 17:17
  governance, but we keep on revisiting it.
• 17:20
  And we just did a webinar because I am to oversee our
• 17:24
  global work in the association space.
• 17:27
  We did this panel on how you design governance for global
• 17:31
  organizations, which is really interesting.
• 17:33
  It's interesting for Americans not to project our pseudo
• 17:39
  Democratic like systems and processes, right, like the House
• 17:42
  of Delegates that a lot of medical societies have, right,
• 17:45
  which is like a little mini Congress.
• 17:47
  You know, all of those things that we've tried to do, you
• 17:50
  know, when when size doesn't fit all.
• 17:52
  But the through line was decision rights, making sure
• 17:56
  that you have regional voices that are meaningful and not
• 17:58
  symbolic and really being explicit about what a group can
• 18:01
  decide versus what it can only advise.
• 18:04
  Like if there's one thing to get clarity on with the governance
• 18:07
  piece for groups, it's that advice decide like those are two
• 18:11
  different things and they're valuable, right?
• 18:14
  Like they're totally valuable. I often, you know, I'm a
• 18:16
  consultant all the time and I go in and obviously I can't make
• 18:19
  them do a single thing, right? So you want to have compelling
• 18:23
  data. You want to have, you know, kind
• 18:24
  of a thoughtful approach to that.
• 18:26
  And then you assume that the people who really can make those
• 18:29
  decisions will incorporate that into their process.
• 18:32
  But I do think that I mean, gosh, it's it's just
• 18:37
  conversations you you have over and over again after 30 plus
• 18:40
  years and is in in this space certainly that those governance
• 18:44
  conversations like we just can't quite solve it because we solve
• 18:47
  it for a group. But then the beauty of
• 18:49
  governance is that it all turns over everyone to three, five
• 18:53
  years, and you've new folks in and with different experiences
• 18:57
  and different points of reference.
• 18:59
  And Aaron, a funny example to that.
• 19:01
  So there's one client that we did three different
• 19:05
  transformation plans for over a six year period.
• 19:08
  Sure. Yeah.
• 19:09
  And did any of them how much of what you recommended the?
• 19:14
  Last one stuck, but the, the interesting thing with that is
• 19:19
  the governance changed and some things got forgotten from the
• 19:26
  initial efforts in the middle effort.
• 19:28
  And so there was the like you going into an organization and
• 19:34
  saying you got to do this right? The, the, there's not a lot of
• 19:38
  time, right? The, the dynamics out there are
• 19:42
  changing very quickly. The professions are changing
• 19:44
  very quickly, the industry itself is changing very quickly.
• 19:47
  And then you introduce AI into this and that is only
• 19:51
  progressing that even even faster.
• 19:54
  And so there was finally the recognition to say, OK, we've
• 19:57
  made a lot of small iterative kind of things, but we do need
• 20:01
  to address this now finally more holistic.
• 20:05
  And you know, I think the other piece of that that we see is
• 20:08
  like there's the, I would say cyclical battle over a small
• 20:12
  type quick, you know, Advisory Board, executive committee
• 20:16
  cease, you know, whatever you whatever you want to call it
• 20:18
  within a company or an association and then the larger
• 20:21
  group. And so you have really tight,
• 20:27
  great decision making. Then people perceive there's a
• 20:29
  lack of transparency or they have FOMO or, or whatever's
• 20:32
  happening, right? So then you go back to the full
• 20:35
  board. So then someone comes in, it's
• 20:37
  like, oh, we've this has been operated to into close to
• 20:41
  nature. We're going to open it up,
• 20:43
  right? I work with some groups where
• 20:45
  they open up every board meeting and hundreds of members attend
• 20:49
  the board meetings, which I, I salute all of those members for
• 20:53
  doing it. But what ends up happening is
• 20:56
  that what I saw with this group is that you have the public
• 20:59
  meeting highly scripted, very much reporting out.
• 21:03
  And then you'd have like the real board meeting, right, which
• 21:05
  would end up being executive session.
• 21:08
  And so I don't know that we can get away from that.
• 21:09
  But that dynamic also like what you're describing of having
• 21:12
  three or one stuck, some of it can be that piece too, right?
• 21:15
  Who who, Who hired you? Who listened to it?
• 21:19
  Who felt included in the plan? Right.
• 21:21
  All of those things are. Important.
• 21:23
  Yeah, there's two months ago I wrote this piece on the meet,
• 21:26
  the meeting, after the meeting, and that was all about that.
• 21:30
  Those kind of situations where all the decisions actually don't
• 21:33
  happen in the meeting. They have an Eruptor.
• 21:36
  Or they happened before, right before, right.
• 21:38
  And then you walk in and like nobody's there's no dissent.
• 21:41
  And you're thinking, especially as someone who's an outsider in
• 21:44
  the room, like is like is Nope. But this seems pretty
• 21:47
  complicated. Like what do you mean there's,
• 21:48
  you know, so, and sometimes that can be really positive.
• 21:51
  You present a very complex budget, but you have a series of
• 21:54
  budget presentation calls or people can ask questions and
• 21:56
  really get into the weeds so that you don't clutter up your
• 22:00
  board meeting with that kind of nonsense.
• 22:02
  Right. That piece I think is great.
• 22:03
  But sometimes I'm I'm always kind of wow, that seems like a
• 22:06
  pretty complex policy that that might merit, you know,
• 22:09
  discussion. So I think that's the other
• 22:11
  piece. I like things to move quickly
• 22:13
  and I serve on four boards, all very different organizations,
• 22:16
  for profit, nonprofit, etcetera. And sometimes I have to check
• 22:20
  myself to make sure that my need for speed isn't kind of
• 22:25
  overriding like the the importance of debate and having
• 22:28
  people ask their questions and be able to kind of extrovert
• 22:32
  their way through that. That connects to something Carl
• 22:34
  Week identified in his research on organizational sense making.
