Episode 8: RevUP Change Management

Waldron: My argument is that everybody likes change. We all like change when it fits the way we like change. So some of us are data people. We have to have the data in order to back up the reason why we need to change. Some of us are values people, and we go, is this change in line with the values and the people that I’m around?Some of us are big vision people, and we go, is this in line with my big picture and the vision that I’m doing?And some of us are logical people and we go, does this even make sense?Does this change even… Why are we even doing this in the first place? So when we process through that lens, everybody’s different, everybody processes change differently, and leaders need to understand their people that not everybody’s gonna think through the lens that they will.

Shomali: If you feel like ideas are abundant within your association, but the right outcomes are elusive, this final episode of season one of Association RevUP is for you. That was author and speaker, Skot Waldron. He specializes in developing and equipping leaders, and today he joins me to discuss one of the most challenging aspects of leadership, change management. It’s so challenging that a now well-known McKenzie statistic reports that 70% of change initiatives fail to achieve their goals.

Hi, and welcome to episode eight, the final episode of PAR’s inaugural season of this podcast. I’m your host, Carolyn Shomali, and I’m the Director of Content for the Professionals for Association Revenue.

Throughout this season, our goal has been to take a comprehensive look at association business, and to do so in a way that is entertaining, concise, and full of valuable insights from association and industry professionals who are pioneering the future of association business.

Our experts have shared a variety of insights and ideas about culture, sales skills, leadership, partnerships, corporate connections, digital strategy, and data-driven business. And while they shared their own experiences and thoughts, you were an active learner, assessing where your association is and where you want it to go.

There are some areas where you’re excelling, and others where you’re ready to spearhead change.And change is what we’ll focus on today with actionable steps to begin your approach.

Waldron: Change equation gives you a roadmap for change. You can take this in to anybody and go, look, here’s our dissatisfaction, here’s the vision of what could be, here’s the next step we need to take, and here’s what we’re up against. And people go, oh, that’s really clear. Cool. If I bring that to the table, there’s going to be a lot more buy-in.

Shomali: Thanks for joining me for the final episode of this season as we look at how to turn ideas into outcomes and RevUP change management.

You don’t need to have an official leadership position within your association to find today’s episode valuable.

We all play a role in ushering change into our associations. To begin, it’s important to understand the characteristics of leadership and the role that leaders play in bringing about change. Skot Waldron begins by giving us these visuals.

Waldron: Leaders are people that aren’t just the ones pulling people along, like that’s not really leadership. That’s just you being a tugboat. There’s illustrations out there that talk about leadership as the beacon of being that light that people want to come towards or that guide people. We draw a lot of analogies with the sherpa and the ones who lead people up the mountain of Everest, up climbing Everest. And we talk about that a lot because a sherpa can be great at climbing the mountain themselves, but if they’re not good at leading other people up the mountain, they’re not a very good sherpa.

And so really thinking about the idea of the sherpa, leaders have to perform themselves, but they also have to be really good at leading performers.

>>00:04:33
Shomali: Let’s look closer at that analogy of the Sherpa. Sherpas are an ethnic community of Tibetan heritage who reside in the high valleys around the base of Mount Everest. Sherpas who are climbers perform well in high altitudes, know how to navigate the treacherous terrain and freezing temperatures, and are equipped with the proper supplies. When expeditions of Mount Everest began in the early 1920s, Westerners came to rely on the Sherpas as their expert guides up the mountain. 30 years later, when the top of Everest was finally reached, it was a joint effort of two men, climber Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay. And now more than 70 years later, there is 1.5 Sherpas for every one climber on an expedition to the top. Just as you wouldn’t climb the world’s highest mountain without a Sherpa guide, an association cannot begin effective change without the guidance of an intentional and high-performing leader. And like a Sherpa, those leaders must equip their teams with the right tools for the journey, which includes an understanding of why you’re making the climb in the first place. Leaders can begin to do this by viewing the change through the lens of a simple equation.

Waldron: The change equation is dissatisfaction. So the D times V, which is vision, times natural next steps, times N, has to be greater than resistance or nothing will change. We have to be dissatisfied enough or else we’re just not gonna worry about it. We’re gonna go, yeah, I don’t know. The discomfort of my current situation is not as uncomfortable as the change is gonna be. So I’m not gonna worry about it. I’d rather live with the discomfort that I’m in right now rather than go through the discomfort of change. Until that discomfort is high enough of the current situation, nothing’s gonna change. So we really have to be in the mode of, this is uncomfortable enough for me. We have to do something about this or something’s gonna happen. Something’s gonna break. Somebody’s gonna leave. Chaos is gonna happen.

