Their dilemma was how to study it, Collins told me during an interview, much of which appears in three articles in this month's Associations Now and on the ASAE website:

• "The No-Excuses Guide to Greatness"
• "The Favorites Game: The Lowdown on Luck"
• "Building a Great by Choice Organization: The Board Perspective"

Great by Choice is the final lap in a 10-year marathon study of what makes companies great. In this fourth and last book in the "Great" series, the focus is on achieving excellence amidst a chaotic global environment. Would luck play a greater role during such turbulence, and could it be leveraged effectively?

In response, Collins and Morten pioneered a methodology that defines "luck events" to evaluate whether the "great" companies in its matched-pair study had better, worse, or the same luck as its counterparts. They explored a luck event by asking whether luck was rare or common, whether any evidence existed that the most successful organizations were luckier, and whether they did anything differently about luck.

The duo discovered that good and bad luck abounds, and that of the 230 identified luck events in their studied companies, the great companies were not luckier comparably and that the timing or size of the luck event did not quantitatively affect their success levels much of the time.

What the duo decided was that a "return on luck"—the ability of an organization to leverage good luck opportunities or ride out bad luck events—was a differentiator in the long run. "What the 10xers [great organizations] do is ask, 'Is this a piece of luck that should cause us to disrupt our plans, and, if so, what should we do to get a high return on that luck?'" Collins said. "It doesn't matter if it's good luck or bad luck. The same question applies. We found that our 10xers were really good at recognizing a luck event, and when it came, they executed supremely well to get a high return on that luck event."

They also found that "Good luck cannot cause a great organization. … However, … if you get bad enough luck, it can end the quest," said Collins, noting that a small organization could go under if it, say, runs out of cash or loses its primary leader because of some bad luck.

I'm betting that we all can think of times when we muttered about having bad luck (grant denied) or celebrated a sprig of good luck (an unexpected check) but did not necessarily look at this luck as an opportunity of much long-term value. Maybe Collins' research will turn our thinking in a different direction if we become more proficient at identifying substantive luck events and pausing to ponder these twists more strategically.

Serendipity Day is a variation on Google's famous "20 percent time," in which employees use a fifth of their work week to tinker with side projects that might eventually become full-fledged products. It's hard to poke too many holes in the 20-percent-time concept—clearly it works for Google—but I can see a "Serendipity Day" concept being a better fit for association staffs, for a number of reasons:

• Not all departments are created equal, ideation-wise. I've heard people propose 20-percent-time ideas for associations, but I've been skeptical about how well that can work across various association departments. Is every one equally in need of regular rethinking and innovation?
• Hey, who's getting their must-dos done with 100 percent time? For some, the opportunity for free-thinking is liberating; for others, it can be just another task, and tasks that are done dutifully don't usually radiate brilliance. Making such efforts relatively rare gives it a sense of importance but doesn't make it feel onerous.
• It's a member-engagement opportunity. Letting members and volunteers know that the association is working on a daylong ideation process might encourage them to focus on their own ideas. Put it on the listservers; put out a call on your Twitter and Facebook pages.
• It's not a retreat. One-day getaways for staff can force them into a particular kind of collaboration and are often better for big-picture strategizing than for brainstorming new products and services or coming up with a way to better address a routine member issue. Serendipity days might be a little more small-ball, but that doesn't mean they lack value.

Thoughts? If you're actually putting a 20-percent-time idea into action, I'd love to hear about how you make it work, especially if you have a small staff. But aside from that, how do you give staff the time to generate the ideas that can improve the organization?

One of the most enjoyable assignments I've had in my involvement in ASAE was working on the Innovation Task Force. Figuring out the answer to "How do we cultivate a spirit of innovation in associations?" was simultaneously challenging and frustrating.

The challenging dimension was that it was fun to engage association executives in conversations around that question. I've heard lots of perspectives on the question, I've heard lots of examples of how associations have empowered staff to innovate, and I've heard how staff and volunteers are routinely challenging the status quo and creating innovative programs and solutions in some associations. It's energizing to hear the enthusiasm that some have for being innovators and creating a culture that promotes innovation.

