There is No Recipe for Innovation

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Or so seems the conclusion of this fascinating blog post from Tim Leberecht of the the frog design and innovation firm, in which he reviews and connects several established and not-so-established kinds of innovation.

Jugaad seems the latest in a long list of innovation fads, "a colloquial Hindi word that describes a creative ad hoc solution to a vexing issue, making existing things work and/or creating new things with scarce resources." But that's just a launching pad for Leberecht, who gives his reader a stream-of-consciousness tour of different approaches to innovation floating around the business landscape. Design Thinking, Disruptive Innovation, Hybrid Thinking, Hacking, Shanzai--they're all given a quick but cogent treatment, the differences and distinctions between them blurring under Leberecht's scrutiny.

His larger point seems to be that there is no magic pill for innovation.

Most of these consultants are trying to sell innovation as a toolbox, but as former BusinessWeek writer Helen Walters aptly points out: Innovation cannot be reduced to a process. “A codified, repeatable, reusable practice contradicts the nature of innovation, which requires difficult, uncomfortable work to challenge the status quo of an industry or, at the very least, an organization,” she writes, and suggests that: “Executives are understandably looking for tidy ways to guarantee their innovation efforts – but they'd be better off coming to terms with the fact that there aren’t any.”

Which is an interesting backdrop for this week, because this is the week of WSAE's National Summit on Association Innovation, where association executives, professionals and industry partners will work together to create new capacities for innovation in the association community and to help individual association professionals develop practical innovation roadmaps for their own organizations. In the words of our summit facilitator, Jeffrey Cufaude:

By associating with each other in the collaborative learning environment of the National Summit on Innovation for Associations, we have the chance to not only gain fresh insights and develop tactical plans for our own organizations, but identify shared paths for moving together as a community.

I'm up for it. I'll be there and tweeting throughout the conference (following along and join in at #innovationhub).

It'll be another major step on the innovation journey I embarked upon when I joined the WSAE Board of Directors and became the chair of its Innovation Task Force. I went into that role with the impression that there was a way of "doing" innovation in the association world. Based on the innovation principles and processes I had been exposed to in the for-profit world, there surely was an adaptation to those models that could made for associations. It would be difficult to find, I believed, and it would take association professionals willing to experiment with different strategies in their real world, but it was there, and we could find it if we worked hard enough.

Now, almost two years later, I'm more confident than ever that associations can be innovative and can find ways to make innovation work for them. I've seen it in my own association and in many other associations in my network.

But I have increasing skepticism for the idea that there is a single innovation model that will work for everyone in the association community. Today, Helen Waters' words ring really true for me. We want innovation to be an established, predictable process, because established, predictable processes are easy for us to manage and master. But your innovation solution is going to be messy, and different from mine. There is a common body of innovation knowledge we can all draw from--things that have been shown to help and things that have been shown to hurt--but it is up to each one of us to study that body of knowledge and figure out how to apply it in our own situations.

I'm going to rededicate myself to that this week in Madison. When will you?

The Season of Innovation

That's certainly what it feels like with the ASAE Annual Meeting next week and the WSAE-sponsored National Summit on Association Innovation five short weeks after that. ASAE has put together some deep dive sessions on innovation, and something they're calling the Innovation Exchange Forum, a place where association staffers can get together and share innovative ideas with each other and with recognized experts.

Jeff De Cagna will be heading up a lot of those ASAE activities, and Jeff will also be leading an important session at the WSAE event. On September 14 he will be gathering together a group of association and other thought leaders for a half-day session on how organizations across our community can collaborate to accelerate the overall pace of innovation. Our intention for this conversation is to bring together a group of stakeholders willing to invest in the creation of platforms and prototypes that will make it possible for associations to build their collective capacity for innovation and new value creation. Many of our organizations face common challenges. We want to test the idea that through a commitment to broad-based collaborations we can all address those challenges more effectively.

WSAE's second day, September 15, will be a full-day educational conference on association innovation, facilitated by Jeffrey Cufaude and Mark Anderson. Its focus will be on leveraging the collective wisdom of our community so that participants can develop detailed innovation roadmaps for their own organizations. If you’ve struggled at all with how to make your association more innovative, this would be an excellent opportunity to share your challenges and work together with your peers to develop actionable solutions.

I plan to be at both the ASAE and WSAE events. I hope you do, too.

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Real-World Innovation for Associations

I had a fantastic opportunity this past Friday—an opportunity to take the principles and ideas about innovation that are being developed through my work with the Innovation Task Force of the Wisconsin Society of Association Executives, and apply them in a real-world situation with a real-world organization. I accepted an invitation from a national professional society to present the information we have developed on innovation in associations at their Board retreat, and help them determine how it applied to them and what specific steps they should take.

To help set-up the conversation, I asked each individual Board member to complete the innovation assessment we have posted on the Hub for Association Innovation, and then I presented their aggregated responses back to them. In some cases the results surprised them. In other cases they didn’t. But I think everyone would agree that it created a lot of great dialogue on where they needed to focus in order to become a more innovative organization.

From my perspective, this organization has pretty much already adopted a culture of innovation among their top leadership. The Board has recently culminated a process in which a new organizational mission and vision have been identified, and are now contemplating a name change in order to better reflect the changes in their environment and how the association is repositioning itself to expand and better serve its membership base. Unlike a lot of other organizations facing similar issues, this one has bravely identified that change is necessary, and its leaders are ready to drive cultural change within the organization appropriately.

In order to perpetuate that change, however, one key area they identified for themselves was leadership development. Having arrived at that place where the current batch of leaders were willing to drive for necessary change, what guarantee did any of them have that the next batch, or even the current leadership one layer down in their organization, would similarly embrace what they were trying to do? We talked about tackling the problem from both the process side of the coin—an immediate need to engage with existing leaders throughout the organization and incorporate their thoughts and ideas in the work of reinvention—as well as from the culture side of the coin—a longer-term plan in which the individuals in their organization with the appropriately innovative approach to leadership were identified and groomed for future involvement.

There was a thoughtful pause in our discussion when one Board member reminded everyone that (probably like a lot of other organizations, I thought), given their existing leadership criteria, those individuals with the appropriate mindset and leadership skills, may not currently be “electable” to leadership positions. It was one of those moments when you can see by the look on people’s faces that everyone together is wrapping their heads around the true scope of what they’re dealing with. It was intimidating and invigorating at the same time.