Shomali: Pause now and think of one element we’ve covered in this series where you’re ready to spearhead change within your association. Is it your culture? Your culture, partnership programs, your sales approach, the use of data or technology or something else altogether? Keep that example in mind as we continue through the elements of this equation. Begin by asking, is the discomfort in this area high enough, not just for me, but for others on my team? Maybe it’s inefficiencies that lead to more work, restrictions on where you work or how you work, or maybe a realization that you’re leaving money for your organization and even for yourself on the table. With discomfort in mind, now turn your focus to naming a specific vision of how you want things to be.

Waldron: Dissatisfaction has to be high enough. Then your vision also has to be high enough because high dissatisfaction just leads to a bunch of griping. If we don’t do anything about it, don’t have any hope for the future, that’s what low vision looks like. High dissatisfaction, low vision, is called hopelessness. I’m super annoyed, I’m super sad, I’m super discouraged, but that’s just the way things are. That’s just how they are. That’s just how they act. That’s just how we do things here. That’s how, like that is defeat. That is hopelessness. Until we can get to the high vision part of, okay, this is what I see us being able to attain. I see this is what it could be like. This is what we could reach and could achieve. Are we all on board with that? Everybody’s like, yeah, that sounds great. We could do that. Until that happens, we’re just gonna be a little bit more hopeless.

>>00:08:33.591
Shomali: The third element of the equation is the steps you’ll put in place to achieve the vision. One of history’s finest visionaries, Nelson Mandela, said, “Vision without action is just a dream. Action without vision just passes the time.And vision with action can change the world.”

What next steps will you propose to get your team on board and bring your vision to life?

Waldron: Natural next steps have to be clear and simple because high dissatisfaction and high vision alone don’t lead to change. We have to take action. The natural next step has to be clear and simple and tactical in order to start the ball moving. In my book, I just have a quote in there that says it’s hard to ride a bike that isn’t moving. So get on the bike and start pedaling and the bike will become a lot easier.

Shomali: You’ve now identified the dissatisfaction, the vision, and the natural next steps to get the ball moving. But what if there’s a massive brick wall in your path? Which is why the final element of the change equation is critical, identifying the resistance your change will encounter. It’s likely you already know what the resistance is or will be. Is it leadership or board buy-in, complacent team members, funding? Whatever it is, name it. You’ll need your dissatisfaction, vision, and plan forward to be greater than that of the resistance you’re facing.

Waldron: And the resistance is really important to name so we know what we’re up against. If it is a, you know, just the way we’ve done things in the past. It’s a legacy rule. It’s management that’s been in pace for 30 years. It’s a regulation that we have to overcome. >What are the things that we have to, what we’re going to be up against in order to create the change that we want to see? A lot of people ignore that because they either say they just don’t know what it is, or they just don’t want to tackle it. They don’t want to face it, but you got to name the beast in order to tame the beast.

Shomali: Now that we’ve gone through the change equation, we turn our focus to another important aspect of change, the people who will be carrying it out. Waldron takes us through a five voices exercise based on Myers-Briggs science. He identifies the five voices as those of nurturers, guardians, connectors, creatives, and pioneers. Then he divides them into two groups of people, present-oriented and future-thinking.

Waldron: What we find in organizations is that you have a lot of pioneers and connectors that are leading organizations. And those are the two voices that generally take up a lot of oxygen in the room. They’re very excited, they’re very competent, they’re very out there with their ideas, and they can be louder, which might suppress the other voices in the room. And so when they are presenting ideas and carrying companies and spreading vision, and they get on a stage or they get in front of a room and they wonder why nobody is on board. They go, what’s going on? This is a really good idea. I’ve thought about this for six months. And I paint a beautiful vision of the future and I’m selling all these ideas. The challenge that future thinkers face is that they are likely working with a group of present-oriented team members.

Shomali: According to Waldron, 73% of the population, or seven out of 10 people in the room, fall into this category. And a future thinker’s big vision that they’re trying to achieve doesn’t solve the challenges of the present.