At the same time, talking about innovation has also been nothing short of frustrating. Many of the CEOs I've spoken with seem paralyzed at the prospect of getting their arms around becoming innovative. While virtually everyone seems to recognize the importance of becoming innovative, they just can't figure out how to do it. Too many seem to be focused on innovation as the next big, grandiose new thing they can develop. They're not recognizing that innovation can also occur incrementally.

Everyone understands the concept of "process improvement" in their organizations, but they don't relate that to being innovative. I liken process improvement to "baby steps." By fostering an environment and culture that promotes baby steps, we begin to get people comfortable with the notion of change, and that can lead to comfort with significant change that can lead to major innovations. It's easy to get people thinking about and acting on simple process improvements, and that's far easier than saying "think big" with a hope that you'll see something innovative develop.

I've been in several conversations recently that have reinforced my belief that too many association CEOs are afraid to tackle the innovation challenge because of reasons like "it's too big to get my arms around" or "it will be expensive," or they rationalize that "I innovate all the time." I'd challenge everyone to think about the issue not as an undertaking that's too big to embrace but rather as something where small steps and a culture change can lead to big things.

Regardless of whether one's approach to innovation is through small steps or big steps, what's most important is that we embrace the notion of innovation as something that can lead to organizational excitement and great new things.

Community management

• Did you know that Monday was Community Manager Appreciation Day? Well, thanks to Maggie McGary, now you do. So go give your association's community manager(s) a belated "thanks."
• Colleen Dilenschneider explains why quality, not quantity, matters most in building your organization's online followers.

Fixing problems

• Laura Otten writes that some struggling nonprofits won't change until they hit rock bottom, much like an addict. "There are those who love the problem so much, they really aren't interested in a solution." 
• Andy Freed shares a "To Don't" list for associations, inspired by and marking 15 years since the release of Built to Last by Jim Collins.

Lobbying

• Stefanie Reeves, CAE, reads about "the dawn of social lobbying" and argues that lobbying has always been social.
• David Patt, CAE, highlights the fine line an association must walk in supporting politicians but also not getting lumped in with them when they draw public backlash.

Member engagement

• Aaron Wolowiec, CAE, explains how a strong pursuit of a relational business model (rather than transactional) can be a key method for recruiting and retaining members.
• Two weeks ago, Elizabeth Engel, CAE, responded to Mark Athitakis's post here on Acronym to say that reading fiction teaches you how to think. So it's no surprise this week that she explains what associations can learn about engaging retired members from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Meetings

• Jeffrey Cufaude thinks a lot of organizations "missed the memo" on effective meetings. Convenietly, he recaps it nicely here if you missed it too.
• Speaking of the future of meetings, after what she saw at the PCMA Convening Leaders and the Virtual Edge Summit, Michelle Bruno writes that the future for meeting planners is one in which "the traditional competencies (and assumptions) will no longer be adequate for the job."

Management. Virgil Carter shares five new management metrics. My favorites on the list are "flow-state percentage" and "positive-feedback ratio."

Customer service. Jeff Hurt explains how organizations are using social media for "digital customer service," like a online version of the bell on a concierge desk.

Nondues revenue. Erik Schonher points out a source of revenue your association might not have considered before: list rentals. And he offers several questions you should ask if you're looking for a list management company to manage rentals of your membership list.

Membership models. Lowll Aplebaum makes a guest appearance on the Affiniscape Blog to argue that the end of the traditional membership model is not a sign of impending doom but rather an opportunity to remake the membership model in any way we can imagine.

Strategic planning. Eric Lanke, CAE, concurs with Humanize authors Maddie Grant, CAE, and Jamie Notter that strategic planning is a term that should be done away with.

Associations Now has done its bit to promote the virtues of introversion: We've run articles on the importance of finding time to think by oneself, on how introverts aren't the insecure souls the stereotype suggests, and on how social media helps introverts better engage with associations. Of course, we run plenty of articles about the virtues of collaboration too—our Volunteer Leadership Issue is, in essence, a handbook for how association boards and staff leaders can work together and be more productive. So which work style works best, in which contexts, and why?