I think another big issue for them will be nimbleness, and a willingness to experiment in front of the members. Again, like a lot of other associations, it seemed like their processes for launching new programs are being hampered by the overly complex nature of their organizational structure. There are perceived risks that need to be managed—financial risks, yes, in launching programs that haven’t been properly vetted or embraced by their potential customers—but more pressingly reputation risks, the idea that the association must protect its reputation by never allowing unsuccessful or half-formed programs out of the gate.

We spent a lot of time talking about the need to design an innovation process—and build an innovation culture—that operated on the exactly opposite principle. That lots of half-formed programs were going to be launched, not to embarrass the organization, but to engage directly with their members in helping to decide which ones were worthy of additional support and development, and which ones should be allowed to suffer an early demise.

Some Board members got really hung up on the issue of failure—a word I deliberately threw out on the table and wanted them to talk about. They thought we were talking about encouraging people to fail. It was great when one of the Board members themselves helped to clarify. No, we’re not encouraging people to fail. We’re encouraging them not to be afraid of failure. Well said.

It was a remarkable experience—one I hope to repeat for other organizations as we continue to define our evidence-based model of innovation for the association community. If there are any Hourglass readers that would like to share their experiences in trying to adopt the principles of innovation, I’d be happy to have the dialogue.

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Don't Wall Yourself Off From Your Community

This is part two of my reaction to Jeff De Cagna's excellent article on business model innovation for associations in the April 2011 issue of Associations Now. In part one I talked about how the primary challenge for associations in innovating is a cultural one, and how organizational priorities need to move away from established structures and towards whatever mechanisms help the organization deliver better value for its members. Now, I want to focus on one of the ways to do that.

Here's the relevant quote from Jeff's article:

Associations must learn who their stakeholders are and what moves them as people, not just where they work or what products and services they buy.

The WSAE white paper on innovation calls this understanding the mind of your community. In the for-profit case studies our innovation task force studied, those organizations were imbued with a true sense of how the constituents thought—what they wanted, what they didn’t want, and how they would react in predictable and unpredictable circumstances. The methods these companies used for attaining this understanding varied, but the knowledge, once attained, was used continually throughout their innovation processes and served as a constant guide for their successful decision‐making.

Associations should be really good at this. Unlike the for‐profit companies we studied, whose community is generally comprised of customers external to the organization, and association's community is made up of its members—and members typically comprise a number of established networks internal to the organization. Boards of Directors, committees, task forces—even supplier networks and, sometimes, staff departments—they all provide associations with a direct connection to their community that for‐profit corporations committed to innovation would envy.

Associations should be good at understanding who their stakeholders are and what moves them as people, but many of them don't. Many of them have had walls put up between their staff people and their members, preventing the staff from really getting to know the members as people and understanding what their true motivations are. In most cases, these walls didn't get built on purpose. They just sprang up naturally. Like weeds in the garden, no one has to tend them and help them grow. And like those weeds, purposeful action is only necessary if you want to keep them away.

Perhaps you've heard of these walls? They go by a variety of names. One of the tallest is called fear. Specifically, fear that you'll look foolish or unprofessional in front of your members. Another one goes by the name of pretending—pretending that we never make mistakes and know exactly what we're doing at all times. If you're leading your association under either one of these premises, you'll never understand the mind of your community, and without that understanding you'll never develop the innovative products and services you'll need to keep your association strong and robust in our uncertain future.

Here are the ground rules: We're all people. None of us is so smart that we can't be taught something new. We all work hard and do the best that we can, but we're going to make mistakes, and that's okay. When they happen, we'll own up and try to learn something useful. We're all in this together, and the only way we're going to succeed is by helping each other.

Now start tearing down those walls.

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The Innovation Problem for Associations

Jeff De Cagna had another great article in the April 2011 issue of Associations Now that I just got around to reading on one of my recent plane rides. “Six Design Principles for Business-Model Innovation” provides association executives with his usual thought-provoking push into territories we should really be spending more of our time in—but often don’t. It’s definitely worth your attention.

It also reminds me of the online discussion Jeff and I had a few months back on our two blogs about innovation for associations and the work of the WSAE Innovation Task Force I chair. In the spirit of that discussion, I’d like to offer some of my own thoughts and reactions to Jeff’s article.

I’ll start with something I suspect Jeff and I agree on.

Our thinking about future business models needs to focus on maximizing the value of better outcomes for our stakeholders, not preserving the traditional structures and inputs we often regard as most important.

This is about as clear as any statement I’ve read about the fundamental challenge facing associations when it comes to embracing innovation. The work of the WSAE task force is predicated on the idea that innovation is a process—one that relies and people and creativity—but a process nonetheless, and like any process it needs to be clearly defined, resourced and continually improved in order to work. In this regard innovation can be viewed as another association business practice—like program management or marketing—something that all organizations can do, albeit with varying levels of expertise and success.

But that’s not the problem. The innovation problem for associations is not about process. It’s about culture. It’s not just changing what we do, it’s changing how we do things. It’s putting a new objective in front of us and retooling the organization itself so it can get serious about pursuing it. And that objective, as Jeff says, is maximizing the value of better outcomes for our stakeholders.

I know what you’re saying. That’s already our objective, Eric. Look at our mission statement and our fifteen-page strategic plan. They’re all about maximizing value for our members.

And they are. At this point in our history, the association world has strategic planning down pat. But what are we willing to sacrifice in order to achieve those finely wordsmithed objectives? How about the organization itself? Or at least the mental image of the organization that exists in our minds and the minds of our members?

It’s a great question to ask. Or maybe just run it in your mind as a thought experiment. If your mission could be achieved by changing what is perceived as the foundation (or core service, or value proposition) of your organization, would you do it? Would your Board chair? Are you sure? Here’s a provocative idea. If your answer is no, it means only two things. One: you won’t achieve those objectives about maximizing value for your members. And two: those objectives aren’t aiming high enough anyway.

We put an innovation readiness assessment up on the WSAE Hub of Association Innovation. It’s really just a short survey to help association professionals determine non-scientifically where their organizations are when it comes to embracing innovation, and which areas they may want to start working on if they wish to change things. There are four questions that relate to the leadership culture of your organization, but I think the most critical one is this:

Is your leadership willing to drive cultural change in your organization if that is what is needed to achieve your goals?

