(originally published on Nick's Book Blog)

So it's now February but I need to start implementing my ideas better. I have decided that it's an implementation problem. In order to make a change happen, you have to advocate for it. In order to advocate effectively, you need to keep good records and keep track of your ideas. Not big ideas, mind you, the small little innovations that make a tight ship. I need to be better at documenting problems and recommending a coherent solution. All this takes discipline, so I'm going to work on that.

(originally published on Nick's Book Blog)

Via Ben Martin, here's a write-up of Bono's speech to ASAE and the Centre. Blogging has been light lately, not that too many people would notice :) I have been trying to get caught up on some things at home and work. These will be useful for me. Also, I just joined the board as secretary of a group called RescueGroups.org. I went to my first meeting yesterday, and it was a great group of folks doing some cool stuff. I'm very much looking forward to it, and it's just fun meeting new people.

(originally published on Nick's Book Blog)

I missed the memo on this one, but I'm making a note of this report for my own reference. It's a report from Moody's Investors Service--the people who do credit ratings and risk analysis--treating issues of governance in the not-for-profit healthcare sector. Now, this clearly centers around hospitals and the like--obviously a different issue than that which us association people face. Nonetheless, the lessons from this report could be useful to many. In particular, the "core dimensions of governance" are ones which should always be on the front burner, regardless of size of what have you. They are, according to the report:

1. Development of Organization's Mission
2. Selection and Evaluation of Senior Management
3. Board Composition and Performance
4. Understanding and Interpretation of Financial Reporting
5. Use of Performance Metrics Based On External Benchmarks to Regularly Review Institution's Performance
6. Maintaining and Building the Organization's Financial Resources
7. Avoidance of Conflicts of Interest

(originally published on Nick's Book Blog)

This is going to be a new series here at Nick's Book Blog. I'm going to do a review of association/trade magazines. How am I going to choose which ones to review, you might ask? Very simple. Whatever trade publication is sitting in the magazine rack at the Golds Gym in Baileys Crossroads is fair game for the blog. There are usually two or three there at any time.

Now that we've got that out of the way, today's featured magazine is published by the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, entitled Club Business for Entrepreneurs which is a supplement to Club Business International, February 2006 issue.

In general, the magazine is pretty attractive. Lots of ads, clearly there are quite a few advertisers who are wanting to speak to this market. The ads are mainly for exercise machines, industry-specific software, etc. The lead article is about a woman who overcame some hardships of her own and now owns a health club. It's nice, feel-good stuff, and I think it's very appropriate to use the magazine space to highlight community-building types of stuff.

They have articles and departments. I took note of one particularly useful department called "IHRSA asks 7 questions." The magazine basically interviews a member, finds out what makes that person tick. Importantly, they ask the member what member benefits she finds most useful:

"I love sampling programs. We distributed free Kashi bars and coupons and they were a big hit. I've told my members about the Passport program, which is also a great benefit."

I passed that one on to my boss because I thought it was so useful.

They also plugged their 4th annual legislative summit. Typical set up. Come to Washington, get trained, meet with your member of congress. Here's what they're working on on Capitol Hill:

"A primary goal of this educational event is to ensure passage of the Workforce Health Improvement Program (WHIP) Act, which is currently being considered by Congress. This bill would boost your corporate membership sales by allowing employers to deduct the cost of health club memberships for their employees and ensuring that this benefit would not be classified as additional income to employees."

Good, solid publication from IHRSA.

(originally published on Nick's Book Blog)

Funny line from an article I found. Read the whole thing.

(originally published on Nick's Book Blog)

You know, since I work for a design-related association--and I've had these thoughts even before I started working here--that really, organizational design has tons in common with traditional design, i.e. "let's create something cool." Anyway, apparently this idea is becoming more mainstream, which I'm all for. Where do I sign up for the PhD program? j/k I need another degree like I need a hole in the head.

(originally published on Nick's Book Blog)

So, as a follow up to yesterday's designy post, I wanted to blog this book. I am not a designer, but I have always been a self-aware consumer of good design. As an organization person now, I have tried to leverage design as best I can in an environment that doesn't always care about it. Currently, I have the luxury of working for an organization where design is bread and butter, so now I can indulge myself a little design wonkery. As I've discovered design has a great deal in common with organizational process, etc., so I've made up my mind to expore this more comprehensively.

So, reading this book in function of association management is a good start. First chapter talks about the job of a communicator. I think we can see that that's a useful thing to look at.

To design means to plan. The process of design is used to bring order from chaos and randomness. Order is good for readers [ed. members or other stakeholders of your organization], who can more easily make sense of an ordered message [the image your association or organization puts forward]. An ordered message is therefore considered good design (1).

Alex White (the author of the book), does a tremendous job of writing clearly about the discipline of design, and of course, gets in to some (fairly but not overly) technical details about graphic design specifically. I will use this book as an outline for more writing about how to use design more as a metaphor for abstraction in organization, but for now, I have to give the book back to the library because I've had it too long. Guess I'll go out and purchase.

By Alex W. White
ISBN # 1581152507

UPDATE: While I'm on about design subjects, just read Emily Chang's thoughts on Design 2.0. Reminds me of a Google "quote of the day" a few weeks ago from Antoine de St-Exupery: "You know you’ve achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away."

(originally published on Nick's Book Blog)

Here's a post by a firm called Gulo, who're writing about some more technical "blogs may be the silver bullet but how do I actually generate content" type of stuff. I generally think the comments are worthwhile, although, I kind of take exception to the "it's unfair to ask staff to blog," line of thought. Seems to me that it's a matter of creating an open culture where staff would have to see a model, and then be encouraged to try it out. Although I can see that not every staffer would be cut out for blogging, I bet one or two would love it--and it probably wouldn't be the communications person, who is probably sick of having to generate content.

