Gen Z and the Urgency for Association Innovation

By Carolyn Shomali, PAR 

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You’ve likely heard the broad descriptions used to categorize the newest members of the workforce: Generation Z. They’re often characterized as pragmatic, digital natives who’ve been shaped by a worldwide pandemic, a shifting economy, and social causes.

But culture strategist Jamie Notter says there’s another quality of Gen Z that associations need to pay close attention to if they want to remain relevant both as a membership community and a workplace – their familiarity and acceptance of disruption.

“Gen Z, the next generation is growing up with constant disruption. And the generation that leads associations thinks stability is the goal.”

That’s why associations must prioritize innovation defined as a process of change that unlocks value. Whether through major shifts or smaller improvements, innovation is the norm for every high-performing organization in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors.

If the word innovation lingers in your association’s vernacular but not in its actions, it’s time to infuse it into your culture – something Notter says is extremely difficult to do, regardless of industry.

“It’s a system of action and learning, and that is honestly not the norm not just for associations but in a lot of organizations,” he says.

To assist with that continuous process of action and learning, teams can benefit from a variety of innovation models that are available like the Lean Startup Method or the Blue Ocean Strategy. But whichever framework your organization adopts will fall short if your culture doesn’t support it.

In their new whitepaper, Lean at Ten: Culture Eats Methodology for Lunch, Notter, along with Elizabeth Engel of Spark Consulting and Guillermo Ortiz de Zárate of the American Society of Appraisers, emphasize the vital role culture plays in innovation.

“While the concepts of lean startup may be attractive, the implementation of the methodology can only happen within the context of your workplace culture,” they write. “And that means that, just like the famous quote from Peter Drucker about culture and strategy we referenced in the title of this monograph, culture often eats lean startup methodology for lunch.”

Notter and Engel joined a recent Professionals for Association Revenue (PAR) workshop alongside Tiffany Dyar, founder of True Scale Marketing & Consulting and former Director of Innovation for the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians (NREMT). Their shared message? When it comes to innovation, associations must not only talk the talk but also walk the walk. Here’s how.

Talk the Innovation Talk

Dyar recalls her time at NREMT, where her main priority was transforming innovation from aspirational to actualized. She says a crucial step many organizations miss is developing a shared understanding of what innovation looks like across the entire organization. One department’s definition of innovation may differ completely from another’s, so associations must clarify what it means for everyone before getting started.

“There were these really polarizing definitions of innovation, where we all had this similar word in our heads, but everybody's definition of that was quite different,” Dyar recalls. “It really took having an honest conversation about, ‘Hey, let's dial it all the way back. What are our assumptions about what innovation is? What does it mean? What type of innovation do we even want to do?’”

Recognizing what your association offers—and who it represents—will help you determine your level of risk tolerance and capacity for innovation. That might mean focusing on small, incremental process improvements or larger overhauls of your offerings. Both can be valuable if you have the culture to support them, and that starts with an organizational understanding of your definition of innovation.

Walk the Innovation Walk

If we adhere to the broader definition of innovation as change that unlocks value, then we must be willing to experiment. And experiments, by their nature, will sometimes fail.

“If you run experiments and they all succeed, you're doing them wrong,” Notter reminds us.

Trying new ideas requires dedicating time and resources. When those ideas fail, it’s not a failure of innovation, but rather part of the process that allows your organization to learn and adjust. The problem, Notter says, isn’t that associations explicitly refuse to take risks – it’s that their cultures don’t actively support a risk-taking mindset.

So how can associations begin to change that culture? Dyar says it can start with something simple: tracking a metric that supports smart risk-taking and helps normalize failure.

“One of the metrics that we had was, ‘How many innovation projects have failed at whatever stage.’ Hopefully they fail before you get to the implementation and scaling stage, but if we didn’t have failures, we knew that we weren't pushing ourselves enough. And we also knew that by not innovating, there was a risk of losing money, missing out on opportunities, and not understanding our customer and audience's needs.”

This practice, Dyar says, helped the board see innovation as a systematic approach to decision-making for business growth and sustainability. It’s a key part of innovation education, something Dyar prioritized for the entire association staff.

“One of the things we did, was we created a training for all staff just on basic innovation principles, and really highlighted the way to sort of upskill and level up in your career, because not everybody gets that opportunity, especially in associations or certification organizations, to be able to do hands-on innovation all the time.”

This training included a hands-on workshop where employees were given a fictional business case about a candy company, supported by real internal research into each employee’s candy preferences. The exercise gave the team a low-stakes opportunity to practice innovation in a fun, risk-free environment.

Whichever innovation methodology your association adopts, it’s essential to pair words with actions to turn innovation from a concept into a continuous initiative. And if your organization doesn’t yet demand it of itself, Notter warns that the next generation of members and employees will.

“We have to ramp up the speed on this, and we’ve got to move faster, and we’ve got to be changing more, because the world is not going to start changing slower.”