Acronym

Past ASAE Board Chair and President of the Ohio Society of CPAs J. Clarke Price shares a painful, early leadership lesson in this video. Drop a comment, I'd love to hear from you about an early work experience that helped shape the person and worker that you have become.

Update: Due to a vendor's player change, the video cannot be embedded directly. To access the video in this post, please choose it from the playlist in the video player below.

"The essence of leadership... is to pay it forward."

That's what Velma Hart, national finance director and CFO of AMVETS National Headquarters, says in her This Week in Associations Video on leading, particularly in difficult times. I'm still trying to decide if I agree with it not, but I like this thought—that the essence of leadership is not inspiring action by followers so much as inspiring the inner leader of others. I think that fits nicely with a leadership tenet I absolutely believe: that no person truly motivates another. Perhaps some people—leaders—are better at finding and tugging at the strings that people use to motivate themselves than others, but charisma from one will never conquer the apathy of another unless their willing to let go of that apathy.

Check out the full video:

Update: Due to a vendor's player change, the video cannot be embedded directly. To access the video in this post, please choose it from the playlist in the video player below.

Check out the latest This Week in Associations with the Oregon Medical Association's Betsy Boyd-Flynn.

I'm especially interested in her comment near the end — do you think people who have served in the same capacity for the same organization for more than 8 or 10 years have probably lost their edge?

Update: Due to a vendor's player change, the video cannot be embedded directly. To access the video in this post, please choose it from the playlist in the video player below.

In the latest segment of This Week in Associations, the second with Jim Gilmore, author of Authenticity, Gilmore makes the claim that everything an organization does is contrived and making anything seem authentic takes action on the part of the organization. I'm not sure I agree with that - how about you?

Update: Due to a vendor's player change, the video cannot be embedded directly. To access the video in this post, please choose it from the playlist in the video player below.

I think Jim Gilmore makes an interesting case in his book, Authenticity, and in his first This Week in Associations video segment when he says that commerce -- all of commerce -- is essentially phony. It is one person trying to entice another person to perform an action. As long as a consumer has a choice, there will be some question in that consumer's mind about how genuine a product producer is in letting the consumer know about the product. Gilmore argues that the company that wins the genuine game wins the customer.

To me there is one big area where associations fail in their quest to be genuine to their members and customers. It's the same thing that has been said many, many times before--it's when we keep doing something over and over -- have the same education session, push the same certification, keep the same member benefits, etc. We try to find new ways to market it, new ways to describe it, and new ways to position, but the fact remains, it's the same old thing. A dog is a dog, no matter how it is marketed, and your members see that. If you want to be relevant, or, better yet, lead your industry or profession or sector, you need to experiment, to try new things, to learn from those trials, and to take leaps forward instead of plod along. For me, being authentic starts with what you do, not what you say.

And Jim Gilmore talks about the antidote — authenticity — in the new series on This Week in Associations. Longer blogpost on this next week, but I'm curious on your thoughts: do associations have a problem being real?

Update: Due to a vendor's player change, the video cannot be embedded directly. To access the video in this post, please choose it from the playlist in the video player below.

Mary Bowie, VP of Finance for the American Association of Museums, says software is no where near good enough at supplanting people in building relationships with her members. Give her a good transaction system built by people who know what associations do and that evolves as association needs evolve, and let staff and volunteers handle the business of analyzing and using member data. See the video on This Week in Associations:

Update: Due to a vendor's player change, the video cannot be embedded directly. To access the video in this post, please choose it from the playlist in the video player below.

In this installment, ASAE & The Center's Chief Technology Officer Reggie Henry talks about the current state of association management systems and says its time for associations to look at systems that are based on building relationships, not tracking transactions.

Want to challenge Reggie? Ask him a question?

Drop a comment, and Reggie will respond with a post next week.

Update: Due to a vendor's player change, the video cannot be embedded directly. To access the video in this post, please choose it from the playlist in the video player below.

Next installment, which will be released in mid-August features an association executive who says her association management system is just fine, Reggie, and it will continue to evolve as association needs evolve. Plus, it has the added trust factor because it was built for associations by people with a knowledge of what associations do.

The latest installment of This Week in Associations completes the 3-part series on Decision to Volunteer with an interview of Bob Farrace from the National Association of Secondary School Principals. (See the previous segments.)

In this one, Bob talks about how NASSP hopes to use their participation in the study, and offers an interesting take on recognizing volunteers—offering the idea of copying a volunteer's supervisor on a letter expressing thanks for the valuable service.

Update: Due to a vendor's player change, the video cannot be embedded directly. To access the video in this post, please choose it from the playlist in the video player below.

Here’s a quote from the second installment of “This Week in Associations,” which continues a look at the upcoming ASAE & The Center publication, Decision to Volunteer. This segment’s guest is former Acronym guest blogger Peter O’Neil, CAE, who talks about what his association, the American Industrial Hygiene Association, got out of its participation in the study.

“Governance structure is probably the biggest overlooked opportunity for most trade and professional societies. We did shift our volunteer structure, governance structure about four or five years ago and what we did was move our technical committees, which for us is the hallmark, the backbone, of what we do through what our volunteers do through that structure. We shifted them to work groups and off of these work groups there were various project teams. And, the project teams enabled individuals to come in and do some very discreet pieces of work, say write a chapter in a textbook and then leave.”

So the question I want to leave readers with is, what changes have you made to make volunteering for your organization easier?

Oh yes, and check out the video, too:

Update: Due to a vendor's player change, the video cannot be embedded directly. To access the video in this post, please choose it from the playlist in the video player below.

Catch ASAE & The Center's new vodcast: This Week in Associations.

This is the first of three segments on The Decision to Volunteer, a new study and book to be released at this Annual Meeting & Exposition in San Diego. This segment features study coauthor Beth Gazley, who highlights some of the interesting findings from the study, which gathered responses from 26,000 people.

The next two segments will feature the American Industrial Hygiene Association and the American Association of Secondary School Principals, two organization who participated in the study.

One of the main points Gazley makes is that many in associations may think that a primary reason that people volunteer for their professional association is for career advancement through networking, resume building, and the like. It turns out, the desire to give back to the profession is a stronger motivating factor. I'm curious how association execs feel about that information (agree or disagree?) and what it might mean to the types of volunteering assignments being developed. I'd love to hear any ideas, or any feedback on the content or the format from Acronym readers. Let us know what you think!

[Note: Posting updated to replace video player with link.]