• 22:38
  Week demonstrated that leaders do not perceive reality and then
• 22:41
  respond to it. They construct a version of
• 22:44
  reality through retrospective interpretation and then respond
• 22:48
  to the version that they constructed.
• 22:51
  Which means a leader inside a single organization is making
• 22:55
  sense of their transformation challenge using only the data
• 22:58
  that organizations provide. And while they have no way to
• 23:03
  know what they're not seeing, you have the corrective lens
• 23:07
  because you see the same dynamics playing out across
• 23:10
  multiple organizations simultaneously when you bring
• 23:14
  that pattern recognition to a leadership team.
• 23:16
  How do they typically? Respond Is it a relief to hear
• 23:20
  that their challenge is structural rather than unique,
• 23:23
  or does it threaten their sense that they understand their own
• 23:26
  organization? So I think that one of the
• 23:29
  biggest risks in associations or organizations, companies would
• 23:34
  have you leaders can be operating with a polite version
• 23:37
  of reality without realizing it. And that in part is like the
• 23:41
  self talk, you know, that you just described in that research
• 23:43
  study. So one of the most consistent
• 23:45
  things I see is structural silence, not because people are
• 23:48
  dishonest, but because they're managing risk.
• 23:51
  So staff learn super quickly what is safe to say upward,
• 23:56
  especially in cultures where disagreement is labeled as
• 23:59
  negativity or difficult being difficult, right?
• 24:02
  We, you know, so internal leaders often get a filtered
• 24:05
  reality and the organization loses its ability to self
• 24:09
  correct because that cycle that you just described becomes even
• 24:13
  more so, right? Where if we pull in external
• 24:15
  benchmarks, it's going to showcase where we're falling
• 24:18
  short. We know that leadership doesn't
• 24:19
  want to hear that. So we're only going to show our
• 24:23
  own increases. So we've increased sales of a
• 24:25
  product 10%. Like Hooray for us, the industry
• 24:28
  benchmark may be 35, right, but we don't, right.
• 24:31
  So, so, so I think as an outside advisor, I, I think I've become
• 24:35
  a pressure valve. And maybe you've seen this as
• 24:37
  well, right? So people will tell me
• 24:39
  operational truths. I was raised Catholic, right?
• 24:42
  So it's like a little bit like, right, we're in, like the, we're
• 24:44
  in the, we're in the booth together.
• 24:46
  So they'll tell me these truths that they might not say to ACEO
• 24:49
  or board chair, not because they're particularly like
• 24:52
  dramatic. It's not like the confessional
• 24:53
  booth in reality TV, you know, I wish, but more because they want
• 24:58
  the organization to succeed and they don't know how to say it
• 25:00
  safely. And so I think, you know, part
• 25:03
  of my role is to translate that without betraying anybody.
• 25:06
  I don't want to carry gossip. I carry the patterns that you
• 25:09
  mentioned. So I bring the themes back as
• 25:11
  system issues, not individual complaints.
• 25:15
  And you really have to create conversations that focus on
• 25:17
  decisions, right? Which what we can change or what
• 25:22
  we will change, rather than kind of blame.
• 25:25
  And a lot of times when people bring in someone external to an
• 25:30
  organization, sometimes it is like finding a scapegoat, right,
• 25:34
  or finding finding something sacrificial, right to kind of
• 25:39
  OfferUp. It's like, look, we brought
• 25:40
  somebody in and we did this and that's our change, right.
• 25:43
  And so that hope it hopeful that people aren't going to see
• 25:45
  things like, oh, you invested in a Cadillac technology system.
• 25:50
  All of the people who made that decision don't work there
• 25:52
  anymore. Everybody else has come in
• 25:54
  doesn't fully understand how to use it.
• 25:56
  So instead of figuring that out, we're going to layer in a
• 26:00
  million different marketing sidecar options right into the
• 26:05
  tech stack. And then all of our data,
• 26:08
  there's not one single source of truth for our data, right?
• 26:11
  It's all living in MailChimp over here in sea vent here,
• 26:15
  right? And so, and so like, that's a
• 26:17
  great example on the technology side that I see all the time of,
• 26:21
  well, no wonder you guys can't get good data or good reporting
• 26:24
  because you, you, you have, you invest seasonally and what data
• 26:29
  is updated where right during big marketing pushes the mail.
• 26:32
  I'm just picking a MailChimp MailChimp.
• 26:36
  But you know, I, I think that, that that piece is just like a,
• 26:39
  a very, a very good example to not get into the political side
• 26:44
  of things, right? But this is where organizations,
• 26:47
  oh, so instead of fixing the inherent problem, it's like,
• 26:51
  what else can we, what else can we kind of add into the mix here
• 26:54
  to, to help us like and be another Band-Aid on these
• 26:56
  systems? I think we do that all the time,
• 26:59
  with governance, with committees, with leadership
• 27:01
  opportunities, etcetera. Well, yeah, and I just.
• 27:04
  And you hit on something that. So I did this whole episode
• 27:10
  about the symptomology and I equated what I hope was a good
• 27:14
  example where you go to a doctor and you have a symptom or you
• 27:21
  have 4 symptoms and he's going to treat each symptom opposed to
• 27:24
  identifying what the. Disease actually is.
