Acronym

ASAE's Executive Management Listserv took a slight turn to the bizarre this week when a discussion about board member recruitment turned on a fly fishing metaphor thanks to Bob Collins of APICS and the always insightful Vinay Kumar.

With apologies to any association board members who read this--honest your staffs do not actually think of you as guppies or steelhead or any other type of cold-blooded animal--here is how Kumar broke down, in general, the types of prospective association board members (I slightly edited his work for style):

ME Guppy--it's all about him, what's in it for him. It's constantly about receiving, about taking, what can you do for me, how will this add to my resume, my ego stroking, how I will look good, and so on. In my judgment, of course.

YOU Guppy--it's about continuous giving. But this guppy can run out of energy at some point because she can overcommit, out of goodness to serve. So initially it's a great start with lots of energy, but they can run out of nourishment at some point.

WE Guppy--she is about both giving and receiving. She knows that when those she is serving are successful, so is she. And when she is successful, she has more to give. She sees her success and the success of those she serves as intertwined and interrelated. The more she gives, the more she receives and vice versa.

What struck me is what is often the case with generalizations: the ideas and descriptions resonate, but then most of the time they break down at an individual application level. I can't imagine something that would be much harder than divining someone's motivation at desiring to join a board of directors. When I volunteer my time and energy on something, the complexity behind my motivations is hard for me to work out and accept myself, and would almost always include components of all three of these categorizations. Which one is slightly (or maybe even significantly) ahead of the others is most likely determined by the specific job as much as anything else.

We've all seen the ME volunteer, right? I imagine a lot of us have seen a ME volunteer transform into a WE volunteer. Now we might pat ourselves on the back for being able to train someone to be a good and productive volunteer. But it just might be that a slightly different volunteer assignment--and when you're on a board, you're going to be talking about many different issues, each could be considered a different assignment--is the difference.

In any event, it's an interesting discussion point, I think. The ideas of what metaphoric hook and metaphoric bait to use to land a metaphoric guppy in the desired category was also part of the conversation. (I told you it got a little bizarre. Good, but bizarre.)