Principled Innovation LLC

Let’s talk simplicity at the Great Ideas Conference!

January 23rd, 2007

If you’re attending ASAE & The Center’s Great Ideas Conference beginning this weekend in Marco Island, Florida, I’d like to invite you to join me for a special conversation on my recent article, “The Struggle for Simplicity,” which appears in the Volunteer Leadership Issue of Associations Now Magazine.

In an increasingly complex world, associations have a great opportunity to embrace simplicity as a platform for innovation. As I have written here before, simplicity does not mean simplistic or dumbed down. Rather, a focus on simplicity is about thinking through new ways to design our enterprises for maximum contribution and minimum frustration on the part of all stakeholders. Simplicity invites us to consider the association in more holistic terms, as we seek to add meaning to every element of the interface between the organization and its members, customers and leaders.

Thinking in more pragmatic terms, the conversation around simplicity challenges us to identify how we can make the lives of those we serve, not to mention our own, easier. Our changed relationship with time, as well as limitations on our attention and energy resources, leave many of us wondering when and how our personal and professional lives became so difficult. Association participation should not add to our existing burdens. Indeed, associations could play a role a reducing that burden, but only if we can make simplicity a priority.

If you find this conversation as intriguing as I do, please join me on Saturday, January 27 at 6:30 pm in the Lobby Bar at the Marriott Marco Island. I will have copies of the article available on site and I hope to be able to post a PDF here later today.

UPDATE: I now have the article available for download, thanks to Associations Now editor-in-chief and Acronym blogger extraordinaire Scott Briscoe. Scott is doing me a big favor by providing me with this PDF, and so I very much want to encourage you to purchase the entire 2007 Volunteer Leadership issue of Associations Now so you can get my article complete with its original artwork, as well as all of the other outstanding articles from association leaders around the country. Thanks Scott!

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Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, Announcements, What's New?, Social Media, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover, The Association Innovator, Simplicity, We Have Always Done It That Way