• 27:27
  Holistic Medicine. Right.
• 27:29
  Yeah, exactly right. So there's always and we, we
• 27:33
  tend as humans to be very short term in our thinking and we like
• 27:38
  to put the nail on the head and think that we have identified
• 27:43
  the the problem. So to your example, another
• 27:46
  MailChimp, another HubSpot, whatever the system may be that
• 27:50
  helps us then collect all of our data or our new association
• 27:53
  management system and new CRM is just going to solve all the
• 27:58
  world's problems. And that's a tool.
• 28:01
  But that doesn't address the human element of that, the
• 28:05
  organizational element of that, and actually looking at the
• 28:08
  symptomology to understand how that actually feeds into a
• 28:12
  system. Yeah.
• 28:14
  And it's just, you know, I think organization associations,
• 28:18
  organizations, they're all corporations, right?
• 28:20
  And all they're really professional services firms,
• 28:23
  right? And, and so I think in general,
• 28:27
  if you, if you ask me kind of what the impact that AI will
• 28:29
  have on professional services, there's going to be a shift in
• 28:33
  expected deliverables, right? So perhaps as a consultant your
• 28:37
  key deliverable, like they said, the capstone thing you deliver
• 28:40
  was like the 60 page term paper. At the end.
• 28:43
  Right. That you were sure no one was
• 28:44
  going to look at. So then you had to make like
• 28:45
  kind of a summary slide deck with lots of pictures, right?
• 28:48
  Like kind of get that through. But that was kind of what you're
• 28:51
  driving towards. But now I can write all of that
• 28:53
  in like 5 minutes, right? So the value of that has gone
• 28:56
  down. So a lot of professional
• 28:58
  services firms and you're seeing this McKenzie and, and and
• 29:01
  others, you know, as well as far smaller firms like mine, but
• 29:06
  you're starting to really build in these really human elements,
• 29:08
  right? Facilitation coaching, training
• 29:12
  on creating cadres of people that are at similar industry
• 29:17
  career stage, What have you that can can learn from I'm, I'm the
• 29:19
  member of a business organization called YPO and the
• 29:23
  reason and it's, it's a significant investment of, of
• 29:26
  time and treasure to be in that organization.
• 29:28
  There's really high expectations for participation and
• 29:31
  engagement. It's, it's, it's very serious
• 29:34
  commitment. But what keeps me there is
• 29:37
  they're just genius at this forum model where you spend 1/2
• 29:41
  day every month talking to other leaders and keeping each other
• 29:45
  accountable. And there's no tech solution for
• 29:47
  that. And that is their killer app.
• 29:49
  I don't know that every association has that kind of
• 29:53
  approach and that's why I'm interested in some of the
• 29:55
  technology that's emerging too, that's going to try to do a
• 29:58
  better job of doing this kind of cohort based learning pieces,
• 30:04
  rally board and a few others that I've seen out there.
• 30:06
  But I think it's really, really interesting of how are we going
• 30:08
  to leverage AI to increase the humanity, the opportunities for
• 30:13
  humanity versus strip it all out, right, which is what
• 30:16
  everybody thinks of AI, right? Like it's a very different, like
• 30:19
  there's two different kind of ways to look at that.
• 30:20
  Well, yeah. And you know, the interesting
• 30:24
  thing to done, you hit on this earlier.
• 30:26
  So in People want to Be heard and you know, that's the the
• 30:31
  beauty of the consultant sometimes is being able to
• 30:35
  create that safe space. And one of the minor to me
• 30:40
  mechanisms that we use is assuring that we first say
• 30:44
  everything you share is confidential.
• 30:46
  We will anonymize it. And if something can be
• 30:49
  attributed to you directly because it's a small
• 30:52
  organization, we'll come back and seek your permission.
• 30:55
  You don't give us your permission.
• 30:56
  We don't share that. And we will, to your earlier
• 30:59
  point, try to couch that in some systematic or process way and to
• 31:05
  make sure those people are heard because they're grasping with
• 31:09
  frustration. They're trying to re identify
• 31:12
  themselves in whatever this is going to be.
• 31:15
  So whether it's a new system or it's a whole completely new
• 31:18
  operational process or a strategic initiative for that
• 31:22
  matter. And AI is not going to be able
• 31:25
  to do that as well or who knows? I my guest last week on the The
• 31:33
  Generation episode said that 75% of Gen.
• 31:36
  Gen. Z is using AI as a counselor and
• 31:40
  as a friend. So that maybe it will get that
• 31:42
  good to be be us right going into an organization.
• 31:47
  But I don't think so humans better understand humans.
• 31:51
  And I think that will, to your point, continue to be a strong
• 31:54
  value and brought to the table. Yeah, I think, you know, I think
• 32:00
  a lot of organizations can't articulate a compelling value
• 32:03
  proposition. And it's not a messaging gap,
• 32:07
  it's an experience gap. So like to say like to kind of
• 32:10
  get that language what you're saying about the humanity piece.
• 32:12
  You know, we do this association engagement index, just this big
• 32:16
  global research project that MC has done for a number of years.
• 32:19
  So members say when they say, when we say personalization, we
• 32:23
  don't mean like that. The e-mail says, dear Aaron,
• 32:25
  like that's that's just baseline.
• 32:28
  And in fact, when we get emails, which we do all the time, like,
• 32:30
  Hey, friend, right, it's kind of like when you cocktail party,
• 32:34
  you're like, you don't know my name, right?
• 32:37
  That's what we're, we went deeper personalization, right?
