WWIF #8: The Weekly Do

When I worked as Greek Affairs Coordinator at Iowa State University, one of the men's fraternities had a large chalkboard stationed just inside the entrance to the house.

On it every Sunday, the chapter's House Manager posted a short list of "things that need to be done in/on the house this week."

Individual members already had regular house duties, so this was an above and beyond list.  Members voluntarily could indicate they would complete an assignment and then post when it was done.

In a few cases, big tasks earned you some credits off your house bill or some other reward.  In general though, taking on the extra work just got you some hearty praise during chapter meeting and the public recognition of seeing your name on the board all week.

And it worked.  Very well.  Almost every week.

Why?  Because the members cared about the house.  Because it was all about individual initiative.  Because the tasks could generally be done in an hour or less.  Because members would informally thank brothers who took on extra assignments.  Because if you played ping-pong for too long or were seen watching TV all day, the House Manager might gently rib you about how you could more productively spend your time helping the chapter and the house.

I think associations should do something similar.

What if each week associations posted a list of simple tasks members could volunteer to complete, helping advance association efforts?

Using a simple online tool like a wiki or a Ta-Da list, the opportunities can be easily shared, claimed, and their completion tracked.

Imagine the energy and commitment that could be leveraged if we made it easy for people to volunteer in completing small assignments that help advance significant achievements.

Note:  Wednesday What If is a weekly feature applying the "what if" mindset associated with abductive reasoning or logic in an effort to stretch our thinking about what is desirable and very frequently, quite doable.

Simpler, Yet More Nuanced

Many end users are looking for more open light-filled environments that are healthy and somehow inspiring to the creative people who drive their business growth.  A variety of different settings rather than a monolithic single solution seems to be what is necessary to support this kind of workforce.  Current and future designs need to be simpler in one way (components, basic desks and tables) but more nuanced and tunable in others.  Open environments are not without enclosure needs.

John Hellwig, design director, Teknion

quoted in Metropolis, March 2010, p. 95

Hellwig was talking about the design of work environments and their furniture, but the same concepts apply to learning and volunteering.

Individuals want learning environments that inspire them to greater personal and professional achievement.  Conferences and workshops can't be monolithic in their design or teaching approaches.  The learning components needs to be simpler and easier to access/use, and whenever possible, ones that individuals can fine-tune/customize to meet their specific needs and interests.  More open learning environments (think unconferences, Open Space, and self-directed learning) still need sufficient emphasis or structure to focus or contain individual interests that could otherwise supercede group needs and dynamics.

Volunteers want creative assignments that enable them to easily contribute to inspired results for the cause or institution they've joined.  Their opportunities to contribute can't be monolithic and limiting, but instead need to be diverse, inviting, and welcoming.  A more open environment for volunteers needs to offer reasonable enclosures (think deadlines, tasks, follow-through, etc.) that ensure results are produced in a timely manner and are consistent with larger strategic aims.

Just as workplace needs often seem contradictory, so can those of learners and volunteers.  Using design thinking can help embrace the genius of the AND and prevent succumbing to the tyranny of false OR choices that don't reflect end users' needs.

WWIF #7 Expiration Dates: Not Just for Milk

While Congress isn't the best role model in terms of how they enact legislation with automatic phase-out dates, the concept is one that might help organizations with an age-old conundrum: how to stop going something.

Corporate folks are more likely to kill off a pet project when it isn't meeting desired results, but professional societies and nonprofit groups frequently struggle to do so because of the personalities and politics associated with a project.  As a result, new and better initiatives are sidelined because resources remain allocated to projects that have outlived their usefulness.

What if new projects had to include an automatic expiration date?

The basic concept is that the project would automatically disappear or be retired on this date unless it fulfills some other very significant metric; i.e., achieves an extraordinarily high level of participation or high return on investment, receives support of 90% of the voting board members, etc.

An automatic expiration date is an example of what Jim Collins (Built to Last, Good to Great), refers to as a catalytic mechanism, a way of instilling organizational discipline where individual intentions are unlikely to do so unfailingly.  Collins says mechanisms produce unpredictable results, have teeth, distribute power, eject viruses, and produce enduring effects.

You might decide to use this mechanism on projects that meet only certain criteria, but ensuring that new projects are implemented with permanent protected status is well worth considering.