Start there. You won’t be able to innovate until you can honestly answer yes.

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Learning Innovation from the Mayo Clinic

Here's another great HBR post describing another set of "principles of innovation." I say "another," of course, because of my work with the WSAE Innovation Task Force, where we helped define four key principles of innovation from the case studies we examined in the for-profit sector.

The HBR post describes several strategies employed by the very famous and very innovative Mayo Clinic. It's worth a full read, but here are two that resonate the most with me and our effort to better define innovation for the association space.

Unofficial Activity
One key aspect to Mayo's innovation infrastructure is its new Center for Innovation (CFI), which exists to help people across the organization take their new ideas to the next level of development. We have found that allowing employees to engage in unofficial activity is one of the most agreed-upon conditions for innovation. Rather than saying that innovation is someone else's job in the organization, it signals to people that they are allowed and expected to spend a proportion of their workweek imagining better solutions.

This sounds a lot like Google's famous 20% time--where employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their time working on unofficial projects aligned with their own interests. But I think Mayo goes one step better.

Born in 2006 as the brainchild of Dr. Nick LaRusso, the CFI was first called the SPARC Lab (with the acronym standing for its methodology: see, plan, act, refine, and communicate). Its mission is not to create innovations directly, but to provide employees who are otherwise occupied with day-to-day business with the resources they need to move something forward: time, money, experts, input from leadership and colleagues, and the company's knowledge base. In fact, the CFI itself owes its existence to some very unofficial activity: LaRusso recalls that the idea first arose in 2005 at a happy hour with colleagues.

Giving employees the freedom to explore is definitely a culturual issue for any organization. The leadership has to be serious about it, model the same behavior, and go out of their way to define it as part of what the organization does. But as Mayo's CFI illustrates, it was also very much a process and resource issue for your organization. Letting people explore is one thing. But those explorations have to be communicated and leveraged so that the organization can take best advantage of them. Any way you slice that, that takes time, people and money--above and beyond what the 20% time is costing.

Combination Innovation
A structural support for innovation at Mayo is the Department of Engineering — the modern iteration of Dr. W. Mayo's "instrument shop." The shop was created in 1915, back when Mayo was forced to build many of its own tools. They quickly perceived how collaboration between engineers, scientists, and physicians created phenomenal new things. The shop helped to pioneer "safe surgery" for the world by combining anesthesia and sterilization. Later, it created the first centrifuge for testing G force tolerance in fighter pilots.

This was hits a little closer to home for me. It seems that more and more of the typical association's products and services are being outsourced these days. Web hosting, association management software, public relations, meeting planning, finanical services--the list goes on and on as many associations struggle with shrinking budgets and higher member expectations.

But in one of those key areas my association has decided to pull the service back in house and re-learn how to do it ourselves. Like Mayo, we're creating our own "Department of Engineering" and learning how to make the tools, not just use the tools manufactured by others. And now we're starting to see some of the advantages the HBR post attributes to Mayo's strategy of combination innovation.

In an area where there are hundreds of vendors offering hundreds of different off-the-shelf products, we're finding success in experimenting with our own technology and adapting it directly to our needs and the needs of our members. The finished product is better aligned with our objectives than any off-the-shelf product I've seen, but more importantly, the learning process required is being embraced by staff as something that helps them do their jobs better. It's opening us up to new ways of doing things no one would've previously anticipated.

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Listening Up

In my last post, I talked about something I called the Catch-22 of innovation.

Your association wants to deliver new innovative products that meet the needs of your members, so you ask and poll them incessantly about their needs, wants and desires. But the whole point of innovation is to change things in a meaningful enough way that it renders past patterns meaningless. Your members can't know what that next innovation is because it doesn't yet exist in their world. They have no familiarity with it.

And where should I find inspiration for how to resolve this conundrum? Where else but in a blog post by Umair Haque. If you're familiar with Haque, then you know he's all about creating a new definition of success in the corporate world--one not based on profit but on human satisfaction and enrichment. With that as his context, in this post he rips into traditional mechanisms of marketing, espousing a new strategy for engaging with customers, something he calls "listening up." And throughout, by simply substituting "members" for "customers" he provides a recipe for how association professionals can address the Catch-22 of innovation. Here are just a few salient excerpts:

Listening up means spending time actually talking to your customers, about not just their "wants" and "needs" but about their hopes and fears, their opportunities and threats, their greatest achievements and biggest regrets.

How many conversations like this have you had with members of your association? How many opportunities have you had for such a conversation that you've squandered on tactical and programmatic details? Forget about what kind of benefits they want from you. What kind of people do they aspire to be?

Listening up means empowering as many people inside your organization as possible to spend time talking to your customers to have those conversations, and empowering them to talk to one another openly.

How many people are there in your organization? How many member contacts do they have every week? What if you instituted a practice of talking openly with your staff about your members--not just what they complained about, but about what they're striving to achieve? Forget about serving those needs for a moment. Let's just develop a habit of understanding the world our members live in and sharing those insights with each other.

Listening up means asking questions that matter--and then being tough enough to hear that, just maybe, yes, you really, honestly do suck at having real, tangible, lasting benefits.

I believe this is the hidden fear that keeps us from truly engaging with our members in the way Haque describes--the fear that our services don't measure up to their expectations. But what better way is there to build those benefits--not just for today but for our innovative futures--than these simple (in concept) but difficult (in execution) recommendations?

The WSAE white paper on innovation talks about the need to understand the mind of your community. By doing what Haque recommends that becomes elementary because the community is no longer something external to your organization, something difficult to understand whose needs you still must serve. By creating this kind of dialogue with your members you become part of their community and you will develop an intrinsic understanding of what is necessary for it to succeed.

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The Catch-22 of Innovation

Lots of good lessons in this HBR post for association professionals looking to be move innovative. It's by Scott Anthony, and it's about the multiple approaches car makers are taking towards the development of electric hybrids.

Nissan believes that customers will use electric vehicles primarily for short trips around town, which mirrors most people's current car usage. The company's all electric Leaf has relatively limited range and takes eight hours to recharge.


General Motors believes that customers will expect performance that mirrors traditional gasoline-powered cars. Its Volt has a backup engine to power the car when the electricity drains out.

The problem is, no one really knows what customers will do with electric cars, because the customers themselves don't know. They don't know what they are, or what they should think of them. They don't know what's good about them and what's bad about them. Most customers have never driven one in their day-to-day lives.