• 32:39
  So most, so most people would say they want something that
• 32:43
  feels like it's, it's created for them, but very small share
• 32:46
  of associations describe their value proposition is very
• 32:49
  compelling. So then it so then it was like,
• 32:51
  it's a marketing problem, right? In my experience, it's usually
• 32:55
  an operating model problem. So most organizations, to your
• 32:59
  point, they have the data, they have the information to make
• 33:01
  better choices. They don't have the right work
• 33:03
  flows or ownership or discipline to redesign somebody's
• 33:07
  experience. And I think the other piece of
• 33:09
  that is a lot of times value propositions are written for the
• 33:12
  board, but not for the member. So they describe what the
• 33:15
  association does or what the vision is, but not what the
• 33:17
  member gets right then, you know, And so if I'm like, you
• 33:21
  know, an association sometimes forget some people are joining
• 33:26
  for the mission, right, a very compelling mission or a give
• 33:29
  back to an industry or profession.
• 33:31
  But most of the time people come in because they're like, I need
• 33:33
  this class to get a better job or I'm worried about my job.
• 33:37
  So I need a better network or my boss sees something.
• 33:40
  I mean, like there's there's something very transactional
• 33:42
  about it. We don't focus a lot on kind of
• 33:44
  that initial get and they don't differentiate against the
• 33:47
  hundreds of other places that somebody can learn and connect
• 33:49
  and belong, which is what everybody sells.
• 33:51
  And so, you know, we within MCI, we always, we talk a lot about
• 33:56
  choice because that is what I think translates into
• 34:02
  personalization. When you talk about association
• 34:04
  reality or service professional services reality.
• 34:07
  If you don't design for a choice on the channel and giving people
• 34:11
  that chance to, to figure out where, where and how they want
• 34:13
  to engage and the ability for them to customize it, then in
• 34:16
  the value promise realized days, I think pretty theoretical.
• 34:20
  We just work with the global medical society and so we didn't
• 34:24
  like I, I kept on telling them like you're not going to message
• 34:26
  your way into higher engagement. So you have to map where your
• 34:29
  members were getting stuck. And so, and then we've kind of
• 34:34
  this engagement loop lens, right?
• 34:35
  Of like, where are the opportunities for me to consume,
• 34:38
  right? Like just take in the info.
• 34:39
  That's kind of that get piece I said earlier.
• 34:42
  Then ideally you bring them to like, how do you contribute?
• 34:46
  Then collaborate? And then ideally there's like
• 34:49
  opportunities for Co creation, right?
• 34:51
  And then you know, and then there's kind of a loop there.
• 34:53
  And then you really need to have micro pathways that make it
• 34:56
  easier to move people to move into higher value participation,
• 35:00
  right? So I signed up because I need
• 35:02
  this class. I'm my credentials about to run
• 35:04
  out and I need this class so that I don't lose my credential
• 35:08
  and that's my transaction. But then maybe they give me the
• 35:11
  opportunity. Hey, do you want to join a
• 35:13
  WhatsApp group with other people you know, who are also studying
• 35:17
  this course? Or what are 5 takeaways?
• 35:20
  You want to make sure the person takes class after you?
• 35:22
  Like there's all these, like, little ways we can do right to
• 35:24
  elicit that because when you make engagement easier and more
• 35:28
  clearly tied to the outcomes they actually care about, then
• 35:31
  the value proposition starts to feel compelling because you're
• 35:34
  experiencing it. You're not just having it
• 35:36
  described to you. Like you're like, oh, yeah, no,
• 35:38
  this is it. Like, this is really what I'm
• 35:39
  getting. I think that those pieces become
• 35:42
  really, really important, especially when it has to feel
• 35:47
  real and authentic, right? This need for authenticity.
• 35:50
  The generational piece is really interesting, Kevin.
• 35:53
  Like I, I'm, and I know because I have my own, my own laboratory
• 35:58
  here in my house. So having a 18 and 21 year old,
• 36:03
  right. But you know, I'm, I don't know
• 36:06
  if you're a TikTok person. Like my joke is that my friends
• 36:10
  always laugh. I always say, when I said I read
• 36:11
  it in The New Yorker, that's code for I totally saw this on
• 36:14
  TikTok. I'm fascinated with TikTok.
• 36:18
  And one of the things that's really interesting to me is how
• 36:21
  many content creators will talk to you as they're putting on
• 36:25
  makeup, right? Or blow drying their hair or I
• 36:28
  mean, whatever, you know, all of these things, you know, that
• 36:30
  feels so chaotic. And also I spent a great part of
• 36:34
  my 1980s high school self making sure that like, nobody saw me
• 36:37
  anything like, you know, less than perfection, right?
• 36:40
  But I'm realizing that part of that is like, oh, you know,
• 36:43
  these people are probably human, right?
• 36:45
  By these very human things they're doing as they're
• 36:48
  talking, Because if it's just a a polished talking head, you
• 36:53
  don't know for sure anymore, right?
• 36:54
  Is that AI right? So so I'm wondering about this
• 36:57
  whole kind of like get ready with me behind the scenes piece,
• 37:01
  etcetera. If that's kind of what people
• 37:03
  want is like, I want proof this is done authentically with real
• 37:07
  people. I'm like, I'm really like, I'm
• 37:09
  fascinated by that whole. It's a whole different
• 37:10
  conversation. To your point and again, this
• 37:14
  side with I had Brian Vet on last week and he's a
• 37:19
  generational futurist, really, really, really cool guy.
• 37:23
  And and so we were talking about Gen.
