Acronym

I recently came across a quote from Richard Danzig, former U.S. secretary of the Navy, that struck me as very insightful: “Organizations,” Danzig says, “are a kind of fossil record of what bothered their predecessors.”

Think about standard procedures and processes in your office. How many of them began because a staff director wanted to see documents presented in a certain way, or a volunteer president got upset about a particular article in the association magazine?

The quote particularly resonated with me because I had just read an article that will appear in the May issue of Associations Now (coming soon to a mailbox near you). In our May cover story, psychiatrist Keith Ablow talks about the importance of confronting your past and acknowledging and understanding the impact those experiences have had on you—either as a person or as an organization.

Now, your association can’t collectively seek therapy. But you could take the time to sit down and say, “What fossils are there in our structure and processes that we can dig up and evolve beyond?” I bet you’ll be surprised at where they’re buried.