The cheeky answer to those questions is obvious: Well, I'd have to think on it a little more, but if you want to talk with me about it, we can. (The rest of this week is booked pretty solid with meetings, though, sorry. How's your Tuesday?) What I can say is that it was a little dispiriting to read "The Rise of the New Groupthink," an essay in the New York Times by Susan Cain about how more and more activities in the workplace have become collaborative ones. "It's one thing to associate with a group in which each member works autonomously on his piece of the puzzle," Cain writes. "It's another to be corralled into endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers."

Cain points out plenty of downsides to that go-team office dynamic: Studies show that open office plans make employees sicker and more insecure, and though group brainstorming sessions produce a high quantity of ideas, there's no evidence that the quality of those ideas are any better than those generated alone by individuals. Her prescription is for "a more nuanced approach to creativity and learning" that allows us more time to hunker down, be it to generate ideas or just to knock things off our to-do lists.

It's a good idea, but how do you put it in motion? I've read plenty in the business and association press about how to create better collaborative environments; there's much less out there about how carve out more time for individual creativity and productivity. Is it something organizations can institute, or do we just hope our employees get around to it between meetings?

• "Opposites Don't Attract (And That's Bad News)," by Jonah Lehrer at Wired's Frontal Cortex blog
• "The End of the Echo Chamber," by Farhad Manjoo at Slate

In the former, Lehrer explains a newly released study that found that college students at larger universities have less diverse social groups than those at smaller universities. The conclusion drawn is that a larger environment allows the natural tendency toward seeking relationships with similar people to play out more thoroughly. As the study's authors put it, "Our findings reveal an irony—greater human diversity within an environment leads to less personal diversity."

Meanwhile, many experts have assumed that the boundless environment of the internet has allowed this same dynamic to turn the net into an "echo chamber," leaving us all increasingly isolated from differing people and viewpoints. The Slate article, however, points out a massive study conducted on Facebook that suggests the opposite is true: social networks (or at least Facebook) expose users to a large amount of novel information (i.e., ideas you most likely wouldn't have found on your own), because the vast majority of online social connections are weak ties. Simply put, the echo chamber theory doesn't appear to be true.

So, in person, opposites don't attract, but seemingly opposites do attract in the internet. The important difference between these scenarios is strength of connections. The former study examined the diversity in close personal relationships, while the latter examined the diversity in weak connections. Very different scenarios, and the evidence from each supports a fairly simple (and perhaps obvious) conclusion: strong relationships arise naturally from compatibility, while weak connections require less compatibility and thus allow for greater diversity.

So why might any of this be relevant to you as an association executive? I see a few lessons to draw, and while none of them are new or novel, the studies serve as important reminders and reinformcements of the following ideas:

Weak ties are conduits for knowledge sharing. My colleague Mark Athitakis asked "What's a Weak Tie Worth?" a few weeks ago and suggested that it might be difficult to turn weak ties into strong ones. I think both of these studies confirm that, but the Facebook study in particular further proves the great value in a large network of weak ties. Working to grow that network—and to help your members grow their weak-tie networks with each other—is a valuable goal in itself.

Growing diversity is another case for online social networking within your membership. Another reason to count the Facebook study in the "pro" column for engaging members through private online community platforms and on external social networks. It's not just a greater volume of connections that can be made online than in person; the online environment allows for the diversity of those connections to be higher, too. And we know that greater diversity in ideas and information being exchanged leads to better decisions, more innovation, and so on.

But just creating a diverse environment isn't enough. Particularly when it comes to your staff or your volunteer leadership, where weak ties that might exist need to be built into strong ties for effective work to be done. Getting a diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints in a room together is the right start, but human nature (sadly) will still resist the forming of diverse relationships unless they're fostered intentionally. Cross-functional teams, task forces, and committees must be created with purpose.

I'm curious if these studies align with your experience with your relationships and networks and those you see in your associations.