It's the Catch-22 of innovation. Your association wants to deliver new innovative products that meet the needs of your members, so you ask and poll them incessantly about their needs, wants and desires. But, as Anthony says, the whole point of innovation is to change things in a meaningful enough way that it renders past patterns meaningless. Your members can't know what that next innovation is because it doesn't yet exist in their world. They have no familiarity with it.

The truth is, you'll know what customers will do with an innovation only once they've done it. And done it in real, natural environments, not artificial environments like a supervised usage test. This reality places stress on companies that need to place big bets without complete knowledge of the outcome. And it places a big premium on getting as close to market conditions as possible as quickly as possible to figure out what really happens when people start using your product.

At the last meeting of the WSAE Innovation Task Force, Jeff De Cagna shared with us an idea that could provide a work-around for this Catch-22. The idea is to embrace "rapid-prototyping" for new association products and services. Don't go through the usual committee development, project approval, budget allocation process that bogs down so many associations. Get something experimental into the hands of your members at the earliest opportunity, and allow their reactions and suggestions for it to drive its further development.

We even started a short discussion about the subject in WSAE's new Innovation Hub for Associations. Does anyone have real-world experience with this practice in an association. Care to comment here or, even better, on the Hub?

The Innovation Hub for Associations

I've been blogging about my work with the Innovation Task Force of the Wisconsin Society of Association Executives for a while now. Through these posts Hourglass readers got a sneak peek at the Innovation for Associations white paper we authored (here, here and here) and the assessment tool we developed for association executives to use in determining the innovation readiness of their associations (here, here and here).

Now, I'm happy to let you in on our latest adventure--the soft launch of our new online community for association professionals interested in helping us build an evidence-based model of innovation for the association community.

It's called the Innovation Hub for Associations, and can be accessed here.

We field tested it at the task force's January 28 meeting. There's still some features were planning to add to it, but the nucleus is there and working. I hope you'll take some time to visit it, create a profile, and help us build it into something that serves your needs and those of our broader community.

The core of the site can be found under the "Innovation Model" tab. There you'll find a series of discussion spaces where successful innovation practices and tools can be offered and explored by the participants. Like our readiness tool, these discussion spaces are organized into three key tracks:

a. Creating a culture of innovation in your association.
b. Designing a process by which innovation will occur in your association.
c. Providing the necessary resources (time, talent and money) for your innovation process to function effectively.

If you've got any information to share on any of those topics, please consider adding it to the Hub. Even if all you have are challenges, please share them. Part of what we'd like to do is learn about the key strategic and tactical challenges associated with bringing innovation to your association and the hundreds of other associations in our community. By aggregating this information together, we'll be better positioned to develop successful strategies for overcoming them.

This is very much a volunteer effort, so let me thank everyone on the task force and in our wider community who have shown such enthusiasm for the project and who have helped make it happen. Seeing the innovative spirit you've all poured into this makes me think solving the next round of problems will be easy.

Diagnosing the Problem

This is part of an on-going dialogue between Eric Lanke and Jeff De Cagna on the work of the WSAE Innovation Task Force and the status of innovation in the association community.

For an introduction to this dialogue, go here.
For Jeff’s first post on why innovation is critical to the future of associations, go here.
For Eric’s response, highlighting why the members of the WSAE task force decided to tackle innovation, go here.
For Jeff’s next post on the factors that prevent associations from making innovation an on-going priority, go here.

+ + + + + + +

I said at the end of my last post that as Jeff and I began discussing the factors that prevent associations from making innovation an on-going priority, we’d see that associations face barriers in three key areas—culture, process and resources.

And you know what? I was right.

That’s what the WSAE Task Force on Innovation concluded in its white paper, and that’s why WSAE has decided to launch an online community (formal announcement coming soon) where crowd-sourced discussions can take place—discussions focused on identifying successful strategies for overcoming barriers in these three areas.

I’m not saying that Jeff’s diagnosis of the barriers that keep associations from innovating is wrong. Rather, I think that the four major barriers he sees—sameness, politics trumps everything, markets vs. membership, and plans matter more than possibilities—are symptoms of the larger disease that afflicts our community. When the task force dissected the problem we focused on four slightly different symptoms—diffuse leadership, low tolerance for risk, unwillingness to commit resources, and complex organizational structures—but I think both our symptoms and Jeff’s symptoms point to the same problem. Too many associations do not have a culture that embraces innovation as a strategic and operational necessity.

I will pick one particular bone with Jeff, but it leads to a larger point. I think he overstates the homogeneity that exists in most associations when he describes what he means by “sameness”:

Sameness is the defining characteristic of the association experience. Associations bring together people who are alike in more ways than they are different: same fields, same jobs and, thus, similar ways of seeing and thinking about the world.

Well, yes, Jeff, associations bring together people who are alike—same fields, same jobs, etc. That’s what makes them associations. But at the same time, every association that I’ve worked with has been challenged in one way or another by the diversity that exists within its own membership. One's a medical society that has both practitioners and academics. Another's a trade association that has both manufacturers and distributors. Every constituent is the same in the sense that they all see the value of associating, of coming together in support of the association’s mission, but within that boundary there is always a surprising amount of diversity. There are different perspectives on the issues, different ideas for solving the challenges, and different needs that seek to be served.

So, what many associations lack is not diversity of perspective—ask any working association executive how many different perspectives are competing for his or her attention every day. What many associations lack is a culture that seeks to leverage its internal diversity of perspective for effective and innovative problem solving.

Diagnose it however you like—politics matter more that progress, membership matters more than markets, plans matter more than possibilities—they are all good descriptions; maybe better than diffuse leadership hiding behind complex organizational structures and an unwillingness to risk and commit resources. But the underlying problem is the same. Too many associations embrace a culture that seeks to stifle rather than encourage its own diversity of perspective. And in this struggle for unity, they validate what Jeff is saying about sameness:

Sameness also shapes the typical association value creation process itself: everyone must be treated the same, receive the same benefits and participate in the same activities. Unfortunately, this homogeneous way of being engenders an inherent resistance to radical and disruptive thinking that is very hard to overcome.

To their detriment, they have defined diversity of opinion as part of the problem, not as part of the solution.

