Ann Oliveri

Welcome

What if for every hour you worked or volunteered, you could earn more, learn more, gain a new skill, connect with peers, and change the world for the better?  

This blog is for those of us who believe that a life of purpose is the ultimate employee and member benefit.  For a selection of favorite posts since 2006, go to the BestOfZen.org

Ann Oliveri is a marketing coach and brand strategist who works with responsible leaders and mission-driven entrepreneurs, mobilizing power for good. 

 

Association Leadership: Oxymoron or Redundancy?

Years ago, military intelligence was the phrase I trotted out as my favorite oxymoron, but maybe it should be one much closer to home: association leadership.  

After all, associations document the minimum standard of practice and benchmark reasonable expectations of performance. The goal is to draw a line in the sand that places ethical practice just beyond the truly unscrupulous but in easy reach of those in technical compliance. So by definition, the bar must be low enough to avoid challenges and excessive legal bills. If that's leadership, we are all in trouble.

Yet, the opportunity for leadership lies in a vigorous challenge to that minimum, the status quo.  To attract new members and support, we must advance practice and aspire to be more. 

How can we make sure "association leadership" is a redundant term not an oxymoron? 

• What if associations relentlessly sought out the thought and market leaders in our sectors and senior practitioners who have moved on, chasing them down and co-creating meaningful opportunities so compelling they couldn't say no to getting involved? 

• What if associations elected and groomed leaders whose business and professional practices reset the benchmark and rewrote the definition of responsible policies and actions?

• What if associations welcomed critics and competitors into neutral forums or created mega-communities of leaders where we could work together to eliminate a mega-problem rather than negotiate the shape of the table?

For too long, association managers have dumbed down member involvement in search of efficiency, emulating Nurse Ratched in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, neutralizing boards and members to keep them docile. Maybe the inmates should be running the asylum.  Maybe it's time to be a movement.

Problem Definition

What does the Journal of Association Leadership need to be?  That was the question of yesterday's retreat for a dozen editorial advisory board members and knowledge staff.  Heroically facilitated by Dan Martinage, we finally sorted out the issues that we could address and the first was definition of terms.  Among the disputed concepts was "leadership." 

In the advance questionnaire, I proposed that the Journal simply live up to its name--leadership.  It's not Association Now; it's Association Next.  Much to my surprise, I learned that in Association Land, leadership is only an adjective as in "leadership group."  My bad.

As Kerry Stackpole reminded us, the association manager's dictum is:  Always place a volunteer between you and a problem.  So finessing who and how you partner with members is just politics, not leadership.  See, definitions are important.

Anyhoo, the good news is we ultimately agreed on the most important definition.  We defined our audience, not the product.  The real issue is how to engage senior practitioners--serious people who no longer have a home at ASAE and the Center--the 10% who are still having their employer pay their dues but who have disengaged. 

If you've done your time on section councils, where do you go?  If you are no longer a functional specialist or simply appalled by the status quo, how do you find your peers? 

Serious people have no ribbon to identify themselves to each other at a meeting and defy stale categories of age, title, or experience.  A speaker ribbon is no longer the answer.  I thought being a fellow would do it for me, but no.   Then the social responsibility movement gained some steam, but that will be years before it reaches critical mass, if at all in its current home.

So what if the Journal was a process not a publication? 

What if someone with an idea, a draft article or some interesting research from another field could attract other interested senior practitioners earlier in the production process, say six months prior to publication--whatever that ultimately looks like.

Would you show up?

Night at the Opera

In a cross between the Marx Brothers and Les Cages Aux Folles, the Washington Opera Company is staging Verdi's farce, Falstaff, at the Kennedy Center through the end of the month--perfect for Halloween with its goblins and witches and faeries.

Tim Smith, Baltimore Sun, has a review today that sums up the experience, including a description of the "Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo-style flock of male dancers in sylph-y ballerina outfits."  You had to be there and thanks to Goldstar.com, we were, at half-price.

What's remarkable is the imagination of director Christian Räth who took the co-produced Royal Opera sets and Verdi's opera and created something new. Charming.