So let's add one more complication here: At the Harvard Business Review website, author Anne Kreamer writes about "the business case for reading novels." By "business case," Kreamer means to say that reading fiction bolsters the kinds of qualities that we admire in leaders but which leaders sometimes have a hard time cultivating: emotional intelligence, empathy, poise, conscientiousness. There's data to back up the claim. According to one study she cites, people who read fiction were better equipped to detect emotional cues in others. Moreover, Kreamer argues, fiction is a way to experience the rougher emotions we try to avoid in everyday life, the better to deal with them when they do come up.

I like the idea in the abstract, though I think fiction is only so beneficial as a leadership tool. As Kreamer points out, people who already have "high interpersonal skills" won't necessarily benefit. And however I look at it, I'm not convinced that the novel I'm reading at the moment, Charles Johnson's Middle Passage, which is set on a mutinous slave ship in 1830, has much to teach me about leadership, even in an inverted, here's-how-to-do-it-wrong kind of way. But I don't read fiction to be taught so much as to be reminded: to remember that there are sometimes voices I hadn't considered, that some of the verities I was sure of years ago (or last month) aren't necessarily so, and that the essential but hard-won personal stuff Kreamer mentions—emotional intelligence, empathy, poise, conscientiousness—still matters. Novels aren't formal training; at best they're refresher courses.

But let me throw it to you, an association readership that I know often balances the must-read business books with less-business-y ones. Is there a business case for novels, as Kreamer argues, or do they serve to bolster the storytelling instinct that threaten to make our narratives a little too pat?

Looking back at some of the top posts from the past few weeks, many association bloggers turned their attention to predictions and resolutions for 2012:

Words for 2012. Following a theme that she started last year, Shelly Alcorn, CAE, shares five words that will define her work with associations in 2012. As she points out, several others joined her in sharing their words for 2012, as well: Lowell Aplebaum, Kiki L'Italien, Nikki Jeske and Jay Daughtry.

Changing the world in 2012. Maddie Grant, CAE, posed a question on her blog: "How are you going to change the world in 2012?" Several association bloggers responded with posts, which Maddie has conveniently gathered up in a recap post.

Technology challenges. Wes Trochlil has followed up ASAE's 2011 Technology Conference & Expo with a series of blog posts titled "Things I heard at the ASAE Tech Conference." He's up to seven so far, with topics ranging from internal users groups to new association management systems to training.

Membership. Maggie McGary tried out a consumer membership at the Consumer Electronics Association in 2011, only to see CEA discontinue it shortly after launching it. Her account is a good example of how a new member experiences an association.

Wifi at conferences. On the NTEN Blog, Jason Samuels shares how the National Council on Family Relations provided wireless internet for conference attendees via mobile broadband hotspots. It worked, but not perfectly, and Jason shares all the ups and downs and lessons learned.

Consensus. Mark J. Golden, FASAE, CAE, makes an argument for the value of consensus in associations, but he also makes some important clarifications about what consensus is and isn't.

Convention management. Sue Pelletier is at the Professional Convention Management Association Annual Meeting this week, and she provides a thorough recap of the first day's keynoters: John Medina, Jane McGonigal, Sally Hogshead, and David Brooks.

Volunteer recruitment. Susan J. Ellis relates author Steve McKee's "spark plug theory of marketing" to volunteer recruitment and connecting with volunteers who "want to be challenged to solve problems in new ways."

Diversity. Elizabeth Engel, CAE, is disappointed in the lack of diversity in a collection of association CEOs in an industry publication and says the lack of progress on diversity in general is a threat to the survivial of associations.

Tradeshows. Michael Pinchera a t MPI's PlusPoint blog shares a video that gives a behind-the-scenes look at the construction of a booth at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Marketing. Cindy Butts, CAE, offers six reasons why sponsoring a sports program (such as a local pro or college team) can benefit your association.

Online communities. Terry Coatta asks if you are promoting your online communities as "deadly jelly babies." If this doesn't make sense to you, the point is that it probably doesn't make sense to your members, either.

[Engle's feature article isn't published online; see page 26 of your print edition. However, in October we published a short article based on an interview with Engle.]