How can we change this? Well, I think it starts by recognizing that:

Innovation thrives in vibrantly imaginative environments filled with diverse experiences, divergent points of view and the creative friction they inspire.

Divergent points of view? Creative friction? Associations have those things in spades. We've been working for years to minimize them at our Board tables and in our special interest groups. It's high time we reveresed direction and started finding better ways of using them.

A Prescription for Innovation

This is part of an on-going dialogue between Eric Lanke and Jeff De Cagna on the work of the WSAE Innovation Task Force and the status of innovation in the association community.

For an introduction to this dialogue, go here.
For Jeff’s first post on why innovation is critical to the future of associations, go here.

+ + + + + + +

In his most recent post, Jeff calls out WSAE’s white paper on Innovation for Associations for not explaining why associations need to make innovation central to their work over the next ten years, and for offering a fairly generic definition of innovation—a process that effectively generates and applies creative ideas to the achievement of defined objectives.

Guilty as charged.

One thing we discovered early on was that everyone in our self-selected group of volunteers that make up the WSAE Innovation Task Force—all association execs and staffers of one stripe or another—had a slightly different perspective on what innovation was and what it should be doing inside their associations.

• Innovation is using technology to streamline operations and deliver new services.

• Innovation is sunsetting legacy programs and developing new programs more aligned with the current needs of members.

• Innovation is getting the older generation to let loose the reins of control and fast track members of the younger generation into leadership positions.

For every challenge cited, “innovation” was the preferred solution, but the corresponding methods and practices needed to bring about change were very different.

Hence our generic definition of innovation. We had to establish a baseline understanding of what we were talking about or we weren’t going to make any progress. Or if we did make any progress, it would be limited to individual advice for individual situations, and there would be little or no benefit for the larger community of association professionals we were hoping to serve. In this way, I believe our group of association professionals is but a microcosm of the association community at large. Look at the magazines and blogs, attend the conferences and webinars, and you’ll see that we’re all talking about innovation, but there are surprisingly few of us that are really speaking the same language.

What about making the case for innovation in the first place? The most honest answer for why such an appeal doesn’t appear explicitly in the white paper is probably because the people on the task force felt the need for innovation—however they initially defined it—was self-evident.

• “If I don’t figure out how to harness technology to streamline what we do and deliver better service to my members, online competitors are going to leave me in the dust.”

• “If I don’t figure out how to stop doing the things that only matter to a few and start doing the things that matter to the bulk of my members, lots of people are going to stop paying their dues.”

• “If I don’t figure out how to get the dead weight off my board they’re going to drag my association down into utter irrelevancy.”

These are the kinds of concerns association executives share with one another when the door is closed and they know their volunteers won’t be listening. This is our business case for innovation. Whatever lack of consensus exists in our community with regard to the need for innovation, it exists only because some executives have identified the threats that are jeopardizing their futures and others have not.

Jeff’s prescription at the end of his last post is, I think, the correct one:

What associations need right now, however, is a genuine commitment to an accelerated and intensive process of continuous experimentation, shaped by empathic understanding, driven by meaningful co-creation with stakeholders and constantly attentive to the power of serendipity.

That’s easy for Jeff to say. In the next series of posts, on what factors prevent associations from making innovation an on-going priority, I believe we’ll see that associations—even those with executives that have identified the threats—face barriers of culture, process and resources that make Jeff’s prescription, necessary as it is, a difficult pill to swallow.

Jumpstarting an Essential Conversation

So, not too long ago I got an email from Jeff De Cagna:



The post he was talking about, Next Steps for Association Innovation, is where I detail the work I've been helping to spearhead as the chair of the Innovation Task Force of the Wisconsin Society of Association Executives, and its plans to launch a new online community dedicated to innovation for associations and to host a National Summit on Association Innovation at the WSAE Annual Educational Conference in September 2011.

Now, in my opinion, Jeff would be perfectly justified to take WSAE and its efforts to task for coming very late to a party he started throwing years ago. If you don't know Jeff, he has been talking about the need for associations to embrace innovation for as long as I can remember, which means he's probably been talking about it even longer than that. And, personally, Jeff has always impressed me with his consistent ability to ask the questions most working association executives don't want to hear, but know they should be thinking about. So when I got this email, I responded in kind:



What followed was a telephone conversation and a series of email exchanges where we agreed to trade a few posts on each other's blogs about the work of the WSAE Innovation Task Force and the status of innovation in the association community. Jeff will start on his blog, then I will post on Hourglass, then Jeff, then me--the two of us trading ideas and building on each other's thoughts as we explore three critical questions:

1. Why is innovation critical to the future of associations?
2. What factors prevent associations from making innovation an on-going priority?
3. How can associations embrace innovation more easily?

Readers of both blogs are invited to participate in the conversation by posting comments on either site. We'll both be reading them all, and incorporating your ideas into our discussion as well.

I'm hopeful that with Jeff's keen understanding of our industry and its challenges, as well as his natural flair for the thought-provoking, we'll be able to generate some substantive dialogue and help advance this issue for our community. And I'll be along to lob in some spitballs, just to keep things interesting.

Please join us!

Next Steps for Association Innovation

This is an exciting time for the WSAE Innovation Task Force. At our last meeting on November 19 we talked about several new initiatives whose success will clearly depend on getting people in the broader community engaged, so I thought I'd share an update here on Hourglass and see if there's anyone out there who'd like to get involved with our objective of defining an evidence-based model of innovation for associations. I've pointed out in the summary below the places where we're especially looking for help, but please feel free to contact me with any ideas and interests you may have.

First of all, our white paper on association innovation is nearly finished. I've posted draft excerpts of the white paper here on Hourglass (here, here and here), but we hope the final version will have much broader dissemination within the association community. We’re looking for appropriate venues to publish and/or present the paper, and encourage your suggestions and help in disseminating it.

Second, we are currently working on a new online community dedicated to innovation for associations. In addition to being a great networking site, we will be using the levels of innovation readiness described in our white paper (and here, here and here on Hourglass) to structure and conduct facilitated conversations in this community, with the hope that they will help us identify and validate practical strategies for innovative practice. We expect that this exciting innovation “hub” will allow us to connect with a much wider audience and aggregate our industry’s state-of-the-art practices into a comprehensive model of innovation that can serve everyone’s needs as we each move forward with brining innovation to our associations. We're looking for several volunteers to help with this initiative, as we will need identified discussion leaders to monitor conversations and to extract the salient nuggets of information for our evolving innovation model. Let me know if you're interested.