• 37:25
  Z and I do writing and so forth. And one of the episodes, the
• 37:29
  first season is actually Gen. Z and 40% of the workforce.
• 37:34
  And the, the biggest, the output of that is the authenticity that
• 37:39
  they're seeking. And like you, I have my own
• 37:42
  little lab. I have a millennial and a Gen.
• 37:44
  Z and they're both attached. So I have two of each that I get
• 37:51
  to watch it and test things out on it and, and see that.
• 37:57
  And that is critical because particularly with Gen.
• 38:00
  Z, the question is why? Why would I need to do this?
• 38:07
  And they're looking for that authenticity and they're looking
• 38:10
  for in many ways, loyalty, right, as well as that value.
• 38:15
  And I don't think a lot of older organizations have been able to
• 38:21
  change their mindset to recognize that that is a
• 38:24
  significant shift. It's not an age thing.
• 38:28
  It's we've done this actually as parents and whatever we did as
• 38:33
  parents, this is the outcome. Right.
• 38:36
  As to why Gen. Z is the way they are?
• 38:39
  Well, I think Kevin too, like those, like those associations,
• 38:42
  maybe more traditional models that you just referenced, right.
• 38:45
  They're like, we'll solve this with some young professionals
• 38:47
  programming. Yeah, exactly.
• 38:48
  And like you don't you like what is?
• 38:51
  No, it has to start with the experience design, right.
• 38:54
  So you've got to remove friction to participation.
• 38:57
  You have to make the relevance clearer by career stage, and you
• 39:01
  have to create those pathways I talked about where people can
• 39:05
  move from that passive consumption to contribution and
• 39:07
  collaboration. And I think like engagement is
• 39:10
  actually the product, right? Like you have to test engagement
• 39:14
  as a separate thing versus assuming that engagement is like
• 39:18
  the byproduct of all the other stuff you're doing because the
• 39:21
  younger members are benchmarking their experience against
• 39:24
  everything else in their lives, right?
• 39:25
  Like Spotify level personalization, right?
• 39:28
  Like we all look at our year, our wrap up, right?
• 39:30
  Yeah, absolutely. Yes.
• 39:32
  Spotify wrap. Are you kidding me?
• 39:33
  I mean, not shockingly, like I'm a Swifty, the LinkedIn level
• 39:38
  network utility, right? Like, why would I join this when
• 39:40
  I can just if I'm looking for someone who does this with
• 39:43
  widgets, like I can go and find that person and communities that
• 39:46
  give them agency. And I think that struggling
• 39:49
  associations misdiagnose this is a again, a marketing problem.
• 39:52
  Like everything's marketing fault.
• 39:54
  So they think they need better messaging, but they really need
• 39:56
  like better on ramps, clear offers and again, like faster
• 40:01
  decisions. Like that's my theme.
• 40:03
  That let them evolve the the experience in real time.
• 40:06
  And it reminds me a little bit of I'm sure you've seen this,
• 40:08
  right, Oxo, who does the the good the good grips thing.
• 40:12
  And they, you know, they started out as an accessibility product.
• 40:15
  And of course I won't buy anything for my kitchen.
• 40:17
  That's not that because they're just better to use, right.
• 40:20
  We think of like, I think of being a mom with a a carriage
• 40:24
  and being so grateful that my stroller that there's curb cuts
• 40:27
  for the ADA, right? Accessibility lifts everybody
• 40:30
  up, right? Parental leave lifts all parents
• 40:33
  up, right? Not just moms.
• 40:34
  And so I think that that what like all the things I just
• 40:37
  referenced, those are great no matter how old you are, like
• 40:41
  those are all kind of good aspects.
• 40:43
  I think we really lost an opportunity.
• 40:46
  I think, you know, with COVID, we had this huge democratization
• 40:49
  of organizations, right? All of the sudden, it was all
• 40:52
  virtual. Everybody could attend.
• 40:54
  People who had never gone to the big event could go to the
• 40:56
  virtual big event. So then volunteerism, all these
• 40:59
  groups and then everyone's like so excited to kind of get back
• 41:03
  to the good old days, right? Of gathering around an actual
• 41:07
  real bar that we lost some of that.
• 41:10
  And I think that there's there needs to be opportunities.
• 41:12
  Like it wasn't all that what was created during COVID.
• 41:17
  There were some good things that that happened there have for
• 41:19
  organizations. So let me because you've hit on
• 41:22
  this in several different ways and you're known for saying
• 41:27
  this, and there are several other people in my universe that
• 41:31
  that have been promoting this as well, including Nikki Walker.
• 41:35
  She and I have had many conversations about this.
• 41:38
  Chris Mcentee SO. You've described the shift from
• 41:41
  membership as a status to membership as a service, So that
• 41:47
  reframe sounds simple when you say it, but I think it is
• 41:50
  actually one of the most psychologically disruptive
• 41:53
  changes an association can undergo.
• 41:57
  So Denise Rousseau's research on psychological contracts
• 42:01
  established that every relationship between an
• 42:04
  organization and its stakeholders contains an
• 42:07
  unwritten set of mutual expectations.
• 42:10
  It goes far. Beyond any formal agreement,
• 42:13
  members don't just pay dues and receive benefits.
• 42:17
  They enter into an implicit contract about what the
• 42:20
  organization represents, what belonging means, and what the
• 42:25
  relationship promises. So when an association errand
• 42:29
  tries to shift from membership as a status, where belonging
• 42:34
  itself is the value, to membership as a service where
• 42:38
  the value must be continuously demonstrated and earned in some
• 42:42
  ways on both sides of felt. Sense of betrayal, right?
