Are we up or are we down? Are we heading towards success or irrelevancy?  Is the recession over or just about to begin again?  Are we growing or shrinking?

Our sense is that the answer depends on who you are talking to.  And, we were particularly interested in taking a pulse with associations.  When the opportunity arose for Tom Laughon, Catch Your Limit’s Founder/CEO, to be the VIP guest at an executive roundtable on September 22, 2011 sponsored by the Colorado Society of Association Executives in Denver, we leapt at it.  The roundtable was such a meaningful experience; we decided to keep the conversation going.  The very next week, we held a similar roundtable in Richmond with association executives.  We posed a variety of questions including:

• We’re all trying to do more with less.  How are you staying focused, energized and enthusiastic?  What are you doing/what could we do to combat fatigue in ourselves and our organizations?
• In these challenging economic times, how do we balance needing to be strategic, innovative leaders for our categories (+ members + staff) while at the same needing job security?
• Looking into 2012 … what behaviors/trends do you expect to see with your members that you’re taking notice of? How are you (+ your association) responding?
• Over the past few years …
  • Where have you cut resources (time, energy, $) and found that it paid off in a positive way? How are you (+ your association) responding?
  • Where have you cut resources (time, energy, $) and found that it was costly and detrimental?  How are you (+ your association) responding?

The questions were powerful and they served their purpose … they got folks talking.  But, it was what was shared during the conversations that left us laughing, crying, hoping and cursing … the power of peers coming together to share their experiences was most impactful.

From the roundtables in Denver and Richmond, as well as the conversations that we’re having with association executives around the nation, we’ve listed a few of our observations.  Please note that the association executives that we’ve talked with and that we work with are a small sample size and this summary is not a research report.  Also, insights may be slightly skewed as we surround ourselves with executives that are setting standards for best practices and are leading the industry in various ways.

Observation 1: You’re Up For the Challenge
If someone thought that you’d back down from a challenge without a fight, they were dead wrong. There may have been an initial “shock and awe” aspect to the impacts the recession and the economy were having on you and your members, but you’ve bounced back as leaders.  You’re growing as leaders as you guide your board, staff and members during tumultuous times.  You’re making much needed changes that should prove to be beneficial, although they have taken a toll in the short run. You’re asking hard questions, you’re problem solving  and you’re more than willing to roll up your sleeves and do what it takes to be successful.

Observation 2: You Have Needs, Too
As the times have taken their toll on your members, you’ve been there to empathize, be supportive and offer to help in a variety of ways.  You’ve seen the categories that you represent from a unique perspective.  Some of you have had to say good-bye and mourn long time industry players that you could never have imagined closing their doors.  Or, perhaps you’ve seen your industry shrink as mergers and acquisitions continue. Some of you have had to educate new start-ups on the importance of an association that advocates on your behalf.  Others have seen impressive growth and have been scurrying around to meet increasing needs.  Whatever the situation, you are there.  You are there caring for your members and your category.  But, you haven’t always cared for yourself.  It’s critical that you find time to tend to the care and well being of you so that you can continue to serve others.  Talking with other association peers can be a positive way to stay focused and energized.

Observation 3: A Roadmap Is Difficult To Come By
Dorothy said it best, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”  You are doing your part to assess the new landscape and identify opportunities but things are changing quickly.  You’re trying to move things along but you recognize that the structure you’ve operated in for years can be slow and clunky and not conducive to creativity and innovation.  You’re working with your volunteer leaders to change mindsets and skillsets so that you’ll be open to new ideas and in a position to act on them. You’ve asked your volunteer leaders for special sessions or to move up dates so that you can get their hearts and brains in the game and come up with the best possible roadmap given what you know today and what scenarios might occur in the future.

Observation 4: Money matters. Performance Counts. Time is the Enemy.
This mantra is posted in everyone’s office at Catch Your Limit.  But, we’re certain that you’ve got this as a tattoo!  You get that money matters, especially to your boards.  You’re having debates over whether to cut costs or invest new directions.  This is especially tricky and sensitive when you’re dealing with downturns and reserves.  You’re having to earn your keep and your staff is doing more than ever before with less.  And, with unrelenting meeting schedules, perhaps the resource you covet the most is time … time to be strategic, time to innovate, time to lead.