>>00:12:27
Waldron: Wait a second, pump the brakes. Have you really thought this through? How’s this gonna impact this person? How’s this gonna impact our values as a company? Is this in line with what we’re trying to be and do? And they’re kind of thinking things through that way. Then the other people are thinking, hold on a second, pump the brakes. Is this worth the risk and investment? Are we really gonna be this risky with this? Are we really gonna step into this world? >Like we’ve been doing this so well, why are we gonna rock the boat? Like this is what we do. And now you’re painting, that’s scary. Because there’s no reassurance it’s gonna work There’s just, it’s risky. And they don’t necessarily love the risk. They have to be, they have to understand what’s gonna be there for them and what’s gonna help them get on board with that.

So as leaders, it goes back into the first things I’m talking about is how do we help those individuals that are pump the brakes people get on board when we’re trying to slam on the gas.

Shomali: So what are you ready to change? We’ll identify five building blocks of association business when we come back.

SPONSOR: There are insightful and often cutting-edge ideas that emerge from our Association’s annual events. But finding the right way to repurpose that content throughout the year so that it reaches an even wider audience is a challenge that many of us face.

Did you know that about 75% of the insights you heard throughout this podcast season were from the breakout sessions of our annual conference, the RevUP Summit? Turning those ideas into a podcast series was an idea that we had to ensure that our content reached a larger audience. And it wouldn’t have been possible without the on-site support at the RevUP Summit of VPC Inc. >In addition to providing full production support at the event, VPC recorded all of the audio from the breakout sessions. And when we shared our idea for a podcast with them, they jumped on board as a supporting partner because they believed in the mission and the product. To learn more about VPC, visit their website at vpcinc.net or connect with me on LinkedIn and I’ll personally introduce you. Now, back to the show.

Shomali: Intentionality, relationships, communication, collaboration, innovation. These are five words and themes that emerge continuously from our experts throughout this series.

And we’re identifying them as the foundation of an association culture where business is valued.

>>00:15:36
Shomali: Being intentional or doing something deliberately or on purpose is at the heart of association business. Everything from how we sell, what we sell, who we sell to, and especially why we sell requires an intentional approach. And it begins by being intentional about our association’s culture. In episode one, Jamie Natter reminded us why.

Notter: Culture is a tangible business tool for driving growth. The reason why culture is so important for driving growth is culture drives behavior. Your culture is what drives behavior inside your organization. That’s what they mean when they say culture eats strategy for breakfast. You can come up with a great strategy, but if you don’t have a culture that drives the behaviors that make that strategy work, it’s not gonna work.

Shomali: If we want an association where revenue health is valued, it must begin with a culture that supports that notion through words, actions, thoughts, and stuff. Without a culture where association business is valued, improvements to partnerships, marketing, membership, events, and more, won’t reach their full potential. If we’re intentional about our culture, then we’ll be intentional about building relationships that contribute to our mission Building sales relationships through the foundation of connection was an emphasis of sales leaders Carrie McIntyre.

McIntyre: How much do you love going, hey, we need more sales, you’re gonna have to make more calls, get more emails out, right? Just crank, crank, crank, crank. Sales is not a numbers game. It is, in fact, a focus game and a relationship game.

Ashcraft: One of the things that we look at when we’re looking at the numbers is actually what kind of relationships are we building. That is the number one thing for us.

Flax: It’s not about having the magic touch. It’s about being smart, being intentional, and taking the right steps. Being intentional and building relationships requires strong communication. Internally, that means communicating the value of the sales work you’re doing with other departments.

Shomali: Jeremy Figoten shares how that communication can foster understanding and buy-in through out. Nondue’s revenue allows a lot of opportunities in association. It allows teams to hire people, to hire people to generate content, to hire people in membership, to hire people for diversity, equity, inclusion, whatever it’s gonna be. That’s a big selling point. I think workload, you’re not gonna have to do this. You can now focus on your job.

Shomali: Externally, the right kind of communication can connect you to the corporate decision-makers whose partnerships can transform your association revenue health and help you reach your mission, as Lori Zaskroska advocates here.

Zoss Kraska: Corporate sponsorship, corporate support is a long game. >It is a long game in terms of bringing in true dollars to your association. Maybe you don’t always think about yourself in this way, but associations are authority. You show authority in bringing together an association of like-minded people.

Shomali: In associations, we often know the value that we’re offering, but learning how to communicate that value in a way that resonates with our audience is a skill that Park Howell says can be mastered through a simple framework called the ABT.