• 42:47
  Where? Does that resistance to that
• 42:48
  shift actually? Come from when you see it play
• 42:50
  out. So I think when you move from
• 42:53
  membership as a badge to membership as a professional
• 42:56
  service, it's not a benefit change.
• 42:59
  But you said it's a belonging change.
• 43:01
  And so you're absolutely right that the reframe does change
• 43:05
  that psychological contract because we if we get our
• 43:09
  identity, our belonging, our professional legitimacy, our
• 43:12
  ribbons, gosh, we love a ribbon bar and associations, right?
• 43:16
  That just that gives us a lot like I'm able to walk into a
• 43:19
  room you've never met me, but you can see how fancy and
• 43:21
  important I am right by that, you know, very.
• 43:24
  I used to personally love that myself.
• 43:25
  I'd have, you know, for when I was chair of the Bia's board,
• 43:29
  I'd have this long thing. My rule is to you take your
• 43:32
  chalk too and you stick with it. But I think membership as a
• 43:35
  service, it sounds more like a product and and then that
• 43:38
  triggers the fear that the association's becoming more
• 43:42
  transactional. So I think the resistance is
• 43:44
  rarely about the words, but it's what people think the shift
• 43:47
  implies about the community and fairness.
• 43:50
  I generate data, any kind of new rhythm of, of developing things,
• 43:55
  all of those things are just staff are resistant to it
• 43:57
  because you have to make those changes while you're still in
• 44:00
  the current business model. So you kind of are running two
• 44:02
  business cycles at once and that's not great.
• 44:05
  So I, I think one of the things that I try to focus on, you
• 44:09
  know, is we have this whole, like I've caught, we've created
• 44:12
  this whole kind of membership value rubric, right, where I
• 44:14
  have a scoring mechanism and I go in and I try to get, go away
• 44:20
  from what they say they offer to what people actually experience.
• 44:24
  So you almost need a secret shopper.
• 44:26
  It's very hard to say. You almost need a secret shopper
• 44:29
  to go in and, and, and really and join and then join the
• 44:34
  chapter and then pay and then see how many screens you're
• 44:38
  putting some, I mean, all of those things are crazy.
• 44:42
  And it starts to really like I, you pulled me in with this
• 44:46
  messaging, then I had to go to 15 different transactional
• 44:49
  screens where I had to give you all this demographic data.
• 44:52
  And I'm not stupid. So I know you're using that
• 44:53
  demographic data in some ways to monetize it.
• 44:57
  And then it takes me and then it takes me 30 to 60 days for the
• 45:01
  chapter to recognize me as a member because they're waiting
• 45:03
  for their dues rebate from the national organization.
• 45:06
  And also like, why did I join this again?
• 45:07
  What do they pay for can is this monthly like Netflix?
• 45:10
  Like can I stop this if I'm not satisfied?
• 45:12
  Like all of these things, right? Become like it really clutters
• 45:15
  up that experience. And then I would say in
• 45:20
  addition, for members not liking tearing or segmentation, they're
• 45:23
  also, I think, much better educated about the difference
• 45:27
  between expectations in reality. And they're not shy about saying
• 45:32
  it, right. We leave a hotel room now and we
• 45:34
  have a message in our phones 3 seconds after checkout.
• 45:38
  Like, give us, what are you going to rate US on Google?
• 45:40
  Like, what are you, like, people this feedback loop people now.
• 45:43
  Yeah. And if you don't create it, then
• 45:46
  they'll be suspicious of why it's not there.
• 45:48
  Yeah. So I you know, it's, it's
• 45:51
  interesting that to your point we had there was a project that
• 45:58
  we did last year or so and it was a market analysis related to
• 46:03
  a series of events and for pharmaceuticals.
• 46:07
  And the goal was to identify how many people are being reached,
• 46:13
  what the potential was across the different segments.
• 46:16
  And to your point about what exists even feedback mechanisms,
• 46:23
  but also the pricing, there was entranced hesitation to move to
• 46:30
  more of a bundling and a different pricing structure to
• 46:33
  remove all of those roadblocks that they had put into the
• 46:37
  system, which was ultimately in feedback majorly why some of
• 46:43
  those potential audiences weren't coming in.
• 46:47
  And it was all that friction, that part of the process opposed
• 46:51
  to what they thought they would eventually get, which probably
• 46:54
  would. Have been good.
• 46:55
  We make it super hard and buying stuff right now is so easy right
• 47:00
  when I can double tap my phone right and wave it towards wave
• 47:04
  my my magic wand towards whatever.
• 47:07
  We are so not caught up to that on to that model for people and
• 47:11
  that that dichotomy is hard for people to reconcile.
• 47:15
  They may understand, they understand, oh, Amazon has more
• 47:17
  resources than ABC, you know, organization.
• 47:20
  But at the same time, like, gosh, what do you like?
• 47:24
  What do you mean? I have to do this, this and
• 47:25
  this? It's too hard.
• 47:27
  Do you see that? As is it an organizational
• 47:32
  resource issue or or is it truly a structural issue?
• 47:37
  I think, you know, I think sometimes with nonprofit
• 47:41
  organizations, a noble mission doesn't protect you from the law
• 47:45
  of economics and capacity. And so the mission doesn't
• 47:49
  exempt you from economics. And I work with board treasurers
• 47:53
  and finance committees all the time, right?
• 47:56
  That if you can't fund the work staff, the worker deliver
• 48:00
  consistently that the mission loses.
• 48:02
  And and I think sometimes these organizations treat operational
• 48:05
  discipline like it's optional, right?
