Products or Markets?

Posted on January 23, 2008 by David

Kevin Holland posted last week about his position that associations should be driven by the needs of their market rather than any particular product they produce.

Many association do choose to drive their products and services based on the needs of their market (which are largely their members and others closely associated with them). This is fine and often works quite well.

I would like to make the point, however, that an association could choose to have a particular product or service (or set of products/services) as the driving force for their strategy, addressing any market that values them. Their customers and members would change over time as they find new markets for their core product. The CFA Institute is a good example of what this might look like in practice.

Driving your choice of markets by a particular set of products you produce is as valid a strategy as determining your products/services by the needs of a defined market. Each would lead to very different looking associations but that’s the whole point of strategy: picking a direction and putting it into action.

Why Business Intelligence is Often Stupid

Posted on January 7, 2008 by David

Business intelligence (or BI) has been all the rage for the last couple of years. It is a central topic in ASAE’s Tech conference later this month, with many sessions focused on how to extract data from your systems and present them in shiny dashboard interfaces. There is a problem though:

Many business intelligence tools are plain stupid.

All the dials, speedometers, bar graphs, and status icons in the world won’t help you if you do not first ground your efforts in what data you need to make sound decision in pursuit of your business outcomes. A lot of vendors and consultants out there gloss over these critical issues in pursuit of the BI sale.

Take dashboards, for example. The concept is that a single screen will give you all the data you need to make quick decisions, just like you can with a car dashboard. The problem is, most businesses and organizations don’t have to make a decision in a split second like you do when driving an automobile. Auto dashboards are optimized to give the driver critical feedback in a glance lasting less than a second.

When is the last time you had to make a decision of major import to the organization from your desk in less than a second? It just doesn’t happen.

Yet, a lot of business intelligence dashboard tools look just like the dashboard of a car. It is a literal interpretation that ruins a somewhat valuable idea.

So, what to do?

You have to start with the objectives you are trying to achieve. What process are you putting into place to achieve an objective? What are the measurable steps within that process? What data sources do you need to tap into to generate those measures? How will you use that data to make decisions?

Once you have answered all those questions you should be able to identify what measures you should monitor and how often. If one or more of them matter on a daily basis, a dashboard interface might make a lot of sense for presentation of the data. If not, a simple report will probably meet your needs and save you the time, effort and expense of developing a dashboard you don’t need.

That is being intelligent about your business data.

By the way, I will be presenting a session with Wes Trochlil at the ASAE Technology Conference titled: “Getting Intelligent About Business Intelligence: Finding the Value Behind the Hype.” If you only go to one BI session, I suggest you make it ours.

Why you should hire Mickie Rops

Posted on December 18, 2007 by David

Mickie is an excellent consultant because she says thing like this when asked if she is an advocate for certification programs:

If certification is really right for the field, then I’m an advocate. If it’s not, then I’m not.

Sounds obvious but she makes the point in her post that a lot of consultants are happy to help you build a certification program whether your field needs it or not! You need advisors who will question your basic assumptions before you make significant investments instead of cheering you on without analysis.

Rapid and Participatory Publishing

Posted on December 14, 2007 by David

Here are the slides from another presentation I gave at ASAE’s Great Ideas conference: Rapid and Participatory Publishing. In this presentation I discuss two cases of traditional book publishers who have leveraged the Web to enhance and extend their publishing efforts. These models are a great fit for most associations that have existing publishing operations. The short-form ebook model could also be a good option for an organization looking to get into book publishing.

http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=rapid-and-participatory-publishing-1197386679816952-5

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I have an article discussing this material forthcoming in ASAE’s Journal of Association Leadership. The new issue with my article should be out this month.

What is Innovation?

Posted on December 10, 2007 by David

I gave a presentation at ASAE’s Great Ideas conference this past Saturday on innovation, technology and risk for associations. This post is the first of several I’m going to write this week on elements of the presentation. A good question to start with is: what is innovation?

Innovation often gets mythologized in the business press to the point that mere mortals feel that they cannot hope to do something innovative in their work. However, to innovate merely means to do something as you haven’t done it before. Not much more to it than that.

Peter Drucker, in his seminal book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, defines two kinds of innovation: supply-side innovation and demand-side innovation.

Supply-side innovation is when you improve the use of your resources in support of existing value delivered to your customers. This is often in the form of greater efficiency but could also mean achieving the same end via means that result in improved employee morale, for example.

Demand-side innovation refers to changes that create greater value for your customers. This could be improving an existing product or service or creating entirely new offerings. The impact of the innovation is on the value received/perceived by the ultimate customer.

Looking at it in those terms, it is easy to realize that you probably innovate something every week if not every day. Innovation is merely the creation of new value.

Update: Here are the slides from the presentation:

http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=innovation-technology-and-risk-1197310164675873-2

| View | Upload your own

Lighting up a Board Meeting

Posted on November 29, 2007 by David

I’ve been exploring photography a bit as a hobby recently and have been reading up on technique. Via a great blog on lighting, Strobist, I found this video which might be valuable to a lot of my association executive and event planner readers.

David Tejada walks us through how he lit a conference room to do head shots and some candids of a board meeting. I found it pretty interesting and it shows how a good photographer approaches doing a potentially deadly boring subject. You can see more of David’s videos on YouTube.

Good lighting is not an accident.

This is also a great example of using social media to spread your ideas and value, drawing people to you.

Unleashing Web Strategy in Cambridge Maryland

Posted on November 9, 2007 by David

I am presenting this afternoon at the Maryland Non Profits Annual Meeting in Cambridge, Maryland. The session, Unleashing the Strategic Potential of the Web, is about aligning your web strategy with that of the overall organization.

I will introduce several concepts and tools that are useful for defining and creating strategic alignment. We will then walk through the process right in the room. Everyone should leave with a good start on defining how their site should contribute to their overall mission and goals.

I am making an audio recording of the session. Let me know if you are interested and I’ll give you first crack at the audio product when it is ready.

Update: See the store for this now.

When Data Crunches You

Posted on October 19, 2007 by David

My most recent post on the We Have Always Done It That Way blog appears to have made a direct hit on the pitfalls of being too data-oriented: When Data Crunches You. Several comments so far and counting.

My co-authors and I are working on a new edition of the book, which was originally developed via collaboration on the blog. The current edition is available from both Lulu and Amazon if you haven’t read it yet.

Deep Thoughts from Peter on Associations and Participation

Posted on August 16, 2007 by David

I was at ASAE’s Annual meeting earlier this week in Chicago and did not blog a single thing about it. Lots of others did, though. (An aside: seems like a blog tipping point was reached at this meeting. Very active and diverse blogging going on all over the place.)

Peter Turner has posted an interesting idea based on the Decision to Join report and Jeff De Cagna’s Ungovernance session:

The longer your association waits to implement governance and product development changes that are more “open and inclusive” to the rank and file member, the more likely you can expect to generate lower retention rates or product sales.

Closed ended models of governance and product development in an era of open innovation and product co-creation is THE CANCER in association management today.

Rings true to me. I think that all the excitement about social media in the association space is a direct response to the subconscious feeling that the time tested models aren’t going to work for much longer.

C. David Gammel, CAE

Helping associations pursue goals that matter.

Category Archives: Associations