And third, we're beginning to plan for a National Summit on Association Innovation, to be held in conjunction with WSAE’s Annual Educational Conference, September 15, 2011, in Madison, WI. Using the innovation model developed by the online community, we plan to structure a day of activities designed to allow individual participants to construct their own roadmaps of innovation for their associations. Speakers on innovation in the for-profit and non-profit sectors are envisioned, with a majority of the time spent in targeted breakout and discussion sessions. A conference planning committee is currently being assembled to help organize this event, and we hope to attract association executives from around the nation to participate. Please let me know if you have an interest in attending or helping to plan this unique conference.

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Innovation = Creativity x Execution

This is a fantastic post on innovation from Vijay Govindarajan, co-author of the new book, The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge. In it, he really drives home the point that the hard part of innovation is not the creativity, the coming up with innovative ideas; but the execution, the translating the ideas into action.

Maybe because of the way my brain works, I really like the mathematical model he uses to make his point:

We like to think of an organization's capacity for innovation as creativity multiplied by execution. We use "multiplication" rather than "sum" because, if either creativity or execution has a score of zero, then the capacity for innovation is zero.

It's excellent. And he goes on to illustrate the "multipler effect" successful execution can have on innovation efforts:

Here's why we worked on execution, as opposed to creativity: We surveyed thousands of executives in Fortune 500 companies to rate their companies' innovation skills on a scale of one to 10, one being poor and 10 world class. Survey participants overwhelmingly believe that their companies are better at generating ideas (average score of six) than they are at commercializing them (average score of one).

So which is more effective--moving your (already good) creativity score from six to eight or lifting your (very poor) execution score from one to three? Here's the math using our shorthand, creativity times execution:

Capacity to innovate = 6 x 1 = 6

Capacity to innovate, increasing creativity score = 8 x 1 = 8

Capacity to innovate, increasing execution score = 6 x 3 = 18

It's no contest. Companies tend to focus far more attention on improving the front end of the innovation process, the creativity. But the real leverage is in the back end.

Simple and effective in underscoring the importance of execution in any innovation effort. It's also something I've realized as part of my work with the Innovation Task Force of the Wisconsin Society of Association Executives. We've recently framed that discussion around three levels of "innovation readiness," which can succinctly be summarized as "build the right culture," "design the right process," and "apply the right resources." In this construction, the creativity piece, the generation of innovative ideas, takes a back seat to a culture that embraces those ideas, a process that solicits and prioritizes them, and the resources that translate them into action.

There's more work ahead for the Task Force as we begin to flesh out the details of these three levels, looking to work with organizations that have developed successful strategies for each objective. I wonder if Govindarajan's book would be worth a read. Has anyone read it? Any ideas to suggest from it?

What's Your Innovation Readiness? Part 3

For Part 2 go here. For Part 1 go here.

The Innovation Task Force of the Wisconsin Society of Association Executives (which I chair), is trying to develop an assessment tool for association executives to use in determining the "innovation readiness" of their associations. As part of our effort to develop an evidence-based model of innovation for the association community, we want to provide a way for associations to determine where they are on the continuum of innovative practice, and plug them into a set of proven strategies tailored for their own position.

Our draft tool consists of three questions. The first, discussed in Part 1 of this post, is "Does your leadership embrace innovation as one of the strategies necessary to achieve your goals?" If you can confidently answer "yes" to that question, you get to move onto the second question, discussed in Part 2, which is "Do you have a defined process for how innovation will function in your association?" If you've got both the culture for innovation and a defined process for how it will occur, you're ready for the third question:

Is that process working?

A simple question, but perhaps the toughest of the three to answer in the affirmative. This is where the innovation rubber really hits the road. Like all successful business processes, innovation does not happen without the appropriate resources to support it. As we observed in the for-profit case studies we examined, successful innovation meant, among other things:

1. Time in employee schedules for engagement in the innovation process;

2. Money allocated in the necessary budgets to allow the process to move forward and to capitalize on the ideas it generated; and

3. Management personnel that were in place to oversee the process and make sure it ran effectively.

There are certainly other factors that may keep an innovation process from working, but these three are among the first to look at if you're having difficulty. And if your process is suffering, then give your association a "readiness score" of "3". You've got the necessary culture, and you've defined a process, but something isn't working as effectively as it should. If that describes you, then we'd like to hear about your challenges and work with you to identify the strategies that can help your association and associations like yours to overcome them.

Please comment if you'd like to get plugged into our process.

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What's Your Innovation Readiness? Part 2

For Part 1 go here.

The Innovation Task Force of the Wisconsin Society of Association Executives (which I chair), is trying to develop an assessment tool for association executives to use in determining the "innovation readiness" of their associations. As part of our effort to develop an evidence-based model of innovation for the association community, we want to provide a way for associations to determine where they are on the continuum of innovative practice, and plug them into a set of proven strategies tailored for their own position.

Our draft tool consists of three questions. The first, discussed in Part 1 of this post, is "Does your leadership embrace innovation as one of the strategies necessary to achieve your goals?" If you can confidently answer "yes" to that question, then ask yourself the next question:

Do you have a defined process for how innovation will function in your association?

Having a leadership culture that embraces innovation is not enough. The culture is a necessary first step, but without a defined process for how innovation will occur, culture alone is generally not disciplined enough to capitalize on the innovative ideas that it may produce.

It's important to note that there is probably not one universal innovation process that will work for every association. But in the case studies we examined, all of the successful innovation processes we found included the following attributes:

A. Precise strategy. The problem to be addressed by the innovation process was clearly defined. Teams working on the problem knew what risks were acceptable and unacceptable, and how their success would be measured.

B. Eclectic teams. Who participated in the process was as important as the process itself. Team members were all creative thinkers, usually from different departments in the organization, and brought a variety of experiences and perspectives to the table.

C. Nimbleness. In the case studies, the objective of innovation was invariably to deliver better products or services to a constituency. In these competitive environments, the processes were designed to move quickly and be highly responsive to the needs of the community being served.

D. Clear decision points. These successful innovation processes generated high numbers of creative ideas. The method for selecting which ideas would be pursued and which would not was always defined up front, was clearly understood by all participants, and did not change as the process went forward.