• 48:07
  But because the purpose is so noble and that that piece right.
• 48:12
  So oh, we know that our website is from like 1994.
• 48:16
  Somebody designed it and like in frames for me, somebody'd kid
• 48:20
  and we know that like you have to fax in.
• 48:23
  What we're going to show our age here.
• 48:25
  Yeah, exactly. I know.
• 48:27
  You know, it's been a wireframe and you know, like all of these
• 48:31
  things, but like everyone understands it because we're a
• 48:34
  nonprofit and they know that that means we're spending our
• 48:37
  money on the mission. And like, do they or they like,
• 48:41
  like I don't have I, I, you've lost me here.
• 48:43
  Like step six, I'm done. I have a short attention span
• 48:46
  because of TikTok. And so therefore I'm not going
• 48:49
  to be able to, to, to execute that.
• 48:51
  So I mean, that's a, that's a very operational example of
• 48:55
  that, right? There's all sorts of
• 48:56
  programmatic examples of it too. But I do think that I think to
• 49:01
  our apparel, we, we use that as kind of a buffer like, oh,
• 49:06
  people don't have the same expectations.
• 49:08
  You're buying something, buying something.
• 49:11
  And, and so I, I do worry a little bit about that, right?
• 49:14
  Pricing decisions can get delayed.
• 49:16
  We don't communicate about pricing very transparently in
• 49:19
  associations or we over communicate it.
• 49:21
  Like if anyone's complaining about 2% membership dues
• 49:23
  increase, I mean, come on, right?
• 49:28
  Low impact legacy program, stay in life support.
• 49:30
  I'm working with a group right now.
• 49:31
  They have an awards program that is so exhausting and exhaustive
• 49:38
  because it's funded by these little requests that happened
• 49:41
  over 100 years ago, Core governance models untangling
• 49:46
  them as hard, you know, So you know that piece then we have a
• 49:50
  million committee structures, right, that have to multiply to
• 49:53
  service all these different product lines.
• 49:55
  And so then as a result, the core investments in like data
• 49:58
  technology, talent, they get framed is a nice to have when I
• 50:02
  would argue that's the most that's the most important
• 50:04
  things. And then you see what programs
• 50:06
  make sense. But a lot of times we're like
• 50:08
  program LED a little bit with these organizations and that
• 50:11
  piece can be hard. So you have to have again like a
• 50:15
  disciplined operating model to me, which is, you know, we've
• 50:18
  talked about this, right governance, clear accountability
• 50:21
  for outcomes. And I think clear revenue logic
• 50:24
  is another big piece of that. Then it's not, we're not turning
• 50:27
  into a corporation, it's we're just being really good stewards.
• 50:30
  So I think there's some language there that's helpful.
• 50:32
  Yeah, most definitely. So I want, I want to focus in on
• 50:34
  MC is association engagement index, OK.
• 50:38
  So yeah, obviously MCI publishes it and there's some data which
• 50:43
  illuminates the dynamic from the membership side that we touched
• 50:46
  on. So the research shows that 84%
• 50:48
  of members say personalization experiences matter to them,
• 50:52
  which you're well putting at the top of the list.
• 50:55
  Yet only in response, 11% of associations describe their own
• 51:00
  value propositions is very compelling.
• 51:03
  So it's an extraordinary gap and it's why I'm not surprised at
• 51:07
  and it's not a marketing gap, it's not a sense making gap.
• 51:11
  The leadership of these. Organizations is constructing a
• 51:14
  version of the value proposition that is fundamentally
• 51:17
  disconnected from how their members extremists.
• 51:20
  So what do you think is driving the disconnect?
• 51:23
  Is it a data problem, a cultural problem, or something so much
• 51:27
  deeper? I think we spend a lot of time
• 51:32
  describing what we think the engagement experience is like,
• 51:37
  and we don't spend enough time really investigating and
• 51:39
  investing in the experience itself.
• 51:42
  And so, yeah, I mentioned this previously, right?
• 51:45
  But but that secret shopper experience, I think is really
• 51:49
  critical for that and making sure that we create that full
• 51:53
  cycle for engagement, right? So the opportunities to to
• 51:59
  consume passively, but then start the contribution, the
• 52:03
  collaboration and the Co creation, right, all which kind
• 52:06
  of raised the stakes a little bit in terms of what you expect.
• 52:09
  I think that those are all pieces that align to that, that
• 52:13
  gap between expectation and what's delivered by
• 52:15
  associations. We have a lot of data within the
• 52:18
  AI that just kind of consistently show that gap.
• 52:21
  There's that gap in other places too, right?
• 52:23
  People, I, I, and I'm going to mangle this a little bit, but I
• 52:27
  want to say something like 80% plus of people will say they're
• 52:30
  expecting their association experience to contribute to
• 52:33
  their career development and progression.
• 52:36
  But less than 20% of association staff view member career
• 52:40
  progression and development as their priority area to focus on.
• 52:43
  So we see those kind of experience gaps and different
• 52:47
  studies all the time. And again, part of that is the
• 52:50
  people who govern are not our target demographic.
• 52:53
  The people who are on the board are successful, right?
• 52:56
  They've, they're, they've got the, the time, the treasurer,
• 52:59
  the experience to devote to volunteer leadership.
• 53:03
  They're at a position in their organization where someone will
• 53:08
  invest in their, you know, going to the events, you know, kind of
• 53:11
  going to all these meetings, etcetera.