In the feature, Engle stresses that the importance of the consensus approach at the association board level runs opposite to what other research says about decision making in for-profit boards, that conflict at the board level improves decision making. A quote from Steve Smith, CAE, executive director and CEO of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, sums this up well:

"Fairness and due diligence are critical within [association] committee or board processes," says Smith. "If a process is seen as unfair, such as when all views are not heard, the focus is likely to be on personal issues or affective conflict."

In other words, in the association context, if the decision-making process is un-inclusive, conflict will arise precisely for that reason.

The association model is such that, by the time a decision reaches the board level, a strong consensus should already exist about the decision to be made. All the various stakeholders should already be on board because they should have already been asked for their input. If they weren't asked, they'll question the decision. In many cases, I suspect, conflict might present itself as healthy debate on the merits of the issue but in truth be rooted in personal or political conflict stemming from a sense of unfairness in the process.

This presents a deeper question: Is the decision-making process more important than the decision itself? For associations and their member-driven governance systems, the answer might be yes. The evidence in Engle's research on conflict and decision making suggests this, and it makes yet another case for more openness and inclusion in decision-making in associations. If you haven't read the comments from that post from November, go back now and read them. They offer some good ideas for meeting this challenge.

It's four days into the new year, and with any luck you're still sticking to your resolutions to be healthier, kinder, more creative, more organized, and so on. All good things. But I hope you'll forgive me for handing you this double-fudge sundae of a resolution-wrecker: Maybe this is the year you stop trying so hard to apply order to things and instead spend more time acknowledging life's inherent messiness.

I say this after spending some time over the holidays reading the transcript of a talk that economist Tyler Cowen gave at the TedxMidAtlantic conference. (The talk—in the video above—was in 2009, but the transcript appeared late last month.) Cowen's talk is about stories—more specifically, our human instinct to organize our lives as stories. Cowen understands that storytelling is baked into our nature, but he's concerned that our need to describe our lives in terms of conflicts and beginnings, middles, and ends oversimplifies things. "Every time you're telling a good-versus-evil story, you're basically lowering your IQ by ten points or more," Cowen says. Good-versus-evil stories deflect nuance and complication, and it's often the subtle things you need to be the most concerned about.

The line that really hit home for me—and that got me thinking about associations—is Cowen's suggestion about what you should do when a story feels a little too enchanting to you:

Pull back and say, "What are the messages, and what are the stories that no one has an incentive to tell?" and start telling yourself those, and see if any of your decisions change.

Associations, of course, tell stories about themselves all the time: In the annual report, in the board minutes, in the marketing programs, in their internal messages. Those messages can be as simple as "We've supported our industry for decades." But what if the industry isn't the same as it was all those decades back? The decades make for a nice story, but they're not what matters—and, as Cowen implies, leaning on that story isn't going to drive you to make changes in what you do.

So here's the question for the new year (and please do weigh in with your answers in the comments if you're willing): What are the stories you've seen associations unwilling to tell themselves? And a bonus question: Where does that lack of incentive come from?

I tried to find a way to get the total number of blog posts in the "associations" folder in my Google Reader for 2011, but had no such luck. Simply put, there were a lot. Far too many to count. And there were a lot of great, interesting, informative, provocative, entertaining ones, which we've been sharing here via our quasi-regular Quick Clicks posts.

If you're not plugged into the association-management blogosphere, you're seriously missing out. Make that a New Year's resolution to start following some of these blogs. (See the "Blogs on Associations" list in the right margin on the Acronym homepage to find some good ones to follow.)

The posts below are listed in chronological order and, though they're not numbered, there are 31 of them. In the interest of spreading out the link love, no blogger appears more than once. (Some of you more prolific bloggers made that difficult.) And, as a disclaimer, the selection process here is wholly unscientific, involving no formal criteria and no panel of judges. It's just me and what I remember as particularly good posts this year. If you have some favorite posts from 2011 that aren't included here, please add them in the comments.

See you in 2012!

