3 Reasons Why We Don’t Stop Doing Anything
In homage to Scott’s post from a few days ago, here are some reasons why associations can be so bad at dropping projects or programs, even long past their expiration date:
1. Even the smallest program can have deeply invested boosters. A particular program or committee may only matter to 10 people out of your membership. But it’s a problem when they’re 10 people who know how to work the board—or, in some cases, people with significant tenure in the association. It’s very difficult to upset a member when said member is Past President Smith, who wrote the book on your industry and whose word carries enormous clout.
2. You hear from people who are upset, not people who don’t care. Your small program may not have many boosters, but chances are that members who aren’t boosters aren’t angry so much as indifferent (or even ignorant of its existence). So you’ll only get irate phone calls when you cancel the program. And, unfortunately, the new program you could create with the resources freed up by ending the old one doesn’t yet have any devoted constituents.
3. Organizational inertia overcomes you. A big money-loser tends to get noticed, of course. But many unsuccessful programs aren’t unsuccessful in a very noticeable way—they just go about their business, not being particularly valuable. It’s only when you think of what could have been done with that $5,000 or $10,000 multiplied over the last three to five years that you realize the opportunity costs that mediocre program has incurred.
As Scott noted in his post, we have to try to do new things. One way to do that is to clear the decks to create some space, time, and resources for new projects and programs. Try looking around and seeing what could be cleared from your association’s plate—and see how you can get the small group that’s devoted to the dying program excited about helping to launch the new program.
If you can’t, be sure that you (and your board) are prepared to stick to your guns when the angry phone calls come in—because it’s incredibly disheartening to go through the process of cutting a program only to bring it back again under pressure.
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Comments
Good thoughts Lisa. But your post (and Scott's) have me thinking we have to come up with something better than this somewhat paternal purse-strings relationship associations have over programs that force too many either-or choices.
I think the future is going to include association-developed efforts (those involving significant staff and fiscal resources) and more association-supported or association-facilitated efforts in which fewer resources are used to support ad hoc consortia of members creating and designing things that have meaning for them ... under the auspices of the association banner; hence,keeping it in the community. The everyday analogy might be a prime time show that NBC wont run on its network programming anymore, but it will air it on a cable affiliate like Bravo where having a smaller audience is sustainable. Win-win.
I'd also suggest that in a limited number of cases, the angry calls represent a real opportunity: "Nice to hear you are passionate about this because past support has been lukewarm to nonexistent. If you believe this is a program worth continuing, here's the show of support that is needed. We welcome you reaching out to folks to connect with others who feel as strongly as you do and are willing to make the necessary commitments."
This shift in dynamic moves the association staff/volunteer leadership out of the "taking my thing away" mode and turning it into a supportive role with accompanying terms.
Posted by: Jeffrey Cufaude | November 1, 2007 1:21 PM
This is an important and timely subject, which is beginning to ripple across this and other blogs. Interesting how intersting subjects cross-pollinate, eh? Or is it an infection, hm?
Here's some new points (since I agree with everyone's comments):
--Associations can't be everything to everyone and still have value and relevancy comparable to other competitive knowledge, community and advocacy sources, many of which are Internet hosted, content refreshed/updated and much more accessible than resources allow for many associations. So choices have to be made. Success has to be defined. What will association success be?
--Does an association exist to support and satisfy the individual personal interests of members? Does the association exist for some "higher purpose"? These are the two most common purposes for associations, as Decision to Join points out. Success for the first purpose may be very, very different than success for the second purpose. Associations concerned with member's personal interests, for example, may never sunset or retire an existing program. And they may never feel compelled to innovate or do anything new (so long as members are satisfied with status quo offerings and personal interests are the driver).
--Jeff's metaphor of major network programs and "B-grade" local programming is appealing, but workload is still defined by resources plus capabilities. It doesn't matter much if the resources and capabilities are maxed out for the network or the B-grade. When resources and capabilities are tapped out, workload has reached its capacity.
--Successful innovation requires capacity--bandwidth. Capacity to start new things, fail fast, learn and restart. And repeat. Where does this capacity come from if all capacity is devoted to existing goods and services? Can an association that is at max workload and that never retires existing programs hope to innovate on a consistent annual basis?
Perhaps most to the point, why do we associations agonize so much about retiring existing stuff and starting new stuff? Why don't we just do what the for-profit world does: goods and services perform to plan (whatever the plan is--but there has to be a plan with metrics) or they are toast and resources are redeployed elsewhere--without a second thought! The is the world our volunteers live in during their working life--why can't we and they make it work in their volunteer life?
The alternative is to hold hands and sing Kum-Ba-Ya!
Posted by: Virgil Carter | November 1, 2007 2:51 PM
Virgil, I'm with you in spirit, but am perceiving your notion of capacity is still tied to much to the staff. I'm suggesting that there is a lot of capacity among the members and volunteers that can be used differently and in many cases, with minimal staff guidance and support. So maybe 100 hours of staff time for a program in the "sponsored" mode is reduced to 20 hours in the "supported"mode, thus freeing up the bandwith for staff to invest in other ventures.
Posted by: Jeffrey Cufaude | November 1, 2007 6:00 PM
I think it's important to remember some programs have a value that is not just financial. As we move towards a more business model, my members worry that we might drop programs that don't make money - but some have a HUGE value in spreading the word about the association, for example. And in other cases, it's more a matter of figuring out where to maximize revenue even if it's not directly from tuition or dues.
Posted by: Maddie Grant | November 2, 2007 4:34 AM
Maddie, your point is echoed by many of my members as well. But it's not a "mission-focused" (subsidized) programs vs "business operations (net revenue producing programs) situation at all. All programs deserve evaluation. If they can't be evaluated, in some reasonable way, that's the problem.
Few associations have programs that aren't valuable, relevant and supported by some constituency or other. If we leave it at that, nothing new ever happens. Innovation isn't possible. So we need to find reasonable ways to evaluate programs and retire some, so that we can move on with new opportunities and challenges.
Unless, of course, we want to try to sustain the status quo and let the world move past us. For many of us, we struggle with ways to rotate the stock and be innovative--for all progreams, mission focused and business operations.
Posted by: Virgil Carter | November 2, 2007 6:50 AM