Does your association have a defined process for innovation that encompasses all of these points? If not, give your association a "readiness score" of "2". You've got the necessary culture, but you need to design a process that will allow your association to harness and execute the innovative ideas it produces.

We'd like to hear about your challenges in building such a process and work with you to identify the strategies that can help your association and associations like yours to overcome them.

Please comment if you'd like to get plugged into our process.

Photo Source

What's Your Innovation Readiness? Part 1

Regular readers of The Hourglass Blog know that I'm chairing the Innovation Task Force for the Wisconsin Society of Association Executives. Examining case studies of successful innovation in the for-profit community, the task force has drafted a set of principles of innovation--organizational traits the must be present to allow innovation to occur--a list of barriers common to associations that prevent them from adopting those principles, and some advantages unique to associations that could be better leveraged for innovative purposes.

The task force met again on September 10, and one of our tasks this time was to create a tool that would allow association executives to assess the "innovation readiness" of their organizations. Knowing that every association is probably at a different point on a continuum of innovative practice, and that the strategies that will work for an association at one point of that continuum won't necessarily work for an association at another, we want to provide a way for associations to determine where they are and then plug them immediately into a set of strategies best suited to their position.

Remember that our long term goal here is to create an evidence-based model for innovation in the association community, one replete with tested and practical strategies for how to "do" innovation in an association. With our principles, barriers and advantages developed, we want now to reach out to association executives across the country to engage them in an interactive dialogue about the practical strategies for innovation in an association. The "innovation readiness" tool will also provide a framework for this discussion, and will help us organize the strategies we hope to develop.

So, when it comes to assessing the innovation readiness of your association, we believe there are three basic questions you need to ask yourself. Here's the first:

Does your leadership embrace innovation as one of the strategies necessary to achieve your goals?

At one of recent meetings I attended I tweeted this:



Jen is Jennifer Blenkle of ASAE (who's spearheading an innovation initiative of their own) and Jen is 100% right. The first and most important piece of the puzzle is the culture of your organization, and your leadership is the key to your culture. If your leadership--however leadership is defined in your association--isn't on board with innovation, no innovation process you try to implement will succeed.

Does your leadership embody a true culture of innovation? If not, give your association a "readiness score" of "1". You've got the longest journey ahead of you, but we need you as part of our future discussion. We want to hear about the challenges you're facing and work with you to identify the strategies that can help you overcome them.

Please comment if you'd like to get plugged into our process.

Photo Source and backstory

Association Advantages for Innovation

Here's part three of the "innovation for associations" white paper I'm helping to write while chairing the Innovation Task Force for the Wisconsin Society of Association Executives. As I've described before, our overall goal is to define an evidence-based model of innovation for the association community, and we've been analyzing several case studies of innovation in the for-profit community to see if those successful models can be adapted for the association world.

Part one of the white paper focused on the principles of innovation we identified from the case studies--organizational traits that are necessary to create a true culture of innovation. Part two discussed some barriers to innovation in the association world--obstacles that associations need to overcome if they are going to embrace the principles. Part three is the flipside of the barriers--organizational advantages that associations possess and which they can leverage for greater innovation.

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Potential Association Advantages

While associations in general experience the barriers described above when it comes to adopting the for-profit world’s principles of innovation, there are also several advantages that associations have over their for-profit counterparts given their unique organizational position and structure. These advantages include:

1. Direct access to the mind of the community

Innovative organizations know the needs and desires of the constituencies they serve—what we described above as understanding the “mind of the community.” In for-profit companies, this community is generally comprised of customers external to the organization. Developing an effective mechanism for understanding their needs can therefore be time-consuming and expensive. But an association’s community is made up of its members, and members typically comprise a number of established networks internal to the organization. Boards of Directors, committees, task forces—even supplier networks and, sometimes, staff departments—they all provide associations with a direct connection to their community that for-profit corporations committed to innovation would envy. These ready-made networks of key stakeholders are a clear advantage for developing a successful process of innovation within an association, as they can be continually leveraged for suggesting, selecting, testing, promoting and, ultimately, using the resulting innovative products and services.

2. Experience with diverse teams and team-based decision-making

Although associations are often hampered by overly complex organizational structures and decision-making processes, another clear advantage they have for adopting the principles of innovation is their experience in bringing diverse teams together for collective action. An association can be thought of as a gathering of colleagues/competitors who have come together to advance their given profession/industry while advancing their own careers/businesses. In this environment, associations have developed several successful strategies for identifying common objectives, creating partnerships, and dealing with dissension and debate—all based on helping diverse constituencies focus on the elements that unite them. When coupled with a targeted objective and clear decision points, these same strategies can be effectively leveraged as part of an effective innovation process.

3. A stewardship position for its profession/industry

Most associations enjoy a position as advocates and champions for their particular profession or industry. Although there is certainly competition in the association world, each successful association is viewed by its constituents as a necessary institution—something critical to the continued growth and development of the profession or industry. They generally would not be members if they did not think so. This provides the well-managed association with a kind of stability not enjoyed by for-profit entities, with some buffering from the vagaries of the marketplace. This should, but often doesn’t, allow for greater risk-taking opportunities in associations. But the reality is that association members are often committed to the success of the association, and to its ability to serve their needs, in a way that customers are not committed to the success of all but the most iconic companies. Their vocal leadership and participation can be effectively used to help an association find innovative solutions for even its most perplexing problems.

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I'm sharing the sections of our white paper here on Hourglass to hopefully get some feedback from a broader cross-section of the association community. Please comment and tell me what you think.

Barriers to Innovation in the Association World

In one of my last posts I shared the principles of innovation we've drafted as part of the "innovation for associations" white paper being written by the WSAE Innovation Task Force. It's part of an effort by my state association executives society to define an evidence-based model of innovation for the association community.

I'm sharing the draft pieces of the white paper here on Hourglass to hopefully get some feedback from a broader cross-section of the association world. The next piece talks about the barriers to adoption many associations experience when trying to embrace the innovation principles. It goes a little something like this:

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Barriers to Innovation in the Association World

The principles of innovation described above were derived from case studies of innovation in the for-profit world. Associations are similar to for-profit organizations in many ways, but different in many others. As such, it is not surprising that associations may have some difficulty in embracing all aspects of the innovation principles. This section describes the barriers to adopting these principles that appear common in associations.

