Principled Innovation LLC

The need for new theory

June 24th, 2008

In the words of Leonardo da Vinci, “he who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.”  Jamie’s recent post on the value of theory was an important statement on behalf of new thinking, but from my perspective, it didn’t go quite far enough.  So let me push the conversation a little bit further.

Association management and leadership are applied disciplines that place far greater emphasis on the day-to-day experiences of practitioners than on the inventive models and still untested perspectives of theorists.  In my career, I have played both roles, and I am very concerned that even as the tried-and-true approaches of the last 20+ years continue to diminish in value, we are not doing nearly enough to build a new theoretical base for the future of associating and associations.

What I find most surprising about our community’s reluctance to engage in theory-building is just how many of the strategic questions with which we are currently grappling cry out not for yet another “best practice,” but a fundamentally new orientation.  For example, it seems to me that in a Web-enabled world, the issue of association membership is less a matter of applying incrementally better marketing practices and more of an opportunity to adopt a new theory of engagement.  Unfortunately, for today’s harried association executives, the former invariably is the easier solution to sell to the CEO and the board of directors.

Even though building a theoretical base is difficult, we still must pursue this critical work.  As a consultant and blogger, I embrace as part of my role the responsibility to actively undermine conventional wisdom and prevailing orthodoxies, even when that obligation means I will be criticized for being too “theoretical.”  Jamie’s client took him to task for “telling CEOs what to do even though [he has] never walked a mile in their shoes.”  In response, I will take CEOs and their boards to task for being closed off to new constructs for driving strategic success, and I strongly urge those leaders to walk a mile in the shoes of frustrated association members who are waiting for outdated approaches to organizational decision-making and value creation to change for the better.

We must do more to create the future we most desire.  In the 21st century, associations cannot afford to cast about a roiling sea rudderless and without a compass.  Our capacity to thrive in a new time will depend, in part, on the quality of the new theoretical concepts of management and leadership we devise today.

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