• "Just What Am I Joining?" Jamie Notter, January 5
• "Think you could never be homeless?" Jeff Cobb, February 22
• "When I get older..." David Patt, CAE, March 2
• "Words Make Worlds - Part 2 - Membership vs Citizenship," Shelly Alcorn, CAE, March 8
• "Uh oh, the pledge and no American Flag," Cindy Butts, CAE, March 26
• "Are your lousy systems affecting staff retention?" Wes Trochlil, April 12
• "Why Private Social Networks for Associations Aren't About Networking," Joshua Paul, April 21
• "Influence in the Context of Associations," Maggie McGary, May 31
• "How to Hire for Social Media Management," Maddie Grant, CAE, June 23
• "Mall Science: What Your Conference Can Learn From The Mall," Jeff Hurt, June 28
• "The Association Cycle," C. David Gammel, CAE, June 29
• "In the Beginning was the Leadership," Judith Lindenau, June 30
• "Psst! Want Your New Executive Director to Succeed?" Tim Wolfred and Jan Masaoka, July 16
• "Staff Meeting 24/7... Its the ONLY WAY," Tom Morrison, July 18
• "Have we lost the ability to argue?" Mark Golden, FASAE, CAE, July 18
• "Getting Extra Credit," Laura Otten, August 3
• "6 Tips to Make Membership Research Work," Adina Wasserman, August 3
• "The Life and Times of an Association Executive," Dan Borschke, CAE, August 10
• "ASAE St. Louis 2011 - in 71 Seconds" [YouTube video], Tom Ingram, August 11
• "Marker-Wielding Board Member Holds Strategic Planning Session Hostage," The Association Onion, August 13
• "Innovation: Small Staff v. Large Staff," Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE, August 16
• "Reflections on ASAE 11: The Sexiness of Unsexy Innovation," Frank Fortin, CAE, August 17
• "Getting More Players on the All-Star Team," Jeffrey Cufaude, August 24
• "The "Hook" for Profitable Engagement: Changing your Conversation with Members and Customers," Anna Caraveli, August 30
• "Should Committees Report to the Board?" Eric Lanke, CAE, September 26
• "Five Ways to Get More From Your Board Meeting," Andy Freed, September 29
• "The 25 Most Important Lessons in Membership Marketing," Tony Rossell, October 10
• "Balancing the Board-CEO Relationship," Skip Potter, October 18
• "Mission: Volunteer Leader Training Part 2: Growing the Leader," Lowell Aplebaum, November 15
• "Association Pareidolia," KiKi L'Italien, November 28
• "Lobbying is not a four-letter word," Stefanie Reeves, CAE, December 1

• New Infographic: Associations Going Mobile (Lindy Dreyer)
• What Online Community Managers Want You To Know (Chris Bonney)
• Gems from the Technology Conference (Shannon Otto)
• Ten steps to building a community blog that rocks! (Maddie Grant, CAE)
• Get on the Mobile Bandwagon (Jamie Notter)
• Post Conference Depression (KiKi L'Italien)
• What the Tech? (Elizabeth Engel, CAE)
• Mobile First (Maddie Grant, CAE)
• On the go… (David Patt, CAE)
• Friday Top 5 (Elizabeth Engel, CAE)

And now on to other interesting commentary from the last two weeks:

Governance. Cindy Butts, CAE, says board officer positions should not be linked with specific tasks, and such requirements definitely should not appear in an association's bylaws.

Collaboration. Nilofer Merchant at Harvard Business Review explains eight reasons why collaboration appears dangerous. (Shared via Robert Rich, CAE and his "Association Strategy and Innovation" Scoop.It page.)

Meetings. Sue Pelletier shares news about the Occupy movement and a quasi-convention that arose from it last week in Florida.

Speaker selection. Jeff Hurt says conference organizers have too much power, particularly in regard to their role as the gatekeeper of information, choosing what education sessions make the cut.

More speaker selection. Stefanie Reeves, CAE, likens conference speaker selection to college football's Bowl Championship Series. The sports fan in me loves this quote: "What are we doing to make sure the Boise States of the association community get their moment in the spotlight?"

Jargon. Dan Pallotta says meaningless business-speak is an epidemic. "I'd say that in about half of my business conversations, I have almost no idea what other people are saying to me," he writes. I agree.

