Principled Innovation LLC

3 questions for #asae11

August 31st, 2010

As I did last year following #asae09 in Toronto, I am bypassing the #asae10 post-mortem in favor of looking ahead at the questions I hope we will be discussing actively by the time we reconvene in St. Louis next August for #asae11.  It should come as no surprise that these are big strategic questions, and I hope they spark many powerful conversations for organizations across our community in the months ahead.

1.  What is it going to take for associations to thrive over the next decade?–The next ten years will be decisive for many associations, if only because our entire society will begin to feel the full force and effect of an exponential rate of change before this decade is out.  The challenge of building resilient organizations capable of flourishing in an environment both unforgiving and filled with opportunity is unprecedented and complex.  Far too many associations continue to struggle with the transition from 20th century command-and-control hierarchies to 21st century distributed and distributive networks, from insular, progress-resistant cultures to a full embrace of the serendipitous possibilities of an open and collaborative social future.  Over the next 12 months, the “thrivability imperative” for associations will grow ever more insistent and our organizations, as well as the association community as a whole, and we need to develop a clearer sense of how we’re going to respond.

2.  What is our mental model for associating over the next decade?–This question is closely related to the first since building our capacity to thrive will depend substantially on how we design and construct the radical new value we propose to offer to our future stakeholders.  We need new mental models of associating in order to conceptualize the new business models that will make our associations thrivable in the years ahead.  I have repeatedly proposed that the future of associating is mobile.  At the very least, the growing global importance of online networks and other social technology platforms confirms that associating is already evolving into a richer, more complete and more resonant digital experience.

Unfortunately, many associations continue to be limited not only by the legacy constraints and costs of a still-mostly analog platform for value creation, but also by the narrow tactical application of new digital tools to slow the inexorable decline of old, failing mental and business models.  So as associations begin to make more significant investments in a variety of new capabilities, their key organizational stakeholders will need to arrive at a shared understanding around the preferred futures those capabilities can help create, and how those futures will be different from the past.

3.  What can associations do to sustain human attention and energy for engagement?–This is a non-trivial issue for organizations that depend on the free flow of these discretionary resources for their success.  In a world of continuous partial attention, growing obesity and sleeplessness, human attention and energy are becoming more scarce and, thus, more expensive.  Associations can no longer afford to waste these irreplaceable commodities on administrivia and meaningless make-work.  Instead, our organizations need to fundamentally rethink how to channel the available attention and energy of both staff and voluntary contributors toward generative work with the potential to create radical new value in the short term and nurture thrivability over the long term.  As part of tackling this emerging challenge, associations will need to design new relationships with future stakeholders that maximize the ease and impact of simpler and more “energy efficient” forms of engagement.

Of course, I’ll be sharing more thoughts on all of these (as well as other) questions in future posts, and I want to hear from you as well.  What questions do you hope we will be discussing by the time we gather for #asae11?  Please post your additions to the list in the comments below.

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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, Garage Memes, Governing for Innovation, Embrace the Revolution, #ASAE09, Mobile, Business Model Innovation, #ASAE10, #ASAE11