CEO Solutions :: KST Consulting

Use SUCCESS to get your message heard! How can you get your ideas and messages across when everyone is bombarded daily with hundreds of “inputs”?

The acronym SUCCESS derives from the book, MADE TO STICK: Why Some Ideas Do & Others Don’t by Chip Health and Dan Heath. It’s chock full of stories, examples of urban legends and why they persist. They tell how you can best get your ideas across by finding the core of your idea–its most critical essence. They share why you can’t have “Five North Stars”–just one. Makes sense, right? We often ignore that wisdom and confuse others with a list of several major goals or ideas.

They quote French aviator and author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery who defined engineering elegance as: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Brilliant! How often do we keep piling it on?

Make an idea sticky according to the Heath brothers by following SUCCESS:

Simplicity, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Story Sticks!

Make people:

1. Pay attention
2. Understand and remember it
3. Agree/believe
4. Care, FEEL something (fear, anger, hope, excitement…)
5. Be able to act on it

What idea do you want to share? How can you get others to understand, remember and care? What story can you tell to make it stick? Will others be able to act on it?

STICK this post someplace as a daily reminder. Review it before you communicate!

For more information, read the book.

It’s US Census time!  Completing the census form prompted me to do a bit of personal reflection on how my personal and professional life has changed markedly in the past ten years. In fact, my life has been transformed. I am:

•  enjoying a different career as an association consultant after 35 years working inside associations,
•  married to a different man,
• grandmother to four children,
• live in a different home,
• a blond instead of brunnette (gray doesn’t fit my self image!)

just to list a few of the changes my life has undergone in the past 10 years. How has your life changed?

Better yet, what do you think has changed in your organization? How have your members changed? How have the demographics of your membership changed? What new programs/services are you offering and how are they being delivered differently? If you haven’t carefully considered these questions very recently, it is time to take a Census for your Organization.

I recommend you do it annually rather than waiting ten years. In fact, you need to keep in touch with the pulse of changes in your organization constantly with significant assessment periodically. So much can dramatically change in so little time that it is not enough to tweak your offerings, you may need a significant overhaul to your value proposition and how it is delivered.  You may need to be on a path of transformation through reinvention and innovation just as I have been personally and professionally for the past ten years. The changes I made didn’t all happen overnight or all at once. It was a progression of events and choices that resulted in my current life. Most of them occurred within a five to seven year timeframe.

A few things to think about:

• How will you attract and retain young professionals (millenials/Gen Y born 1977 and beyond) to engage them as future contributing members?
• How are you integrating social media into your marketing and communications initiatives if you haven’t already and are you gearin up for more changes in the social media environment?
• Are you successfully meeting and exceeding the expectations of four or more generations of culturally diverse members and staff?
• Do you engage in global initiatives? If not, are you missing opportunities?
• What language does your staff need to speak–English, Spanish, French, Chinese, other?
• What are your core business hours in a 24/7 world? Do you offer flexible schedules for staff? Operate up  from virtual offices?
• What needs to change, what needs to stay the same, what needs to be stopped so you can be the “go to resource” for your market five and ten years from now with a talented and engaged staff and cadre of volunteer leaders?

These are just a few questions that I encourage you to talk about with your stakeholders. What is your self image for the future and how will you achieve it?

Wishing you successful transformation in the next ten years, Karen

While on a wonderful cruise last week on the new  Oasis of the Seas, I was struck by how “fresh” all of the staff were. The magnificent ship is huge, holding over 6,000 passengers and a couple thousand staff.

 Week after week the staff greet and care for a new batch of several thousand guests on a ship they live and work on for several months without much down time. The staff work very long days. 

Watching the cruise staff interact with the passengers reminded me somewhat of association staff working an annual association conference. Association conferences are typically shorter than a cruise for most staff, lasting about 5 days. Some staff may be onsite for up to 10 days for pre and post meetings. There are some differences between the cruise staff and association staff. For instance, lots of extra time is devoted by association staff throughout the year to prepare for the annual event. The last few weeks are a definite push, with the staff usually feeling like it won’t all get done. Somehow it does! The leader has to cheer the staff to the end, assuring them of their expected success.

As staff, we come home exhausted, and usually take a few days of R&R. Yet, the cruise staff welcome a new crop of guests each week with the same energy and enthusiasm as the last. The ship’s captain oversees the whole operation week after week as well. He depends on the staff to work together as a well oiled machine, a team he can depend on to be his eyes and ears.