Also I agree wholeheartedly with the fact that some members would love to get their views out there, and I don't think you'd have to pay them anything. After all, members volunteer for lots of other jobs without the promise of remuneration.

Worth the read. See what you think.

(originally published on Nick's Book Blog)

The second in my series on association publications, this time I'm doing the CIO Executive Council's magazine which is called, appropriately enough, CIO. The article I focused on was a pretty good one that focused on strategic partnerships. Here's a graphic that illustrates the issue. I thought the magazine was very well done and pretty slick. The production quality was seriously like Newsweek.

Anyway, the piece featured Campbell Soup's CIO, a woman called Doreen Wright. Here's a case study of the issue from IBM themselves. Anyhow, the article was pretty good--but it made partnering sound pretty scary--at least that was my takeaway. Apparently "strategic partnerships" fail like 50% of the time. Above is a graphic that covers some of the issues one needs to look out for.

Not being a member of the Executive Council, I thought the magazine did a good job of covering current issues in the field and talking about big-picture stuff. I'm not sure how I would feel if I were in a smaller organization, it was fairly focused on Fortune 500 types of issues--maybe that's their overwhelmingly predominant demo. The other thing I noticed is that there weren't many plugs for membership, and the sense of community was not there, it was pretty advertiser driven. I wonder if they sell a lot of subscriptions to nonmembers. Would be interesting to find out.

(originally published on Nick's Book Blog)

(originally published on Nick's Book Blog)

My library trip has been postponed due to the snow in our nation's capital. So I've got this book and am raring to go.

Chapter 1 is entitled "Space is emptiness."

Emptiness is an essential aspect of life. It is the unavoidable opposite of fullness, of busyness, of activity. It is the natural and universally present background to everything we see.

How can this principle (or element) apply to the nonprofit, or association environment? Or, to the business environment for that matter? Usually we don't think about our organizations in the context of absense, but rather, of presence.

But background is important, whether to design or to organizations. The book goes on to talk about how few people actually "see." We look at things, but we don't see them. I came across this link yesterday that talks about asking questions. I think they'd agree that asking these questions, eliciting unobvious answers, is all about "seeing" clearly.

RESOURCE: Introduction to Questionnaire Design. This might seem random to my readers, but I want to be able to refer to it later! Also, a usability study from the government provides a good model. These types of activities can help us see, I think.

So, let's look at the principle of white space. In graphic design, the white space is obviously the part of the page that is black or unused. But it's important. If I want to apply this principle to an organization, I'd say that the "white space" is the areas where the organization IS NOT. For example, staying within mission is an example of using white space and defining the message by what you're not doing. Any other ideas?

A couple of other interesting points from chapter 1. "Space is context." So the context in which an organization works is meaningful. I'm thinking an analog to my work would be audience, potential audience, profession or trade, generational differences, etc.

"Space adds quality." The book talks about retailers. If you think about a place like Banana Republic, Armani, or Zegna, there aren't racks upon racks upon racks of clothes to display. (Even Armani's website is amazingly sparse.) There is room to spread out and to think. I think lots of associations could use this model more. I haven't read the book, (I have put a hold on it so it'll be along soon) but The Paradox of Choice, Why More is Less, by Barry Schwartz, seems like it must address this facet of organizational design.

By Alex White
ISBN# 1581152507

(originally published on Nick's Book Blog)

I haven't known quite how to do this for awhile, but here goes. My name is Nick Senzee. I live in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, where I've lived for four years. I like it here. I am originally from Kansas City, Missouri.

I earned my Bachelor's and Master's degrees in French and Francophone literatures from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Although Utah is in the mountains, I never learned to ski while I was there. I think it was a combination of limited cash flow as well as fear of skiing with my black-diamond friends. Provo was great, but after awhile my wife and I decided it was time for adventure. Since we got our degrees in French, we decided to do something very French and move to the capital to make our fortunes (like so many Balzac heros and heroines before us).

I studied French because, well, I speak it pretty good. After my degree was over with, I figured out I wasn't very good at doing postmodern readings of texts I didn't care about. Also I had to hide the fact that it was all kind of stupid. (No offense, former profs, I love you all). So I decided to get a job, which DC was willing to help me out with. Thus begins my affair with association management.

I started working for the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy as their "Division Affairs Manager," which other people would call "Chapter Relations." I learned a lot in the position, and the best part was working with all these wonderful therapists. I would come home from a conference and feel really good about myself. When it was time to move on from AAMFT, I went to the Alpha-1 Association, a patient-advocacy organization for individuals with a rare disease.

After a brief stint as membership director for the Color Marketing Group (a professional association for designers who, among other things, forecast color trends), I came to work at a larger healthcare professional association in Alexandria, Virginia. I am active in the American Society for Association Executives (ASAE). I have written a piece for their trade magazine and for the chapter relations newsletter, played a small part in their environmental scanning conversations and educational development. And I enjoy making connections with other professionals in Association Management. It's generally good fun.

For me, association management is a good fit for a career because I get the opportunity to do lots of different things each day. It's people-intensive, so it doesn't get boring very often. And I've had the opportunity to learn more about the workings of the federal and state governments, as well as to do lots of work with Canadians (always fun, since I speak French with a PQ brogue) and other cultures as well through my fairly short career.

For fun, I like to putter. This means keeping in touch with friends, gardening and working around the house, etc. I like to read, mostly nonfiction. I also like to work out and go running when I'm motivated. (Don't ask me to explain that.) I also sometimes enjoy writing and I have several book and article ideas that I work on whenever I'm feeling manic.