I'm using a mechanism right now during a 30-day writing sabbatical.  I've committed to write a minimum 500 words daily for my book or else I will not take an end-of-April vacation.  Knowing it would be easy to fudge word count or simply allow myself to make a valiant effort a trusted friend has the password to my airline account and the record locator for my flight.  If I don't provide this person with 15,000 words two days prior to my vacation departure, he will automatically cancel my ticket.

As you might guess, that's not an outcome I want to occur, so I'll be getting back to today's 500 words right now.


Note:  Wednesday What If is a weekly feature applying the "what if" mindset associated with abductive reasoning or logic in an effort to stretch our thinking about what is desirable and very frequently, quite doable.

Your Morning Ritual and the Message it Sends

We each have morning rituals that start our day.  Yours might involve coffee and the paper, tea and Twitter, or hitting the treadmill followed by a protein shake.

Organizations (or more precisely, their staffs) have rituals as well.  How the day starts says something about what people value in how they approach their work.

In my first association job, we had a morning ritual I came to deeply appreciate over time.  Our small staff gathered each day at 8 a.m. in our break area.  We quickly offered updates on what had transpired since our gathering the previous day, passed on relevant information about our efforts for the day ahead, asked for help from colleagues where it was needed, and often did some quick brainstorming around a question posed either in advance or on the spot.  These quick gatherings lasted no more than 20-30 minutes and usually included a fair amount of laughter and good-natured ribbing.

The messages this simple ritual sent were powerful:

• We're all in this together.
• We start our days off as a team.
• It is important to keep your colleagues updated.
• Ask for help and you will get it.
• Soliciting input from others is important.
• We should have fun as a team.

Our morning meetings probably did more for teamwork, collaboration, and achieving greater results than most of our off-site retreats.

So often I am in offices where the mornings start with individuals going about their own business with little interaction with (or connection to) their colleagues.  Many times people walk right pass others' offices without so much as a morning greeting.  Perhaps it works well for them.  For me, it sends messages of independence, not interdependence, and I'm not sure how sustainable that is nowadays.

What messages do your morning rituals send and how are they supporting the results you want to achieve?

WWIF #6: Playing Your Way to Refreshed Value

What if associations used the power of play to refresh their competitive advantage and to rethink their programs and services?

In the ABC Nightline episode in which product designers from IDEO redesign the grocery store shopping cart, IDEO founder David Kelly asserts "We have to tell them (members of the design team) what needs to optimize their solutions to."

It's a critical piece of advice for most effectively engaging the wisdom of the crowd:  don't just throw open the floodgates for ideas that respond to a vague open-ended question. Solicit ideas and input that fit specific needs and constraints imposed to inspire fresh thinking and identify untapped value opportunities.

Just as companies engage in more customer-generated innovation, associations should be leveraging member-centered ideas and innovative thinking … but directed toward solutions meeting specific criteria.  Example:  Rethink association volunteer assignments to maximize volunteer autonomy while ensuring a high degree of overall quality.

The board game, rethink, offers an excellent example of how an organization can use a game to involve individuals in generating creative solutions to timeless challenges, both in person and online.  While the game's purpose is to promote fresh thinking about eco-design and sustainability issues, its basic format could be modified for any specific needs an association might wish to address. 

Teams of individuals could play the game as part of a major conference, or you could simply invite individuals from throughout your membership to download a game card, respond to it, and upload a scan of their solution.  Members could be invited to vote for their favorites. Those selected might then be developed through rapid prototyping and offered to the membership on a trial basis.  Something similar was done at a recent UK conference sponsored by the Economist. The entire effort is ripe for a business partner's sponsorship.

I think I might just go about creating this type of game, as well as a sample conversation kit suggested in last week's Wednesday What If?  based on a recent session I co-led at ASAE & the Center's Great Ideas Conference on The Serious Business of Purposeful Play, there is ample interest in using play in more purposeful ways.  You can access the handouts and slides from our session here.  Just look for our session title in the Monday, 3:15-4:30 p.m. time block.

Note:  Wednesday What If is a weekly feature applying the "what if" mindset associated with abductive reasoning or logic in an effort to stretch our thinking about what is desirable and very frequently, quite doable.

Expecting the Unexpected

The Grand Club concierge at the Grand Hyatt New York sits in front of his computer screen, seemingly bored and frequently surfing the Internet.  He may greet you upon your entrance and exit into the Club, or he may not.

The staff at the Grand Club at the Grand Hyatt Seattle are all youthful employees whose primary job seems to be bussing tables.  They are perky, but seem more suited to being servers at TGI Friday's.