(Photo by Karin Cooper, Kennedy Center / March 3, 2008, appearing in the Baltimore Sun, October 13, 2009.)

Write On

When asked about her writing process for a video interview, a nine-year old girl carefully considers her answer and finally says: "I like to write with a red pen." 

Ah, there's nothing like a great pen to inspire a writer.

October 20 is the National Day on Writing and you can celebrate by adding a favorite piece to the National Gallery of Writing. Samples are not limited to traditional essays.  Blog posts, YouTube videos, almost any medium is welcome.  All contributions are reviewed prior to posting to maintain the spirit of the exercise.

The National Council of Teachers of English and dozens of affiliates and partners are celebrating clear thinking and good writing by hosting this digital archive of writing from across the U.S.  NCTE's partners include:

• 826 Project
• Alliance for Young Artists & Writers (AYAW)
• American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
• Association of American Colleges and Universities Gallery
• Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA)
• Faculty Resource Network Gallery
• Google Docs
• International Reading Association (IRA)
• Karz Productions
• National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL)
• National Council of Social Studies (NCSS)
• National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
• National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
• National Geographic Society (NGS)
• National Science Teachers Association (NSTA)
• National Writing Project (NWP)
• Newseum
• ProLiteracy
• USA Today

So if there's an English teacher that made you a better writer or at least a better person, contribute a sample of your writing before the 20th.   I am indebted to Sr. Eleanor and Mrs. Tofoya,  Miss McKeil and Mr. Z. My contribution was a 2007 blog post, Mentor for Life, about a letter I wrote to my mom when I was 18.

Get out that red pen and write on...anything!

Crowd Sourcing the Future of Associations

Finally, someone is using social media to reform the failed business model of a beloved membership organization, the National Geogrphic Society. 

Alan Mairson, free-lance journalist and former staffer at NGS, is on a crusade to save National Geographic and, in turn, journalism.  Blogging at SocietyMatters.org, Mairson offers up solid reporting and is attracting a crowd to work on the problem.

Last night, I attended the second IgniteDC event as the guest of that perennial cool chick, Rhea Blanken.  It was an opportunity to experience a digital crowd in human form, giving a platform and five minutes to people with a passion.  In Round Two, Mairson did his five minutes and brought the place to life.

Stories from his time at National Geographic made his point, reinforcing his credibility as a writer who worked inside that golden yellow box of images for twenty years.  One story was of a failed membership campaign, appealing to subscribers to "Join the Adventure."   Mairson's point?  By promising armchair adventure as it had for 100 years, NGS failed to engage potential members in their own adventure.

No doubt the magazine is in trouble--all are--and those who love the magazine want to save it.  But when I think of National Geographic, it's no longer the magazine that comes to mind.  I think of exploration and our planet, their fabulous exhibits in Washington and maniacal love of photography and perfection.  I think of the one time NGS involved me in their work--I sent my DNA in to the ongoing "genographic" project tracing our shared humanity.

I haven't looked at the magazine in years--Smithsonian magazine filled that gap--but is the National Geographic just a magazine? And is a magazine journalism?

Scopes Trial Redux

Apple dropped its membership in the U.S. Chamber this week not just because of a difference of opinion on climate change, but also due to the Chamber's hyperbolic boasting.  

According to Politco, "A large part of the campaign against Chamber membership stems from the group’s call to launch a “Scopes Monkey Trial of the 21st century” about the science of climate change, referring to a 1926 trial that challenged Tennessee law mandating the teaching of the divine creation and forbidding the teaching of evolution."

Rather than reaching "consensus" among its 3 million members, (see correction below) why doesn't the Chamber celebrate the differences?  By promoting the division on EPA regulation vs. cap and trade legislation, the Chamber provides useful information to lawmakers of all stripes and better represents its members. 

No wait.  What am I saying?  Gladiators like the Chambers' lobbyists need to swing a big, uh, stick and preach doom and destruction to earn their hefty salaries, don't they?

