Transform Culture

If you want to build a culture that values collaboration, you can’t only focus on cross-functional teamwork and breaking down silos. You have to take a look at how you collaborate outside your own association, as well. This includes vendors, partners and related organizations, ranging from your foundation that shares your staff, to chapters/components and […]

As I pointed out in a previous post, collaboration can sometimes be seen as “interference.” It can be perceived as distracting to someone who is already focused on “their” piece of the work. If you’re a leader and you see this happening — but know collaboration is critical to your success — you might consider […]

If I had to pick one single “core value” I thought would be mostly likely to show up on an association’s core value list, “collaboration” would be towards the top. Who doesn’t like collaboration, right? Well, I led a senior management retreat for a client one time, and in a rare moment of truth-telling, one […]

In the association world, we tend to think of our annual meeting in terms of what it delivers to the members. It is typically a crown jewel type of program — that date on our annual calendar when it’s all hands on deck because a large number of our members get a LOT of their […]

With January right around the corner, it can only mean one thing: Resolutions. You can likely guess what’s frequently atop the list of most popular resolutions — losing weight, or something along the lines of getting fit. This, coupled with a recent conversation with association colleague Arianna Rehak, got me thinking about waistlines. Not mine, but […]

There are plenty of articles that define culture, explain what a high performance culture looks like and gives angles on creating one. But here, we want to provide direction for anyone tasked with creating culture change. It is assumed you understand what culture is, you have decided to make a change and you want to […]

I saw a presentation several years ago from an association CEO who had recently redesigned their office space. He started by talking about the core values of the organization, which included one like “Having fun.” This was a place that viewed fun as an integral part of getting their work done. He then showed a […]

When I interview potential new employees, I like to show them our version of a staff chart. I am always met with surprise. “This doesn’t look like the traditional box and line drawing I usually see.” That’s because it isn’t. When I first took over as CEO at the American Society for Parenteral & Enteral […]

Whether or not you have a written policy about it, all organizations have a dress code. It’s a part of your culture — the kinds of clothing you are expected to wear (or not wear) actually says something about what is internally valued at the organization. But I don’t think most organizations realize this. They […]

Jamie Notter hosted an all-Millennial panel to discuss common questions in the association space regarding the largest generation in U.S. history. The impetus came from Beth Burchill, a Millennial who works at the American Counseling Association. She was fired up after having sat through yet another conference session where a Baby Boomer preached about how […]