David, one of the Grand Club staff at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco, holds court over the Club.  He greets you immediately upon entering and quickly asks for your name.  It is noted in a small notebook he keeps in a pocket inside his suit jacket.  He will greet you by name the rest of your stay and if you visit the hotel often, quite likely will remember it months later.  None of his colleagues do the same.

Same hotel brand.
Same Club level lounge.
Completely different experiences.

It's great that you have consistent application of your graphic identity and other visual elements for your brand.  But the real brand value comes from a consistently extraordinary interaction with your front-line staff.

Who is determining the success of your organization right now with your members and customers? 

If it's not a David, you'd better get to work.

WWIF #5: Convening and Conversing

"Creating a positive future begins in human conversation.
The simplest and most powerful investment any member of a community or an organization may make in renewal is to begin talking with other people as though the answers mattered." —William Greider

Regardless of your profession, industry, or community, there is great knowledge and creativity going untapped in it.  Books like The Wisdom of Crowds and Crowdsourcing offer insights about the value of engaging individuals' ideas and interests.  Online communities, wikis, and other platforms enable us to to do.  Face-to-face gatherings can be enhanced using simple meeting technologies like The World Cafe.

Imagine bringing them all together periodically in an integrated format to focus on a compelling question of interest to your members and stakeholders.  Imagine meaningful conversations happening at the grassroots level and the ideas they generate being shared across your members in real-time.  Imagine these types of conversations happening throughout the year, each addressing a different topic.  Imagine the change that might be possible.  Companies like IBM do exactly this in events such as Innovation Jam.

What if associations created Conversation Kits—each focusing on a compelling question of interest to its members—and then scheduled periodic industry-wide Days of Conversation?

A kit might include:

• A brief guide on facilitating great conversations
• Podcasts, video clips, and short essays offering fresh thinking on the compelling question
• Sample agendas of varying lengths for how the discussions could be structured
• Links to an online site where output from the conversations could be shared

The goal is to engage at the local level your entire membership or community in a simultaneous exploration of an important issue or question, capture the ideas and insights from those conversations in real-time, promulgate that output back to your members, and then use it internally to guide existing efforts and identify innovative opportunities to now pursue.

Note:  Wednesday What If is a weekly feature applying the "what if" mindset associated with abductive reasoning or logic in an effort to stretch our thinking about what is desirable and very frequently, quite doable.

Leaving Well Enough Alone

What's wrong with this picture?

Any traveler will tell you that the mouthwash is always the bottle with the aqua liquid.

Unless you are at The Broadmoor Resort, where I (and apparently dozens of others at the conference I am attending) discovered it is energizing seamoss bath gel.

The taller bottle is mouthwash, a lesson some learned only through trial and error ... an unexpected, bitter, vile-tasting error.  Nothing energizes our mouth faster than an unexpected shot of seamoss gel.

Now having a larger bottle of mouthwash might indeed be nice for a guest to enjoy during a stay, but not if you discover it in desperate need to wash the tatst of bath gel out of your mouth (note: it doesn't go away easily).

Why The Broadmoor chose to introduce a new language for travel mouthwash I cannot tell you.  But it was unnecessary and unappreciated by many.

When a fairly universal standard exists for recognizing what something is, one that works very well I might add, you don't introduce a new code unless the meaning is going to be clearly understood and add some new value.

The opposite though can be true if you are going to take it to the extreme ... like Starbucks.  They introduced a complete set of new language around ordering coffee, one that was an integral part of the new customer experience they were trying to create.

So do change the framework if you are trying to shift the culture.  Otherwise leave well enough alone.  Because if you don't, we are going to wash your mouth out with soap, bath gel, mouthwash.

Stop Shopping and Start Sourcing

Last week I bought a new sweater from Eddie Bauer.  When I went to put it in my closet, I found I already owned the same sweater.

Every once in awhile I'll go to buy a book on Amazon and it's super software will remind me of the exact date that I previously purchased it.

Similarly, if you're looking for an idea or a solution to a problem, you tend to look for the new thing to buy.

In reality, someone already had the idea you're looking for, and somewhere a record of it likely exists: in a blog post, an article, a book, or a colleague's memory.

It's tempting to always go buy the shiny new thing, but there is a cost in doing so, one that can often be avoided if we just take the time to look at the sources already in our midst.

Moving Towards a Results-Only Volunteer Environment

Why do we make it so hard for people to volunteer their time, to share their ideas, to help make a difference?

