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Musings
…while the
iron is hot.
At the turn of the 18th
century, tiny little America began its emergence as world leader.
From its inception our nation has been a
prolific blacksmith – when the iron was hot, striking it in new and
different ways, reshaping the world.
Over the next two centuries we continued to
reinvent the future every time the opportunity presented itself.
Even when opportunity didn’t seem to be
knocking, we went right on anyway, opening up mountains and rocketing into
space.
We knew, we have always known, how to dream a better
future.
And here we are 200+ years
later, in the midst of world-transforming change.
Nations rise to match and potentially
supersede our preeminence.
It seems that in too many ways we’ve chosen to
hunker down, working hard to hold on to the world as we know it, and like
very well thank you – because we created it.
We want it to survive instead of some
new world order where, unless we change and do it fast, we may no longer
dominate.
When I think on it, I can’t help but see that
mindset in my own profession.
Associations seem to be hunkering down in hard
times, hanging on as the world around us evolves with dizzying speed and a
vast array of options.
We’re still here, but operating with
organizational constructs created centuries in the past: hugely resource
draining governing units, slow and cumbersome hierarchies; decisions and
actions assigned by position and geography instead of capacity and
capability; patch-working instead of wholly integrating communities and
technologies; and my own love-hate target, the mythos of “representative”
governance.
Some say that now is not the
time to tackle governance change; things are too uncertain and we’re worried
about other, more urgent things.
I’d argue that now is exactly the time, when
change is all around us and before it overtakes us.
What could be more important or beneficial
than to adjust the way we do business, not to survive the now, but to thrive
over the long haul.
Too few associations are
making any serious attempt at substantive governance change.
And those that do often go at it with little
verve.
I think that’s because they begin with those two
words; governance restructuring
(geez – how fun does THAT sound!).
The prospect is usually viewed with the
enthusiasm you’d have for a limb amputation.
The process is typically akin to playing with
tinker toys, popping the same pieces in and out in different configurations.
We might do better if we stopped the boring
and arduous task of reconfiguring old structures and instead got jazzed, and
got our member-leaders jazzed, about exploring the whole world of
possibilities.
Our challenge is to do what
Americans have always done - "imagine". Association leaders can and
should be the imagineers of wowingly new and wicked-smart governance
options.
We’ll need exploration and discussion among a
cross-section of current and future association professionals.
Boomers – a rich storehouse of experience and
ideas to share.
Gens-X and Y – the enthusiastic and
indefatigable army who’ll build what collectively we imagine.
Millennials, Digitals and Globals – we need to
stop thinking of them as inheritors and recast them as idea-matches,
igniting the fires from which our profession and our industry will forge its
future.
The world in which
associations exist is in a state of super-heated change.
Let’s strike while the iron is hot; EXPLORE
possibilities, IMAGINE a panoply of options for what could be, and INVENT
the business models by which associations will thrive.
Linda
Ridge,
President of OnPoint Solutions, Inc. and CEO of the Independent Chauffeurs
Association
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