How do they do sustain that fresh energy and focus? What is the magical ingredient for them that enables them to remain so engaged in their work, week after week? Is it the gratuities many of them are counting on earning? Maybe the abject poverty of their home country and families depending on them to send home money, so they must keep their job and be eligible for another contract?  Are they unique in their makeup, somehow hard wired differently than the association staff? No matter the source of  their motivation, how do they avoid becoming exhausted?

It strikes me that these questions may be worthwhile to contemplate and discuss with your staff. See what might surface that could help you and your staff achieve a similiar level of energy and engagement with your members week after week.

Yes, I know a cruise is different from an annual conference and the cruise staff are not spending extraordinary time engaged in preparatory work before the next week’s cruise. Or are they? Surely, some must be. Food, fuel and other supplies must be ordered and placed onboard and registration must be prepared for the next group of vacationers to mention a few things. 

I don’t have the answers. Just the questions. What do you think? Could you be “up and on” week after week if you were interacting so closely with your members? If not, why? If so, what is your secret formula for success? Others would love to know. So would I!

It was over 15 years ago that I first learned about an organization’s lifecycle and the bell curve it can follow. Thus, when this topic recently surfaced on a listserv as if it was a new idea, I was very surprised. Thanks to the wisdom of another consultant doing board training for my association many years ago, I had been talking about the organization’s lifecyle with several associations for the past many years. It makes me think that association management topics may be a bit like those of women’s magazines. The headlines rarely change from year to year. There is one on fast weight loss, better sex, fabulous recipes, beautiful rooms, the latest fashions, and more. The topics may remain the same, but the information provided may have a new twist.

For those of us who have been working with associations for several years, even a few decades, maybe we need to dust off some topics that we consider old news. It may be old news to some of us but it is news to others. Just as we advise CEO’s to keep repeating the same messages time after time as their audience keeps changing, I think the same must be true for those of us speaking and consulting in the association leadership and management world.

For now, where do you think your association is in its lifecyle? Is it a newborn, adolescent, adult, mature? The key is to be on the cusp of adult/mature and once you are in adulthood, it is time to start refreshing to keep the passion and excitement alive before hitting the downside of maturity.

As individuals, we also have to keep rreinventing ourselves to remain healthy and vibrant as we age. Maturity calls for new kinds of interests and activities, maybe even new locales for where we choose to live. More on this in a later post.

I was recently a speaker for a board development session–the first ever offered by the association. It made me wonder how many associations are neglecting this very important activity. Sure, most association CEOs offer some sort of orientation to the specifics of their association. For instance, there may be a round robin of presentations by various senior managers and an overview of the basic logistics such as travel expense policies and procedures, dress code, transportation tips, and more. How many devote time and resources to training their board members on how to be an effective board?

With this particular client, it was a group of highly educated and sophisticated members. Most of the individuals have served on other national boards, so they wanted more than the basics. I asked a few questions and determined that the basics were in fact needed in addition to more advanced knowledge.

For instance, most could not respond to my query about the three legal duties of a board. That was just the beginning and made me realize that I was on the right track by offering a board development session annually when I was a CEO. Do you? Can your board answer my query? What else might they know or not know? Think about how you can provide the training and information they need in order to protect themselves legally and lead your organization on a continued path of success. It’s a new decade, in this somewhat still new century. Maybe it is time for a new approach to your board orientation and development sessions. Just a thought.

I have made two trips to the nearby Verizon store to replace my Blackberry. I love my Blackberry, but the trackball keeps falling out and jamming. The store nearest me isn’t staffed appropriately to meet the customer demand. I have visited twice, waited several minutes with no acknowledgement and disappointed. My time has been wasted and I still am unable to access email on my Blackberry. I will try again tomorrow. Why don’t I just order a new phone online? Well, I have some questions about the new DROID and want to compare two Blackberry models. Besides, I love the instant gratification of walking out of a bricks and mortar store with my new operating phone in hand.

It makes me wonder, what do your customers or members experience when they call, email or log on to your website? Are their needs quickly met? Are their questions easily answered? Or, do they leave a bit disgruntled? Do you know if they will return or do they have an alternative for meeting their needs? Lots of questions here. Do you know the answers? If so, good for you. If not, maybe time to do a little research. It might be time for a tune up.