Dan Pink speaks next week at ASAE & the Center's Great Ideas Conference about the power of intrinsic motivation he explores in his new book Drive.  Pink suggests three motivational drivers for individuals—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—that have significant implications for all organizations.

Associations in particular have a real opportunity to capitalize on these three drivers when engaging volunteers in contributing to the organization's efforts, whether it is an academic presenting a paper at a professional society's conference or a community member leading a local fundraiser for a national philanthropic drive.

In Drive, Pink highlights the ROWE which stands for Results-Only Work Environment.   Cali Resler and Jodi Thompson, founders of the ROWE movement and authors of  Work Sucks, a book about the needed changes in organizational culture to support a ROWE describe it as:

"Results-Only Work Environment is a management strategy where employees are evaluated on performance, not presence. In a ROWE, people focus on results and only results - increasing the organization's performance while creating the right climate for people to manage all the demands in their lives . . . including work."

Associations need to consider the ROWE equivalent for some (if not all) aspects of their volunteer workforce, perhaps creating a ROVE: Results-Only (or at least -Oriented) Volunteer Environment.  Too much volunteer inspiration and aspiration is stifled by the bureaucratic structures and limiting opportunities members encounter when looking to get involved.

We've known for years (and ASAE & The Center's The Decision to Volunteer study affirmed) that a significant percentage of volunteers prefer to contribute to time-specific tasks or deadline-driven projects, yet we still overuse committees, advisory boards, and task forces as the gateway to volunteer engagement.  Talent and passion stifled by structures and recruitment models that have been too limiting for too long.   Why?  Because it may be easier for association leaders to manage.

But that's not the criteria to use when determining the effectiveness of a governance structure.  The more important question to ask is "does our volunteer structure most effectively engage our members' interest, capabilities, and passions in achieving our envisioned results?"  For many associations, the answer would have to be a resounding NO!

Unlike a ROWE, a ROVE may need a few more parameters put in place because we are dealing with volunteers and not paid employees, perhaps: greater specificity for the desired end results, templates or models of what successful project completion looks like, some sort of minor prequalification for volunteers looking to take on major projects, etc.  And initially an association may want to test what types of volunteer assignments are best suited to a ROVE-style management model and then refine their efforts as they apply the model to more of the association's work.

Individuals join associations because they believe in the organization's purpose and the community it engages.   They often possess great mastery of a subject matter of importance to that purpose and community.  With greater autonomy to share their time and talents, they will enrich and expand the community and further advance the association's core purpose.

Not all association projects are probably right for a ROVE (scholarly journals might be one example of a less likely candidate) and some nonprofits may be able to embrace the model more quickly than others.   But shifting our thinking from the current way we chain volunteers to a limited number of contribution opportunities on our terms is a no-brainer.  Association leaders should care more about understanding what their potential volunteers care about … and eliminating the barriers to acting on that caring.

WWIF #4: How to Do How to Better

Numerous commercial web sites offer brief how to or introductory tutorials in text, video, or slides with audio.  Two that I frequent regularly are eHow, "how to do just about everything" and CommonCraft, "three-minute videos that help educators and influencers introduce complex subjects."

Though a lot of the "how to" real estate has been claimed, many professional societies have yet to embrace the opportunities creating such condensed content provide … both for members general public.  In addition, few nonprofit organizations seem to be effectively utilizing such formats to orient and train volunteers, board members, speakers, etc..   Do I really need to fly across country and have 30 minutes of an in-person training teach me how to complete a travel request?

What if organizations generated a list of the Top 100 How To Tutorials (the list could even be crowdsourced) that would best serve their stakeholders and then invited individuals to use a standard template/approach to create and contribute this content as a volunteer opportunity?

Note:  Wednesday What If is a weekly feature applying the "what if" mindset associated with abductive reasoning or logic in an effort to stretch our thinking about what is desirable and very frequently, quite doable.

It's About Time

7 a.m. Delta first class cabin snack basket contents:  peanuts, pretzels, Sun Chips, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Twix, spice cookies, apples, and bananas.

7 p.m. Delta first class cabin snack basket contents:  peanuts, pretzels, Sun Chips, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Twix, spice cookies, apples, and bananas.

Not a single thing different. Consistency is admirable except when variety or different is more desired.

Delivering value requires timely tactics or responses that support timeless or enduring principles, not just doing the same thing over and over again regardless of the circumstances in which your members or customers find themselves.

Easier for you does not usually translate into better for those you serve.