Observation 5: Work smarter, Not Harder
Your association is changing.  You’re coming up with new plans and are trying new things.  You have less resources.  In this environment, a “stop doing” list is crucial.  And, although you’ve been through lots of change in recent years, you must never underestimate how difficult change can be and how powerful “but we’ve always done it that way” can be.  Where does your focus need to be? What is getting in the way?  What programs have little to no ROI? The time is right to examine what you need to stop investing resources (time, $ and energy) in.  Also, be sure that you’re leveraging your staff, board and committees to the fullest.  Where is the highest and best use of your time?

Join the conversation.
Use the questions to generate discussions for your organization.  Share what you learn/observe with us.

Melissa Laughon
melissa@catchyourlimit.com
804-767-1702

><(("> Melissa Laughon

Melissa is a ><(("> Team Member at Catch Your Limit, a management consulting firm with offices in Tallahassee, Florida and Richmond, Virginia. To learn more, visit www.catchyourlimit.com.

A few months ago, I agreed to interview Kevin Maney as part of Idea Sandbox’s Post 2Post Virtual Book Tour (which we think is great).

A few days after committing to the project, The Two-Second Advantage arrived at the office and made its way to my desk (which is to say that this book landed in the Bermuda Triangle).   For days it sat on my desk – not too close to interfere with the deadlines at hand, but not too far as to get out of my stream of consciousness.  And, on my desk, this interesting book stayed untouched for days – ok weeks.

I had not even opened the book and knew very little about it, but each time I glanced at this book, it told stories to me every day … stories of all of the “one more things” I’ve elected to read, to write, to do, to cram into an already busy schedule and all of the book ideas and blogs and articles and interviews and research papers of my very own that have gone unwritten.  After a few weeks of being tortured by the book (and the impending interview deadline), I was faced with a decision.  I could write to Idea Sandbox and share with them the paranormal nature of my desk and how the book had disappeared under mysterious circumstances.  Or, I could follow through with my commitment and pick up the book, open the book, read the book and interview Kevin.

So, I did what I normally do in these situations, I asked my 8ball – should I follow through and interview Kevin?  And, it said, “better not tell you now.”  Great.  Maybe YouTube could help me craft my excuses involving extraterrestrials.  Yes, for the record, YouTube can help with that.  And, it can also tell you a little about this book - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3XSR6turQs.

Click on book cover to see book trailer

True Story

And, after watching the trailer, I thought how silly of me to have put this off for so long!  P2P always features great books and this was one that I knew I’d be fascinated by!

So, on that note, me, my book and I, walked down the street to a little Thai restaurant and got to know each other.  After just a few chapters, I was excited to talk with Kevin and started counting down the days until our interview.

And, just in case you’re a little like me and have a short attention span and like to skip around a bit, we’ve edited the interview down into shorter segments that you can take a self-guided tour of .  The audio links are included below.

I highly recommend this book.  The concepts of how human brainpower and a new evolution of IT will work together in a predictive manner to help us succeed in the future is as useful as it is fascinating.  The stories that are shared as examples are captivating and inspiring.  And, the bottom line is that this is a change in mindset and we need to understand it and embrace it or we’ll be left in the dust … you know … that “change or die” stuff people have been talking about.

• Kevin Maney on how having a two-second advantage can make the world a better place
  Making the World a Better Place
  
• Kevin Maney on how the need for a two-second advantage will impact recruiting in the future
  Recruiting Talent
• Kevin Maney on the relevancy of strategic planning and scenario planning in the future
  Strategizing
• Kevin Maney on our education system and the two-second advantage
  Education
  
• Kevin Maney on more data vs. better answers
  Data vs Answers
  
• Kevin Maney on the ones to watch re: the two-second advantage
  The Ones to Watch
  
• Kevin Maney on how having a two-second advantage is about more than technology, it requires a cultural change
  A Cultural Change

Thanks Idea Sandbox and Kevin Maney! To follow the tour – check out the previous stop  http://collaborativeinnovation.org/2011/10/can-predictive-technology-solve-crowdsourcing/  and the next stop http://innovationtools.com/.

