Acronym

Scott,
Interesting post...I agree with you regarding your assessment of Good to Great...one thing that is funny is that several of the companies who were 'great' in the book have suffered a great deal, like Circuit City and Fannie Mae...not that he could have predicted it, but its just interesting...I'd rather be Good than out of business!

I like the 80/20 rule, but I don't like to get pigeonholed in a black or white scenario...with your definitions, it seems like lead should take the forefront, until the systems/processes are in place to help serve...but I think one great aspect of leadership that you are missing is dealing with things that come up quickly, those NOW items that need quick resolution or new innovation--its service to members and its leadership to solve immediate pain or problems for them...

If you think about this topic in terms of doing one at the detriment of the other, is that perhaps not the best way to approach things?

I don't believe that the organization should be the trend setter, but do believe that they are responsible for guiding the membership through industry transitions. The organization that provides the highest level of service to their members will listen and watch what the membership is doing and therefore be better prepared to lead the members through change.

My argument against 80/20 is - either way the organization is failing. If you are serving the members 80% of the time, the resources are most likely not available to effectively lead. If you are leading 80% who is serving the members?

Whatever your percentages, the association still has to get people to follow. That's the real challenge, be the association 20% ahead or 80%.

We should have more conversation around what strategies have people found effective for bringing a large percentage of members along to a change they have not yet envisioned needing.

I don't know. Serving and leading (as you defined it) are both valuable to the membership or industry, etc. But trying to determine the right percentage back as a staff person in your office seems somehow wrong to me. The value that we're going to deliver needs to be cultivated and grown, listening to members, and telling them things, where we BOTH are uncomfortable sometimes, and the lead/serve mix has the ability to bounce around as needed. Am I being too idealistic to think we could do it that way?

Scott, you've set up a bit of a false dichotomy. Here's your definition of leading:

(1) anticipating future events and needs and ensuring members are prepared for it--and by its nature, your anticipations and the work you do will be wrong or inadequate a bunch of the time;
(2) pushing members into uncomfortable positions to accept realities that may be hard to accept or even to create realities that are less-than-ideal for their companies but achieve a greater good--for the profession or industry, or for society as a whole

Part (1) is definitely serving, not leading. It's one of the primary reasons my members belong to my association. By doing this, we are addressing one of our members' expressed needs, and offering solutions to meet it (your definition of serving).

And I would argue that half of part (2) is also serving, not leading. "Pushing members into uncomfortable positions to accept realities that may be hard to accept" is serving their needs if accepting those realities is better for their businesses in the long-run. To me that's a slam dunk. It only gets fuzzy when there are situations where what's good for the industry as a whole is what's bad for a portion of your membership. I can't imagine a situation in which what's good for the industry is what's bad for all of your members. And unless your mission encompasses it, what's good for society as a whole may not even enter into the discussion.

Am I missing your point?

I think the issue (which you're right has come up again and again over the years) can no longer be set forth in traditional either-or language. To me it's a both-and. You serve in order to lead and you lead in order to serve. Jamie mentioned "listening" - in the digital age you have a duty to "listen" to what members are discussing and working through in order to incorporate those things back into the system (and the ecosystem). You follow by paying attention, in other words, but then you (the org) are in a position to take those lessons and feed them back in to organizational structures so you can lead at the same time.

Thank you all for the wonderful comments.

Jamie & Maddie - I think both can be valuable too. I just don't think both can coexist very well when they have equal focus. I feel like I'm repeating myself, sorry for that, but an organization has finite resources. I think the strongest organizations are those that can say definitively we are about serving (or leading) and then devote most of its resources to do that. Conversely, organizations who say the are roughly equal parts of both have a very hard time doing either as well as they should. It doesn't mean they completely give up the other side, but at the end of a quarter or year or month or whatever time makes sense, they should be able to take stock of what they've done and see that they've allocated resources appropriately.

Eric -- It sounds to me like you and your org fall squarely on the lead side of the equation. I think you and Maddie are right, to lead is to serve as well. The semantics I was trying to get at are the types of debates I've had in the associations I've worked. In that context, when a member is telling you that you need to scan the environment and alert them to things that may (or may not) have significant impact on them, they are telling you to lead. When they say that want you to help them fix XXX problem, they're asking you to serve them. If you look at the August issue of Associations Now, How to Think Like a Designer is an excellent article that would fall in the "lead" category. Get Your Volunteers on Track is a very good article that falls on the "serve" side.

To answer the last part of your comment, let's say you're an association of crab fishers in the Chesapeake Bay (if such an organization exists - my apologies, I'm not trying to be factual, just illustrating a point). Let's say scientific studies show that the crab population in the Bay will cease to exist rapidly at existing crabbing levels. They recommend crabbing be eliminated in some areas and curtailed by 90 percent in others. The legislature adopts the study and idea and writes a bill. The bill will obviously devastate your members. They've noticed the decline, but they're scraping by, and don't want to lose their way of life. In such a case, member interest would not in fact be compatible with the industry as a whole's interest, and certainly wouldn't be compatible with society's interests. I admit such cases would be rare, more common would be when members' and an industry's interests are opposite of societal interest. An organization can choose to fight for the member or industry, or it can decide to work to get its members to accept working in ways where societal interest outweighs member interest.

Thanks for the example, Scott.

If the crab population really is going to disappear at existing crabbing levels, how is it in the industry's interest to fight the bill and allow the industry to destroy itself? It might be in the interest of some members more focused on short-term gain, but any member truly interested in preserving their way of life is going to see that taking all the crabs out of the Cheasapeake will hurt them in the long-run.

And re: societal interest, as I said before, if your mission is to advance your industry, then what's best for society has to be viewed through that prism. It's bad business to run counter to society's interest, so aligning your industry's advancement with society's interest is likely the best strategy whenever possible. When it's not possible--that may be one of those times when the association has to lead instead of serve.

Ok Eric, let's stick with the example for a second (though whenever you try to make up these hypotheticals, it's kind of an exercise in futility). If the bill really eliminates some crabbing and curbs the rest by 90%, and it does so for say a decade until new research shows a growing crab population,I think that probably kills the industry and the need for the association -- at the very least for 10 years. I mean, scarcity would drive up prices, but you couldn't drive it up that much, as there are replacement products for the market. So you might have a few people continuing to crab, but it would be their secondary source of income, not primary.

I think most associations I know would fight the legislation, saying that yes, reductions may be necessary, but 10% reductions, not 90%. Let's say they lose the battle, the association's next tactic will be to try to get funding for assistance or skills training or something for it's members -- but given all the information, this is where they should have started.

Things are pretty much never as black & white as the example though. But there are many times where the actions of associations creep pretty far into that gray area of credibility. What I'm saying is, wouldn't it be great if instead of approaching credibility limits, organizations conceded and looked back at its members and said "this is the way it is, and we have to learn how to thrive best now." I know that happens sometimes, but I don't think it happens often enough.