Principled Innovation LLC

From recession to reset: Three learning questions for #ASAE10

August 21st, 2009

In the spirit of orienting our thinking toward the future, I’ve decided not to do a recap post for #ASAE09.  Other bloggers are covering this angle quite well, especially my friend and colleague Jamie Notter.  (BTW, I love you too man. ) Let me just say that #ASAE09 was a good meeting overall, outstanding in some ways and less so in others.  But no meeting can live up to all of our expectations, so why bother measuring it against some abstract, impossible-to-achieve standard of perfection?  What should matter most is whether the experience of attending creates personal and professional value, and in my case, the answer is a resounding yes.

Instead of looking back, let’s look ahead at what I hope we’ll be discussing next August at #ASAE10 in Los Angeles.  If the growing consensus among political leaders and pundits is to be believed, we will be out of the current recession by the time we gather for the next Annual Meeting, and the emerging “reset” economy will be underway.  In that context, here are three questions I hope we’ll be discussing in sessions, in the hallways and everywhere in between next summer in L.A.:

+What does it mean to be a 21st century association?–As we look toward the next decade of this still nascent century, associations need to rediscover the original beliefs and purposes that led to their creation, and explicitly connect those intentions to the new realities of the Web-enabled world.  For years, I have implored association leaders to stop living in the past.  Now, as 2010 approaches, it is critical for associations to shed their historical baggage once and for all, and focus on nurturing the cultural attributes, strategic capabilities and human creativity that blend to enable innovation.

+How do we design next practices?–Thriving in the reset economy will require associations to make real the emphasis on innovation heard throughout #ASAE09.  To do this, leaders must drive the development and implementation of new ways of working, especially fresh approaches that fully capitalize on emerging tools and technologies, including, but not limited to, social technologies.  By applying design thinking, associations can craft next practices to support the immediate innovation of products, services and experiences, and the longer term innovation of our rapidly decaying approaches to management, strategy-making and governing.

+How do we solve wicked problems?–Our society, our industries and professions and our association community all face extremely complicated and intractable problems that defy easy solutions.  Despite the complexity of these wicked problems, the time to tackle them is at hand, and continuing to defer them to future would be irresponsible.  Associations need to embrace what Clay Shirky calls “convening logic” and proactively cultivate the social assets that make collective action possible.  In the reset economy, the capacity to create deep meaning will be the central strategic imperative of association success.

By no means do I think these are the only three questions on our learning agenda for #ASAE10, and I reserve the right to revise and refine my choices as the next 12 months unfold in ways that are sure to be unpredictable.  For now, though, I believe these three questions offer a useful platform from which to launch a dialogue about the future of the association community.  So, please share your thoughts and your learning questions as comments below.  I look forward to your ideas and insights!

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Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, What's New?, Social Media, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover, The Association Innovator, We Have Always Done It That Way, Garage Memes, Governing for Innovation, Embrace the Revolution, #ASAE09