><(("> Melissa Laughon

Melissa is a ><(("> Team Member at Catch Your Limit, a management consulting firm with offices in Tallahassee, Florida and Richmond, Virginia. To learn more, visit www.catchyourlimit.com.

However, a pet peeve of mine has been festering, and I reached my boiling point today. I’m going to let it out and save my fluffy blog for another time.

It is normal to have pet peeves in business such as: “I hate when my cubicle neighbor routinely cuts his or her toenails on work time,” “my boss still calls twitter ‘tweeter,’” and “I was almost run over by my maniacal coworker in the parking garage – again.”

Everybody is entitled to be annoyed by things in the office considering we spend a huge portion of our lives there.

But my concern is one that very few folks in business do not seem to have a grasp on – the e-mail carbon copy function.

Electronic mail actually predates the inception of the Internet and was in use by the early 1970s. Most people have been using e-mail for business and personal matters since the mid 1990s, meaning an average person could have sent possibly hundreds of thousands of e-mails over the years. That’s a long time to catch on to some basic principles of what to do and what not to do when it comes to e-mail.

I’ll get to the point. Carbon copying (abbreviated as cc or c.c.) in an e-mail goes to two or more people whom the author wants to publicly include in a message. Usually the main person you’re writing to is listed in the “to” category and secondary recipients are listed in the “cc” category. Ok, that’s pretty simple.

Carbon copying others makes sense when writing to an entire department, a team or a family – groups of people who logically would be included in the message.

Here’s where carbon copying can go awry:

Coworkers use e-mail to ask each other questions, share ideas and problem solve. In these cases, the e-mails tend to be informal in nature and not meant to be seen by an outside party – especially a boss or supervisor. There is usually a big difference between the types of e-mails that are sent among the ranks and that are sent to executives.

If you are bouncing ideas off your coworker, don’t start to carbon copy the boss mid-conversation – especially without letting the other person know. From my experience, higher ups prefer to see the final result and unless they specifically ask to be included in the planning phases of a project, don’t bore them with things they probably don’t want to know.

And here’s something else to think about – this could be perceived as a violation of trust and privacy. There’s times when I wonder if people use e-mail carbon copying as a weapon to make other people look silly or expose an error or a mistake to a boss or another person.

If this did happen to me, I know my cheeks would turn red as I imagined my boss opening the e-mail wondering why they were included in such mundane details and why the person felt it necessary to get them involved. I’d feel like I just got told on to my teacher.

Another example of a huge no-no in my book is using carbon copying for personal gain. As innocent as this sounds, it is not a way to make brownie points. I know of somebody who was doing some research about services and sent out a few feeler e-mails to get information. One of the e-mails that person received back included not only the information they requested, but a strategically placed carbon copy to a VIP.

Think of an e-mail almost like a phone call. If your coworker asked you a quick question, would you ask them to wait a second while you conferenced in their boss? If you called a vendor, would you think it was strange if they wanted you to put the director of the company on the line too? What a way to make somebody feel insignificant or incompetent!

I know we all make mistakes and clearly think what we’re doing at any given moment is appropriate and the right thing to do. E-mail is quick and dirty, but it requires more than just being able to hit send. It takes a few minutes of strategizing to really determine what you’re saying and to whom you’re saying it.

For such an easy-to-come by and practically free tool – e-mail is more powerful than we could ever imagine in relaying our image, our message our motives and our credibility.

“There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.”~ Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)

Mandy is a ><(("> Friend of Catch Your Limit, a marketing firm with offices in Tallahassee, Florida and Richmond, Virginia. To contact Mandy email her at misslou20@aol.com or to learn more about Catch Your Limit, visit www.catchyourlimit.com. ]]> http://blog.catchyourlimit.com/index.php/2011/a-really-big-rant-e-mail-courtesy/feed 0 http://blog.catchyourlimit.com/index.php/2011/my-last-days-at-catch-your-limit http://blog.catchyourlimit.com/index.php/2011/my-last-days-at-catch-your-limit#comments Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:18:30 +0000 Leighton http://blog.catchyourlimit.com/?p=3623 Well, sadly, this is my last week interning at Catch Your Limit Consulting. L It’s about time for me to return further south to finish my senior year at the University of Alabama! I truly have had a wonderful experience here at Catch Your Limit and in Richmond, VA.