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Two interesting links Monday about taking a serious look at what your organization is doing right and what it's doing wrong:

• "How efficient is your association?" by Shannon Otto at the Splash! blog. Shannon writes about moving to a new apartment (more than once in the past year): "In my effort to make my move easier, I got rid of unnecessary and excess items, and it did indeed help my move go (relatively) smoothly."
• "How Microsoft Hit CTRL+ALT+DEL on Windows Phone," by Brian X. Chen on the Gadget Lab blog. The lead: "Microsoft staff refer to December 2008 as 'The Reset' -- the month that the company killed all progress on its Windows phone project and started over."

These two scenarios feature some trying circumstances: a relocation and a severe product-sales decline. However, they both talk about the healthy process of reflection and action that the situations demanded.

I posed a similar idea last year when I asked if an association could ever blow it up and start over. But that might have been the wrong question. It might be more important to ask, "If we wait until our circumstances force us to take stock and make significant changes, might it be too late?"

Inspired by the two posts above, I'd suggest a healthy practice for associations would be a yearly (at least, or more frequent) "spring cleaning" day. It wouldn't be about physical cleaning, of course, but about cleaning budgets, processes, and products. It would be a day to ask every staff member and volunteer two questions: "What one thing should we stop doing?" and "What one thing needs to be reinvented?"

Call it "spring cleaning day" or "moving day" or "reset day"--whatever resonates with your staff and volunteers. Just make sure you're doing it regularly rather than waiting until you're packing up to relocate or staring up at your competition from the bottom of your market.