7 Measures Likes and Dislikes
I'm not really qualified—yet—to enter the conversation about whether 7 Measures of Success should be required CAE reading. I do try to keep up on my reading, however, and I can say that it's a book anyone who considers themself an association executive should read.
Like most important books, there are parts I agree with, and parts I don't. So here's one thing I love and one thing I hate in 7 Measures:
Love—Organizational adaptability is one of the seven measures. What it boils down to is a continuous process of assessing the environment in which your association operates and making changes based on it. It's about being decisive. It's about learning from failure. But more than anything, it's about having the courage to stop doing things that no longer work and the discipline to improve the things that do. Associations Now excerpted this part of the book in August.
Hate—There's a list of behaviors in the book that "remarkable" associations do and a list of counterparts to those behaviors. One of the behaviors of remarkable associations is that they "do their homework, through surveys, assessments, and evaluations, before launching or discontinuing a product or service." The counterpart: "rely more on intuition, assumptions, and chance to guide product development and improvement."
I believe surveys, assessments, and the like do provide valuable information, but the way that is written, it sounds like the advice is to not take an action until you've studied it extensively. No, no, no. That takes too long. And it leads to bad decisions. It's a minor part of the article, buried deep in this Washington Post article is the notion that advertising got severly dumbed down and uncreative thanks to prescreening in front of an audience. I'm a proponent of Tom Peters' advice, "Ready, fire, aim." Far from being a liability, intuition is how you spell success. Intuition and assumption (despite the cliche that assuming makes a you-know-what out of you know who) should not be equated with chance. Do your surveys and assessments, not to discover the answer to a specific question, but to better understand your constituents. If you study and know that data, your intuition will be better. As you gain experience in both knowing your members beyond how they rank something on a 5-point scale and in what your association is capable of doing, your intution will improve. And as you add to your network of peers and advisors, your intuition will improve.
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Comments
I totally agree with your dislike Scott. Gary Hamel has long asserted (as have others) that "innovation results from insight into the unarticulated need." That insight often is the result of intuitive readings of the data or pure gut hunches that something is the right thing to do based on experience and interactions with memebrs and the profession or industry stakeholders. By the time a clear member need emerges in survey results, the more intuitive association would already have a successful response in place.
Posted by: Jeffrey Cufaude | September 22, 2006 10:13 AM
Thank you for the additional information, Jeff. I find myself increasingly influenced on this topic by an article in last October's Associations Now: "Creating What Members Don't Know They Need."
The genesis of the article is about Fed Ex developing barcode tracking so customers could tell where packages are in transit. It's taken for granted now, but it was a technological wonder when Fed Ex first offered the service. And no customer ever asked for it.
Posted by: Scott Briscoe | September 23, 2006 10:32 PM
I agree that surveys, assessments, and evaluations are not necessarily the prefereble way to make decisions and there is definitely a (sometimes very valuable) place for intuition. In many cases, it would be ideal to have a healthy blend of the two.
But in playing devil's advocate, I'd quibble with two of the statements, "That takes too long. And it leads to bad decisions." (referring to surveys/assessments, study, etc.)
Sometimes, both statements are true. But I would point out that with Internet based tools, access to member email addresses, etc. surveys can in fact be quite fast, efficient and inexpensive. I don't necessarily agree that a "more intuitive association would already have a successful response in place" before a member need emerges from survey results. One, the time frame for surveys is pretty short. Two, that makes a fairly big assumption about the other association's "intuition" and whether that would automatically translate into a successful response.
That leads into the second point, that surveys/study lead to bad decisions. Again, this is sometimes true. But I'm not sure it's any more true than for "intuition" on the other side. To rely on intuition, you really have to have a lot of confidence in the person(s) making the decisions. There's a chance their intuition will be wrong or at least "off" enough to have a detrimental effect on your success.
Again, I would say that the best situation is a healthy blend of the two. In fact, intuition plays an important role in surveys/assessments because it influences the whole process including interpreting and analyzing the results.
The one caveat I'd add is that there are many cases where the project/initiative isn't "big" (expense to launch, potential revenues, etc) enough to really require any sort of survey or assessment.
Posted by: Andy McDaniel | September 25, 2006 12:23 PM
I would like more informaiton on the pros and cons of surveys with opinions from everyday people and not the companies that conduct surveys.
I want to konw what people really think ABOUT SURVEYS FROM INSTITUTIONS LIKE BANK OF AMERICA, SPRINT, INSURANCE COMPANIES and other major companies.
Posted by: yolanda korff | March 6, 2007 9:37 PM