Re-Solving and Resolutions

With the new year on our doorstep, conversations naturally turn to resolutions and whether or not you're making any.

Resolution is a word that has always intrigued me. You can make a resolution just as many are doing for the new year. You can come to a resolution for a challenge or problem that has vexed you. And in reality that's what many of the resolutions people make attempt to do: resolve some aspect of their individual or organizational life they hope to bring to a different conclusion.

Many say that doing so just takes more resolve, being more resolute. But if we look at a slight variation of the word resolve, we get re - solve, an attempt (or need) to solve again an enduring problem or challenge.

Trying the same solution with greater resolve or simply being more resolute will not achieve a resolution for your resolution.

If you find yourself, either individually or organizationally, looking to re-solve the same issue repeatedly, you may need to direct your attention deeper. You likely need to think more systemically about why this same issue recurs. What beliefs, mindsets, policies, procedures, or practices help perpetuate the same behaviors or outcomes, the ones you want to change?

Direct your attention, your ambition, and your resolve at those levels and perhaps when 2010 comes to a close, the issue at hand will no longer need re-solving.

New Habits at Arms Reach

Like many gyms, mine is no stranger to the sweaty exercisers who fail to wipe down quipment after using it. Despite bottles of disinfectant and rags placed in several locations throughout the workout area, few people ever cleaned up after themselves.

A few weeks ago, using the equivalent of jumbo cupholders, spray bottles and rags were attached to every piece of exercise equipment. The result? Significantly more cleaning going on by equipment users. Not 100%, but pretty darn close in my several hours of direct experience.

As we approach the annual rite of New Year's resolutions, it is useful to remember that we're most likely to change our habits when we put the desired choice within immediate reach. We have to make it easy to say yes, to select the right response, to act in the manner desired ... whether we be talking about our own personal choices or the options our organizations want members and customers to select.

Preparing to do so requires a nominal upfront investment, but it is one that will pay dividends for a significant period of time.

Let's Change Meetings and Conferences

The Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) asked 14 thought leaders about the metamorphosis we need to see in meetings and conferences. I was flattered to have the chance to offer this suggestion:

I want more meetings that crackle with energy and excitement—where participants are on the edge of their seats in general sessions and the din of hallway conversations between breakouts is ear-splitting because people have so much to share with colleagues.

I want stories that inspire, examples worth emulating, insights worth adopting.

I want the highest-quality sessions that immerse newcomers in their profession’s fundamentals and mind-blowing conversations among experienced professionals that push their collective brainpower to unseen levels of mastery.

I want to leave with my skills polished, my awareness heightened, my passion ignited, my network of influential colleagues expanded, my relationships with mentors deepened, and my spirit renewed and reinvigorated.

In short, I want it all, and I’ll pay dearly for guaranteed results. I just can’t find many meetings ready to take my cash and my contribution to the community. Meetings like this should not be rare antiques available only in elite circles. They should be the norm.

Read a baker's dozen or so of other responses from a variety of thought leaders, including author Dan Pink.

Big Idea: Speaking our Truth

Perhaps it’s the incessant media stories about Tiger Woods, healthcare, and the economy, but I’m feeling that the biggest idea for all our organizations—the one that might actually enable the other possibilities being discussed—relates to how we talk and share with each other.

What if we each begin speaking our truth more regularly, invites others to do the same, and create a climate where doing so is normal and expected?

How many accumulated hours each day are wasted because we think it is risky to tell the truth? How much insight is never shared because people don’t believe they can express themselves freely? How much passion and engagement is shackled because individuals protect themselves with self-censorship? How many bad choices are made daily because of faux conversations about incomplete information, choices that can result in resources wasted, opportunities lost, jobs sacrificed, and credibility diminished?

But what about all those P words? Posturing Politeness. Personalities. Politics. They aren’t going away.

• So why not stand up straight instead of stooping hunched over by the hunch we need to spin what we say?
• Isn’t it actually impolite to not express what you truly think or believe because you sense people won’t respond well?
• Why get all worked up by how someone says something instead of respecting each person’s right to see things differently? As the Quaker say everyone holds a piece of the truth.
• Politics is defined as the art of science of influencing policy. Shouldn’t our influence be tied to our level of honesty?

Expressing our truth doesn’t have to be (nor should it be) mean, rude, belligerent, marginalizing, caustic, self-aggrandizing, offensive, hateful, accusatory, or any other negative possibility. No need to raise your voice, increase your volume, or wave your arms frantically to be heard. Just share your perspective respectfully and respect the right of others to do the same. Sharing what you think is right shouldn't require making others feel so wrong.

Positional leaders can certainly model the way to make speaking our truth more palatable, but the ultimate invitation is the very act of someone, anyone, doing so. Why not let it be you?

What's so big about big ideas?

It is useful now and then to engage in exercises like the one ASAE & the Center’s Acronym blog has prompted: to explore the possibilities of ideas that we deem big. It stimulates our creative thinking, it forces us to consider new possibilities, it causes us to question our assumptions.

But, just what is a big idea? Big to whom? Big by what criteria? Big could reference:

• How large the impact of the idea might be for members or customers
• The amount of resources that would be required to produce the idea
• How much the idea would deviate from the way things are currently being done
• The required stretch it would take for the idea to become a reality
• The wow factor or shock value … how people would react upon hearing the idea
• The degree of change people would see your idea requiring
• The number of people the idea could benefit

And for any of these references, big is in the eyes of the beholder, right? While I don’t find some of the ideas being discussed particularly big, they might be a significant change for you or your organization. What might be new for your company is already standard operating practice at another. Something you see as very doable could appear as risky and uncertain to someone else. An idea compelling to many can be crippling for some. So we have to be careful about labeling ideas as big and what we expect to happen when we do.

