Association 3.0
December 25th, 2007
Last month, I posted about Association 5.0, and received a few comments questioning whether we’ve actually reached the fifth generation of association evolution in the United States. Upon further reflection, I’m willing to concede that our community has probably not yet arrived at its fifth iteration in the last 200+ years. Nevertheless, I still firmly believe that we have moved beyond Association 2.0, and are now feeling our way through the early stages of Association 3.0.
Following the initial creation of associations in the late 18th and 19th centuries (Association 1.0), the emergence of societies of association executives in the early decades of the 20th Century, including Association Forum of Chicagoland in 1916 and ASAE in 1920, clearly set the table for a focus on “managerial professionalism” that eventually led to the creation of the CAE designation in 1960. Throughout this time, and up to the present day, the emphasis on strengthening staff professionalism has been the operative paradigm for our community, and it is simply more accurate to call this period Association 2.0.
Now that the membership-centric model for associations is beginning to evaporate, and business model innovation is sorely needed, there are indications that the paradigm for associations is moving beyond managerial professionalism and toward what I would describe as “systemic capacity-building.” In this regard, Association 3.0 is about more than a centralized and standardized effort to developing leaders and building organizations in the traditional mold. Association 3.0 is about a distributed and distributive approach to re-thinking, re-designing and re-creating the underlying human and organizational systems that make “associating” possible. And by observing principles of openness, inclusion and shared responsibility, among others, we can create third generation organizations that, at once, honor the heritage of their predecessors and embrace the possibilities of the future.
I’ll have more thoughts to share on Association 3.0 in future posts. For now, let me close by wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas. No matter what you’re doing, please enjoy your day!
If you're new here, I hope you will consider subscribing to the P.I. Blog. Just click on this link to add it to your RSS reader. You can also receive e-mail updates by subscribing via the box located on the blog itself. Thanks for visiting!
Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, What's New?, Social Media, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover, The Association Innovator, Simplicity, We Have Always Done It That Way, Garage Memes, Socially Responsible Innovation
Ben Martin and P.I.
Association exec Ben Martin, CAE is P.I.’s Architect of Participation. Jeff and Ben help clients harness the power of the Web through the strategic application of social tools.
The AST Executive Summary
The executive summary of the groundbreaking Association Social Technologies survey project is now available for download! The full report will be available in October.
