Principled Innovation LLC

Act with confidence

April 20th, 2006

On Tuesday, Doug Sundheim had an excellent post on the FC NOW Blog about the importance of decisiveness:

Contrary to popular belief, your decisions don’t drive your long term success - your decisiveness does. Said another way, when you reach a crossroads on any issue, the act of choosing creates power, not the choice itself. The issue is momentum. No matter what you choose, when you commit boldly with conviction, you create momentum. When you hesitate you don’t. And success is built on momentum.

Doug has hit the nail on the head. One of the biggest obstacles to successful innovation is the inability of decision-makers to act with confidence when opportunities present themselves. Too often in associations, staff and volunteer leaders–including those who claim to have a bias for action–fall into the trap of uninformed naysaying and analysis paralysis when compelling new ideas are put on the table. Surely these leaders want what’s best for their organizations, right? Could it be they fear the new momentum that the bold pursuit of innovation will create for their associations? To ask the question another way, are association leaders concerned that embracing innovation will make their organizations too successful?

In my experience, there is at least some indirect evidence to suggest that they are. Throughout the association community, there is a deeply embedded and palpable scarcity mentality, i.e., we don’t have enough money, staff or time and we’ll never have enough no matter what we do. A seriously successful innovation effort could alter that dynamic in a fundamental way, forcing association leaders to make a 180-degree shift in their thinking, something they may find difficult to do. There is certainly precious little association leadership/management education that inculcates an enduring growth perspective around the business of associations. Mostly, the focus of learning and development in the association community is on managing within, through or around the prevailing scarcity, rather than how to transform it into abundance. Without effective preparation for driving it, then, staff and volunteer leaders may simply find the prospect of accelerating growth through innovation too daunting to choose.

One of my key principles of innovation is “innovate to keep ideas mobile.” So my advice to association leaders is simple: give yourself permission to be as decisive in the realm of innovation as you are on operational matters. You can facilitate this effort by developing a clear innovation process for your association that includes specific criteria for making intelligent decisions quickly. In future posts, I’ll share more thoughts on how you can do that.

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Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover, The Association Innovator

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