Housekeeping. Andy Freed offers a year-end checklist for associations: to-do's that will get your organization refreshed for the new year.

Marketing. Colleen Dilenschneider offers four ways nonprofit organizations can benefit from their employees personal brands.

Inclusion. Joe Gerstandt explains why The Golden Rule isn't as great as everyone thinks it is. (Hint: it's about the difference between good intentions and good outcomes.)

• An association that promotes international cooperation in an industry has, at long last, assembled a diverse, global board—whose members now can't get along.
• The staff of an organization that promotes literacy receives regular emails from the Executive Director that are riddled with so many typos and so much opaque jargon that some people are starting to wonder how the ED got hired.
• An association promoting green technologies has routine staff squabbles on its internal website about office recycling. What is that eco-friendly go-cup lid doing in the trash? Excuse me, but why did I just see a soda can in the mixed-papers bin?

If you'd asked me a while back if there were a term for this sort of thing, I might have just shrugged and said, "Uh, bitter irony?" But a recent edition of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly has set me straight. David Allyn, director of development for New Jersey SEEDS, calls the phenomenon "mission mirroring," a situation in which "organizations routinely become mired in internal conflicts that look eerily like the external problems they were founded to address." The main cause of mission mirroring, Allyn argues, is that stakeholders are hyperaware of the kind of issue they've come together to fix, so that very same issue has a way of bubbling up more often in staff and board interactions.

I'm not entirely sold on the idea. The single case study Allyn addresses is anonymous and a little too on-the-nose: conflict at an organization whose mission is conflict resolution. (It's a doozy of an internal conflict, though: "At one donor event," Allyn writes, "two guests nearly came to blows over the use of a chair.") But it doesn't strike me as unthinkable, either. Moreover, Allyn argues that awareness of mission mirroring should be an essential part of its work, to forestall such conflicts down the line. Organizations that do so will be "less likely to get trapped in vicious cycles of accusation and reprisal," he writes.

Have you ever experienced (or even heard of) a case of mission mirroring? Is simply acknowledging the problem quite enough to help fix it?

Whatever amount of resources your association is currently devoting to technology and web development is not anywhere close to enough. Double it. Triple it. Probably still not enough.

I promise no technology vendors paid me to write that. My first inclination would be to increase in-house tech and web staff anyway. And I say this acknowledging that money, time, and staff don't grow on trees, of course. I just think it's time for a significant reorganization of priorities.

In speeches and presentations at the conference, I heard references to companies like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Yahoo!, Instagram, and Rovio (makers of Angry Birds). To be clear, these aren't just companies that are good at technology. They are tech companies. Tech is either the majority or the entirety of what they do. The common reaction is to take these examples as inspiration for lofty but unattainable ideas and think, "Yeah, but we're an association. We're not a tech company."

Are you sure about that? Here's a rundown of common association endeavors, each with a tech/web component:

• Membership (online application and renewal, member directory, discussion groups)
• Volunteer management (discussion groups, document sharing and collaboration)
• Meetings (online registration, digital or mobile/tablet program guides, recording and livestreaming, virtual conferences)
• Publications (e-newsletters, mobile and tablet editions, audio and video, e-books)
• Communications (email, social media)
• Advocacy (alerts, online petitions)
• Education (webinars, self-directed online learning, digital course material)
• Research (electronic surveys, interactive databases)

This list is not complete, but you get the idea. How many of your association's activities can you think of that involve no technology whatsoever? There aren't many. In-person meetings and face-to-face collaboration still count, of course, and they count for a lot. But when I look at this list above, I wonder what associations actually did before the invention of the internet. I really do.

And so it's with that mindset that I wonder why associations still devote such a small percentage of their in-house resources to technology. An association might not be a "tech company" in the traditional sense, and associations will always need technology partners for big, hairy projects and for highly specialized work. But if nearly everything your association does involves technology and the web—if the core of the business is helping people meet, communicate, interact, and collaborate, almost entirely online—how can you justify not shifting a larger percentage of your resources toward making those tech and web components excel? Luke Wroblewski said associations should start thinking about mobile first. That's going to be tough if you're still in denial about being web first.