Does anyone else appreciate the irony of threatening another Scopes trial?  Colonialists and capitalists embraced evolution as the rationale for exploitation, chanting the survival of the fittest slogan. Manifest destiny and all that, right? Yet now those same interests have found religion.

Who are the real monkeys here?

UPDATE:  Don't miss James Surowiecki's column in the New Yorker and the October 12 blog post, Abandoning the Chamber and October 14 post on downsizing its membership from 3 million to 300,000 in The U.S. Chamber: Now 90% Smaller.

Don't miss the Mother Jones' blog post outing the Chamber and the comment from a former U.S. Chamber membership staffer dropping the dime on the actual number of dues-paying members.  Oh, my.

Hedgehog in Paris

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery is ideal reading over a grand creme in Paris.  I had been meaning to read it, but am glad I put it off until the trip.  After pouring over Michelin guides and tourist brochures, it was a relief to retreat to fiction while staying in the place.

Born in Casablanca, raised in France, and now living in Japan, Barbery has written a fable of two outsider intellectuals, one old and one young, mixing in German philosophy and Japanese art films, to create a delightful cast of characters, satire, and inspiration in one package.

Hedgehog has been on the New York TImes Bestseller list for the last three years and remains at #14.   Europa Editions, publisher of Hedgehog in paperback, also publishes Jane Gardam, author of another favorite novel, Old Filth.   With two winners like these, it's enough to recommend all Europa Edition authors to me so I hunted up Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett's Prime Time Suspect at the library.  Will let you know if the theory holds.

France. It's Good.

Enlightenment architect Claude-Nicholas Ledoux's Saline Royale was one of the highlights of our two-week, 2,000 mile drive through France last month. 

The big discovery of the trip for me, though, was why terroir is such a definitive force, not just in wine but in a region's identity.  The landscape is dominant, even if carefully manicured.  Everyone does their part to make the world beautiful, starting with their own beautiful selves.

Some things have changed since our last trip here 20 years ago, but only the things that needed to change (like the WCs).  Everyone we dealt with was pleasant, even in Paris, and we made some lovely new friends along the way.

We drove from Paris to Bordeaux then cross country via Sarlat and Millau to Avignon then north to Lyon and the Franche-Comte before heading back to Paris. To see our route, take a look at the Google Map.

Here's a link to the photo album, but be prepared. There are 40 some photos, but that's edited down from 800 or so!

There's plenty of speculation that La Belle France may be changing for the worse, though, becoming as homogenized as our pasteurized cheese. Zut alors!  Never!  But get there before it all turns into DIsneyland Paris.

Cringe Factor

Tuesday, the Daily Show satirized the protectors of corporations from big government--trade associations--and their fake populist ad campaigns featuring average Americans as spokesmodels. The punchline came when the coal lobby's "Faces of Coal" campaign was outed for its use of purchased photos from iStock.com.

Earlier this year, when big pharma's Harry and Louise ads came out in favor of health care insurance reform, I had started to hope that associations had turned the corner on advocacy, but the energy giants have proven me wrong.  Huge cringe factor.

UPDATE: A week after this show, I saw an ad on MSNBC from the American Petroleum Institute of an interview with a woman who was clearly not an actor or model. 

IDEO Puts the "I" in Community

Enabling the individual enables the community, writes IDEO's Patrice Martin in the current issue of Patterns. Powerful communities emerge when individuals are encouraged to take ownership and find their voices.

"Funny how an emphasis on “I” leads to a more coherent sense of we," she notes, adding a list of three ways we can put the "i" in community:

1. Make your customers co-owners

Let your customers own the experience with you. Push past the comfort zone of control and see how far your experience grows.

2. Attract personality with personality

Want to attract passion? Be passionate. Dare to show your personality in order to encourage others to put just as much or more into the experience.

3. Practice stealth facilitation

Edit in the background. Authenticity and spontaneity should appear in the forefront, not control.

Doesn't that sum up the best advice for handling communities of practice?  Easy to see why I love the people of IDEO!  BTW, if you'd like to play with them, and talk more about building community, don't miss The Vine Salon at IDEO on November 17 at IDEO's HQ in Palo Alto.