• 53:13
  You don't give that to your 27 year old early career person, a
• 53:17
  writer or maybe you have a token spot for one of those people on
• 53:20
  the board. But I think that that piece is
• 53:22
  also challenging at the committee level as well as the
• 53:25
  board level, as we don't have people who are really reflecting
• 53:29
  back those experiences in a way that makes it helpful to kind of
• 53:34
  design it for better engagement. You know, it's so interesting
• 53:37
  that you you saw that because I can't tell you how many clients
• 53:40
  that we've walked into and we have asked the career path
• 53:44
  question and they're unable to answer it and say, oh, we don't
• 53:49
  have that. But we really need it.
• 53:51
  So the the what I what I want to ask you, Aaron.
• 53:55
  So this is one thing I try to do with the guests.
• 53:57
  So given the, the purview that you have across organizations,
• 54:04
  you know what is the the one thing that people might be
• 54:09
  surprised about related to? Change and transformation.
• 54:14
  Yeah, I think the surprise about transformation is it's not.
• 54:20
  It's rarely a technical challenge, it's a loss and trust
• 54:25
  challenge. And that can be underestimated
• 54:28
  every time. So transformation isn't hard
• 54:30
  because people fear change. It's because it's hard because
• 54:33
  people feel fear of loss, right? So change often to people means
• 54:38
  I'm going to lose something that I have now.
• 54:40
  So loss of status, control, competence, community, like all
• 54:44
  those things. So once you name what those
• 54:46
  those fears, those loss areas are going to be, I think you can
• 54:49
  lead differently and you stop arguing with the resistance.
• 54:53
  And ideally, you start designing conditions where people can step
• 54:57
  into something new without feel like they're being a race.
• 55:01
  And I feel like sometimes when we talk about transformation and
• 55:03
  change right now, it's hard to not make this sound bigger in a
• 55:06
  geopolitical context. I am truly talking about
• 55:08
  associations, but there's certainly echoes there.
• 55:11
  I think the second surprise is that the hard part is usually
• 55:15
  decision hygiene. So transformations fail because
• 55:19
  decisions are slow, reversible, or revisit constantly.
• 55:24
  And So what I often tell CE OS is you have to start with a few
• 55:27
  measurable outcomes, not a long wish list.
• 55:30
  You have to tell everybody explicitly who gets to make
• 55:33
  decisions, and you have to match your ambition to capacity.
• 55:37
  I think sequencing really matters.
• 55:39
  You got to build in a couple quick wins that prove the new
• 55:42
  model and your own aptitude and then scale from there.
• 55:45
  And you have to treat the member experience as the design system.
• 55:49
  So the segmentation, the personalization and the
• 55:52
  engagement all has to be easier than disengaging or there has to
• 55:56
  be enough of a cost to it to disengagement.
• 55:59
  So that's that's where I would wrap up.
• 56:01
  Thank you. Thank you, Aaron for being on
• 56:03
  the show today. Thanks, Kevin.
• 56:05
  I appreciate the opportunity. It's so great to see you.
• 56:08
  Every guest we have had has illuminated a different
• 56:10
  dimension of why transformation fails at the human level.
• 56:15
  Elizabeth Stewart showed us how anxiety spreads through
• 56:19
  organizations. James Elliott showed us how the
• 56:22
  immune system neutralizes change.
• 56:26
  Ryan Vet showed us how generational identity shapes
• 56:29
  every response to transformation.
• 56:32
  And what you have shown us today is what becomes visible when you
• 56:36
  have the vantage point to see across organizations.
• 56:40
  The institutional isomorphism that makes organizations
• 56:44
  converge on the same blind spots.
• 56:46
  The psychological contracts that membership creates and the
• 56:50
  transformation violates. The governance structures that
• 56:54
  become immune systems. And the structural silence that
• 56:58
  ensures leadership never hears the information that most needs
• 57:02
  to hear. That pattern recognition, the
• 57:05
  ability to see across rather than just within, is what I
• 57:09
  think distinguishes leaders who navigate transformation
• 57:13
  successfully from those who keep solving the wrong problems with
• 57:17
  increasing sophistication. What error described today is
• 57:20
  something that I think every leader needs to sit with.
• 57:23
  The patterns that repeat across organizations are not
• 57:26
  coincidences. They are structural dynamics
• 57:30
  produced by the way institutions are designed, governed and
• 57:33
  maintained, and the human beings inside those institutions are
• 57:37
  responding rationally to the incentives, the silences, and
• 57:42
  the psychological contracts that the institution has created,
• 57:46
  whether it is intended to or not.
• 57:49
  If you found today's episode valuable, subscribe to the Human
• 57:53
  Factor Podcast. Wherever you watch or listen the
• 57:55
  podcast, leave a rating and then comment and share this episode
• 57:59
  with your leadership team and your board.
• 58:02
  If your organization is navigating change and
• 58:04
  transformation right now, the patterns Aaron described are
• 58:08
  almost certainly active in your organization.
• 58:11
  The question is whether you can see them.
• 58:14
  Subscribe to my Ideas and Innovations newsletter at 2040
• 58:18
  digital.com for weekly frameworks and research on why
• 58:21
  change succeeds or fails. And we'll connect with me on
• 58:25
  LinkedIn, where I post regularly about the psychology of
• 58:28
  transformation. Next episode, we continue the
• 58:32
  journey. Until then.
• 58:33
  Remember, change in transformation doesn't fail
• 58:37
  because of technology, strategy or market conditions.
• 58:41
  It fails because of people. And the more deeply you
• 58:44
  understand the human factor, the more likely your change or
• 58:47
  transformation is to succeed. I'm Kevin Novak, thanks for
• 58:52
  watching or listening.