Acronym

I had the opportunity last week to hear Polly LaBarre speak about her new book Mavericks at Work. After spending considerable time studying “maverick” companies in industries ranging from entertainment (HBO, Pixar) to retail and mining (Whole Foods, Goldcorp), she and co-author William Taylor have quite a few lessons to share.

One remarkable trait shared by the companies they studied is the concept of “strategy as advocacy.” These companies have a mission and they’re in business to advance it. And by mission, they don’t mean one of those meaningless statements of interchangeable corporate-speak terms. Internet banking company ING Direct wants to “lead Americans back to savings.” Southwest Airlines wants to “democratize the skies.” Cranium, the game company, wants to help people “laugh and feel and connect.”

Of course, using strategy as advocacy means that you will alienate some people. When ING Direct fires approximately 3,500 customers a year—and even rejects potential new customers—that don’t fit in with its mission and criteria, it is doing something alien to most associations (and for-profit businesses, for that matter). As association professionals, we aim to bring people together, and the bigger the tent, the better. But if your association really threw its energy and resources behind a simple, compelling mission—if you had the ability and indeed the requirement to say no to requests that didn’t fit with that mission—how much do you think you could you accomplish?

With that kind of mission, I bet a lot of associations could move forward far more quickly than we can when we try to be all things to all members.