Engaging in an exercise that generates and discusses big ideas is worthwhile. But ultimately we need to develop the organizational culture, attract the talent and knowledge, and turbo-charge our daily processes and systems to enable big thinking and big execution on a routine basis. Contemplating possibilities difficult to imagine and unprecedented impact and value should be woven into the fabric of how we do our work. Strike that. It is our work.

So while we continue this month to explore big ideas, let’s spend the new year building organizations where routinely imagining and achieving them (big ideas) is no longer seen as one of them.

The answer lies somewhere between asking the seemingly required open-ended question—what keeps you up at night (nothing, I sleep fine thank you)—and asking individuals to spend 15 minutes online clicking through a mind-numbing series of screens packed with long lists of programs and services to evaluate.

Ah, but what is the question? It's a simple one: what do our members or customers most need, desire, or value?

I truly appreciate any association or company that wants to gather data and insight to serve me better. I'm just not sure their approach helps me much because it's isolated feedback detached from the reality of any actual program or issue being experienced.

Contrast that with my physical therapist who, while treating an increasingly ailing lower back, regularly asks about the amount of pressure being applied, the intensity of pain I am feeling at a particular moment, or what I am sensing in reaction to a treatment being tried. These real-time refinements which I help shape ultimately leave me feeling much better served. Stylists cutting your hair do the same thing.

I'm unsure of how organizations could incorporate something similar into their own evaluation and feedback efforts, but I'm confident that doing so would ultimately be worthwhile.

Associations as value facilitators

"The things you own end up owning you."
~ Tyler Durden character in Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

What if associations shifted more of their efforts from being direct providers of member value to facilitators of members receiving value?

I posed this question and you can read my answer in this Acronym post for Big Ideas Month.

But Is Your Idea Spongeworthy?

But are you spongeworthy?

This was Elaine's question for her suitors in the classic Seinfeld episode about her favorite contraceptive, Today’s Sponge, being discontinued. After hoarding a small supply she began to carefully ration them out, subjecting prospective boyfriends to an intensive screening process: How about your bathroom? Did you scrub the tub completely? And what about your sideburns?

She was only in search of the sure thing, the man certain to be spongeworthy.

Too many organizations manage big ideas the same way. They act as if the resources to invest new possibilities are in danger of being discontinued. They screen possible innovations so intensely that few, if any, ideas are actually approved. The review process rarely is transparent, and the criteria are often arbitrary or imposed by individuals as opposed to having been approved by an appropriate body.

Pursuing a big idea is an experiment. By the time it is a sure thing, it rarely qualifies any more as a big idea. And in experimentation, there will be setbacks, and what often will be seen as a loss or waste. That’s the only way individuals and organizations can discover what doesn’t work: by trying something and engaging in the process of discovery.

If that’s not acceptable to your company or association, then don’t pretend to be serious about big ideas. Like Elaine, you’re only going to use your resources on the most spongeworthy projects. So every now and then you'll get what you want, But most of the time you’re going to be celibate when it comes to innovating on behalf of your customers or members. And that seems like the least spongeworthy idea of all.

Note:

Acronym, ASAE & the Center for Association Leadership’s blog, has declared December to be Big Ideas Month and invited association bloggers to write about some of the big ideas contributed to its site or a big idea of our own. I plan on doing just that, but first wanted to contribute this thinking about the notion of big ideas in general and how we tend to react to them. I hope the spongeworthy comparison doesn’t offend readers’ sensibilities or cloud the point I am trying to make.

The Book and the Cover

We know we're not supposed to judge a book bit its cover, but we do.

And truth be told, who hasn't at least once bought a bottle of wine because the label was appealing?

What's on the outside counts and often doesn't get the attention to deserves. Just as common is bait and switch packaging ... the sensational headline that gets lots of clicks and eyeballs, but doesn't accurately reflect the substance of the story.

Take a look at your work and how you're packaging it. If it doesn't reflect the position you want to hold in others' minds or the values you wish to communicate, you know what needs to be done.

Like It ... Isn't It

Tastes just like butter.

Feels just like cashmere.

Looks just like the original.

But it's not butter, cashmere, or the original. It's a substitution.

While that might be acceptable for some consumer purchases, it's less acceptable when trying to engage others' talents and motivations.

I don't want my boss to make me feel like I am empowered, I want wholesale organizational change that actually empowers me.

I don't want a committee chair to let me feel like I am making a contribution, I want systems and processes that allow me to contribute regardless of what committee I join.

Too many associations and corporations substitute hard to argue with platitudes for harder to implement substantive culture shifts. And so they get what the deserve: customer, member, and volunteer commitment that looks like loyalty, but only exists until an opportunity for real engagement comes along.

When Opportunity Knocks, Don't Answer ...

if you haven't already clarified your personal values, identified your priorities, and developed criteria for evaluating options.

Without that pre-work being completed, you'll jump at whatever first comes along and derail yourself from the more intentional path you should be pursuing.

True for individuals. True for organizations.

Just One Statement

Here's the one simple statement planners should ask potential conference attendees to complete:

I could achieve better results in my job if I knew how to/was more capable of _______.

That simple act would probably yield more useful insights and convey more about the sessions and formats that should be included in a conference agenda than most of the surveys currently being used.