1. Diffuse leadership

Innovative organizations have a culture of innovation that is driven from the very top. But in the association world, “the top” of the organization is sometimes difficult to define. Almost every association has a Board of Directors that governs the organization, and an Executive Director that provides operational leadership, but the interplay and degree of inerrant functional overlap between these two entities varies from association to association, and in many cases creates an environment in which leadership authority is imprecisely diffused among many individuals. In addition, some associations are said to be “staff-driven,” and others “volunteer-driven”—conditions in which the identified constituency exercises tremendous influence over the culture and activities of the organization. Even when leadership structures are clearly defined, term limits and turn-over of association Board members often make it difficult for the organization to sustain long-term strategic initiatives.

2. Low tolerance for risk

Innovative organizations are by nature risk-taking organizations—places with the freedom to experiment and fail. But many associations approach risk from a decidedly conservative perspective. The need for change must be clearly documented and then trial-ballooned and focus-grouped with numerous stakeholders before it can get off the ground, and then it often has to navigate a minefield of existing programs and sacred cows in order to compete for funding. What many associations deem normal due diligence procedures—financial analyses and projections—can prematurely kill most innovative ideas, by creating the illusion of a known financial outcome where none, in fact, exists. Furthermore, the perceived “price of failure,” in terms of the potential loss of power and influence within an association hierarchy, is also often too high to attract the necessary champions for innovation.

3. Limited resources

Innovative organizations commit resources to the process of innovation. But many associations have budgets they either perceive to be too small to allow for such an investment, or which are already overstretched into dozens or hundreds of association programs and activities. Innovation does not require a big financial budget in order to happen—many small organizations are good at innovation. Innovation does, however, require some investment of resources—money, staff time, expertise, management processes—and too many associations are unwilling to seriously commit a portion of these resources to its execution.

4. Complex organizational structures

Innovative organizations employ a process of innovation that is nimble and which offers clear decision points. But for many associations, decision-making is a long and complicated affair, requiring the engagement of multiple stakeholders and the approval of several layers of management and authority. Staff departments, volunteer task forces, standing committees, houses of delegates, boards of directors—there are all hallmarks of even the best-run associations, each with a defined role to play in the organization’s budgeting process and decision tree. In a poorly-run association these complex organizational structures, and the commitment to consensus-based decision-making that they require, can leave an association incapable of sustaining a productive and useful process of innovation.

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I'm really interested in what the readers of The Hourglass Blog think about all of this. I'll keep posting additional sections of the draft paper as we write them, and I encourage all of you to share your thoughts and comments.

Principles of Innovation

The fourth meeting of the WSAE Innovation Task Force was held on July 16, 2010. For those of you new to this conversation, I'm heading up an effort for my state society to define an evidence-based model of innovation for the association community. Inspired by the dedicated, defined and resourced “innovation function” that exists in many for-profit companies, we are examining a series of case studies that profile these processes. I'm also blogging about it here. By examining how innovation is successfully employed by the organizations profiled we hope to identify practical strategies for applying innovation in the association environment.

We've now examined enough case studies where we feel ready to start writing a "white paper" on innovation for the association community. This white paper will describe the traits—or principles—that we believe are necessary to create a culture of innovation within any organization. It will then describe several barriers to the adoption of these principles that appear common to associations. And, if all goes according to plan, it will also begin to explore some unique qualities of associations and other strategies that associations may leverage to overcome those barriers.

We started working on the paper in earnest at our July 16 meeting. Based on the discussion we had there, I wanted to share my draft of the "Principles of Innovation" section.

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Principles of Innovation

Among the case studies of successful innovation we studied, the following four principles appeared universal and necessary.

1. The culture of innovation was driven from the top of the organization

Like most organizational cultures, innovation began with the leadership of the organization. Several different leadership structures existed, but the organizations with innovative cultures invariably reflected a commitment to innovation among its most senior leadership, and organizations that wished to adopt an innovation culture had a leadership team that embraced, advocated for, and supported that change. Attempts to drive innovation from the middle or only one portion of the organization invariably failed, because any innovative action that fell outside the boundaries of the existing culture did not receive the leadership support or resources it needed to get off the ground. The lesson that these organizations learned was that a commitment must be made at the very top in order to create a culture of innovation, and that leadership must drive the cultural change necessary to support and re-organize the organization for that function.

2. Commitment of resources to the process of innovation

Like all successful business processes, innovation did not happen without the appropriate resources to support it. Employee schedules included time for engagement in the innovation process, money was allocated in the necessary budgets to allow the process to move forward and to capitalize on the ideas it generated, and management personnel were in place to oversee the process and make sure it ran effectively. Although the process mechanics varied across the different case studies we examined, some of the common attributes of the successful processes of innovation were:

A. Precise strategy. The problem to be addressed by the innovation process was clearly defined. Teams working on the problem knew what risks were acceptable and unacceptable, and how their success would be measured.

B. Eclectic teams. Who participated in the process was as important as the process itself. Team members were all creative thinkers that brought a variety of experiences and perspectives to the table.

C. Nimbleness. In the case studies, the objective of innovation was invariably to deliver better products or services to a constituency. In these competitive environments, the processes were designed to move quickly and be highly responsive to the needs of the communities being served.

D. Clear decision points. These successful innovation processes generated high numbers of creative ideas. The method for selecting which ideas would be pursued and which would not was always defined and clearly understood by all participants.

3. Understanding the mind of the community

All organizations serve a community in one form or another, and innovative organizations have developed mechanisms that provide a keen understanding of what’s on their community’s mind. In the most successful cases, it went beyond an awareness of the constituent’s needs. These innovation processes were imbued with a true sense of how the constituents thought—what they wanted, what they didn't want, and how they would react in predictable and unpredictable circumstances. The methods for attaining this understanding varied, but the knowledge, once attained, was used throughout the innovation process as a constant guide for successful decision-making.

4. Freedom to experiment and fail

The innovative organizations we studied all viewed failure as a natural and necessary part of the innovation process. Within the boundaries defined above, ideas were given the support they needed to succeed or fail, and when they failed, the focus was on learning from the experience rather than assigning blame. One company’s motto was “fail often to succeed sooner,” and they encouraged their employees to ask for forgiveness, not permission.

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I'm really interested in what the readers of The Hourglass Blog think about all of this. I'll keep posting additional sections of the draft paper as we write them, and I encourage all of you to share your thoughts and comments.