Howell: They’re not about your brand, your association. They’re not even about your offering. They’re always about your audience and their point of view in relation to what you have to offer them. >Make no mistake, you’re gonna get to your offering in this, but you don’t lead with it. So you always wanna start with your number one audience. What do they want relative to what you have to offer? >That gets them nodding in agreement, saying, gee, you’ve done your discovery, you understand me, and you appreciate what I want. Then you demonstrate your empathy because you, in the but statement, describe why they don’t have it. And then the therefore is pretty obvious. How will you help them get it?

>>00:19:50
Shomali: We’ve discussed how being intentional, developing relationships, and communicating in a way to create understanding and interest in your offerings can all lead to better association business. The next piece is collaboration, or working with someone to create or produce something. Collaborating can lead to understanding, buy-in, and new opportunities. Here’s Figoten again on how to encourage collaboration among different association departments in support of partnerships.

Figoten: Right, let them see the program, understand it, critique it, you know, listen. We’ve made changes before, but most importantly, it’s listening to them. What are their assets that you can then sell? Because 10 times out of 10, I hear stuff I didn’t know about.

Shomali: Intention, relationships, communication, and collaboration all lead to the final theme that emerged throughout the entirety of this season. And if our associations want to surpass relevancy and become indispensable, it’s the most important theme of all.

Innovation.

New ideas, new products, new ways of doing things that are supported by the resources to make it happen. Our associations need to innovate more. And Thad Laurie and Jamie Natter say that that means we’re going to have to take more risks and be okay with failing.

Lurie: I think associations have generally been very risk averse, but in the technology and digital space where I’ve lived for most of my career, we need to be willing and able to take risks because there are always going to be unknowns and there are always going to be things.

Notter: If we want to drive revenue, like we’re going to have to try stuff and sometimes we’re going to fail. By definition, some experiments have to fail for you to learn something, but we don’t like failure. We say we like failure, but then when someone fails, they get in trouble, right? Risk taking, if you take risks, it could go badly and you would look not good. Testing new ideas, taking something that’s unfinished and showing it to members to get feedback, that makes me look bad because it’s not finished. >And so we choose not to engage in these behaviors and you cannot have its incomplete innovation. You can’t have innovation if you’re not doing these things.

Shomali: Supportive leadership, psychologically safe environments, access to the right kind of resources and data-backed decision making lead to innovative insights that allow our associations to provide personal experiences that our members value and expect. Here’s Joe Colangelo.

Colangelo: Are they looking to have more or less personalized experiences in the future? Are they looking to have more or less tailored value benefits in the future? And if the answer that you believe, like I do, that both of those things are going to be, you want to be more tailored and more value-added experiences, then all of a sudden you’re going to realize that you have to come to rely on the data more.

Shomali: >As you envision your association’s future, which one of these five elements of association business do you need to focus on? As we wrap up, there’s one area of association business that we didn’t take a full episode to dive into. And that’s because it’s at the heart of all we do. Amy Lestition Burke is the Executive Director and CEO of the Solid Waste Association of North America and reminds us that prioritizing association business will in fact enhance the foundation of our associations, membership.

Burke: Membership is the result of doing everything else well and right. So what I mean by that is membership is the final point when someone says, I see the value in your organization. I see the value in your mission. I see what you’re doing. This is great stuff. I’m now going to join. It’s also a lagging indicator. When membership starts to decline, that means something else isn’t going right at the beginning, right, whether that’s the programming, the services, the products, the feel of the community even. Something’s not going right there when membership starts to decline.

Shomali: My thanks to Skot Waldron for his insights into change management, and to all of the experts who contributed to this season of Association RevUP.

Today, we focused on how to turn ideas into outcomes. >And that is the theme of PAR’s RevUP Summit 2024. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, join us for RevUP, November 20th and 21st in Annapolis, Maryland. I’ll be there along with our supporting partner VPC and many of the contributors of this season, some of whom will be presenting. Visit revupsummit.org and use the code PARPOD for savings when you register. And finally, my thanks to you. >Whether you join me for one episode or all eight, I know your time as an Association Professional is valuable. I hope you gained insights into new ideas and approaches to your work, and above all, you feel energized by the truly transformative work that our Associations do for the world around us.

I’d love to hear from you. You can find me on LinkedIn or send me an email at carolyn.shomalyatmypar.org. At the start of each episode, I said that this was the podcast that would get everyone in your Association talking about revenue health. Keep the conversation going and RevUP your Association’s business.