IMPORTANCE OF HAVING GREAT VISION?

AuSAE has partnered with Enterprise Care to bring a range of Health Checks to members. No matter what challenges you are facing AuSAE wishes to ensure your association is primed to respond positively.

Managing your organisation’s Culture and people issues is an excellent investment. Pinpointing how to better empower everyone will quickly deliver the right actions. The value of injecting greater confidence in decision making enhances your positive outcomes.

SPECIAL OFFER! AuSAE Member  - Take Advantage of our introductory offer

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Culture/HR Snapshot

To take advantage of this offer – talk to us today 

smithdj@enterprisecare.com.au or phone 03 8862 6315 www.governanceintelligence.com.au

In the not for profit world Boards are an idea born from the notion that collective intelligence and passion will be a great driving force for organisations. Boards ensure that the cause of the organisation is maintained and the governance issues are mastered. They are often the legal employees of the staff, a huge responsibility to carry – especially for volunteers.

However, whilst this collegial ambition is great, unfortunately, they often fall dramatically short, and in fact, sometimes a board can become a barrier to progression, productive change and evolution.

As an experienced integrated communications agency, collectively we have worked with a great number of boards – small, large, all volunteers, a mixture of volunteers and paid positions and some who have recruited executive members. I have found there is no hard and fast rule when it comes to the successful make-up of a board; sometimes you get great, active, progressive Boards made up from the ‘core’ of the organisation’s base, and sometimes you find recalcitrant Boards who should (and get paid to) do better.

The Board will either make or break the success of any communications program, this is because they have the ultimate say for the strategic direction and budget and can sway an organisation as powerfully as a hurricane– one minute you are flying in an easterly direction, the next, the opposite. Even if a Board is in agreement with a strategy, their willingness to resource it or see the importance of stakeholder interaction (including staff) in the decision making process can really make the difference.

Here are some of the experiences I’ve had with Boards and what strategies have worked to get a great result.

Experience: Boards who don’t understand their governance role, and want to have a say in the details

I’d say this is the most common frustration of CEO’s and GM’s of NFP organisations; their Board members want to get into the detail of things, but neglect to look at the larger issues such as diversification of income, team structures and approving big decisions such as a move in premise, a name change etc. Most staff would love more support by people in the know on their day to day, but only when the larger issues are taken care of.

This is a tricky scenario and can take a full cycle of a Board term to resolve (if your Board doesn’t have terms, this is even harder). The key is providing information and training on the role of Board members, the structure and meeting agendas to direct focus. However, this can be especially difficult if you’ve had Board members for a long time, who might have been volunteers, or ex-staff who know a lot about the details.

A key strategy* that has worked for me over the years, is to provide a refresh on roles and responsibilities and to review how the board meets, why, when and what the agenda is. It is very illuminating for most, and usually inspires a lot of great discussion. If the CEO/senior management are unhappy with their Board - the Board probably isn’t happy either. This is a great way to clear the air, set up boundaries and agree to how things will be done.

*Warning – this definitely needs to be managed by an external facilitator!

Experience: The frequency or lack thereof of Board meetings.

Board meetings can occur monthly, bi-monthly or even quarterly. When major decisions need to be made at board meetings, their frequency can dramatically slow down progress and change. That might have worked well when the pace of business was slower (remember sending letters?), but in today’s business climate, it is often not fast enough and can put the organisation at a competitive disadvantage.

The organisations lack of framework and strategic plan when it comes to Board decisions and sign offs can hinder progress, additional challenges include Board members not coming to meetings, meaning topics are pushed back, re-briefed and this can delay critical action.

The solution to this scenario includes:

1. Having a strategic plan – with a three year and one-year action plan. This will help frame the conversation for the year ahead and keep people focused.
   
2. Every organisation needs an active Chair. When you can’t get your chair on the phone or via email within a few hours, then it is really hard for the staff.
   
3. Developing sub-committees who are charged with an action plan, who can go off, research, collate information and make strong recommendations to the board is a must.
   
4. If your Board meetings are stale and boring, dramatically change the agenda. The chair should keep the conversation on track and to timeframes – when meetings go over, people either won’t come (can’t face a three-hour meeting) or leave. Minutes should be professionally taken and circulated in a timely fashion. It should be assumed that everyone has read the minutes before the meeting and pick up the conversation as such.
   

Experience: When the Board has too much love to share.

Boards made up of only passionate people who have been around the organisation for a long time, who don’t have professional skills, experience or most importantly time to contribute, may not be able to tackle the constantly changing and complex landscape the organisation works within. This is because whilst that passion is vital, it is not the only thing that drives the team forward. A board needs to include people who are up to date with the policy and legal framework and changes, be able to think big picture, be able to have a meeting with government, have a network of professional contacts and ensure strong financial management.

With the mix right, the organisation has the best of both worlds.

Being on a Board and working with Boards is an inspiring, engaging and challenging process but where a little from many can do a lot for a great cause.

If you sit on a Board or work for a Board, feel free to use this article to help you raise some of the trickier issues you might be dealing with. It might help you get that step closer to achieving your organisation’s goals – and isn’t that why we are all there in the first place?

Need help to create a 12 month strategic plan for your organisation with clear action and goal progression? Contact Zadro to find out how.

This article was written by Felicity Zadro, Managing Director, Zadro.

Backup OK, Recovery OK, Redundancy OK, Indestructible Emergency Instructions OK and Business Plan OK. It is now time to consider experiences from the "real world".

In the "real world", it is not just accidents and unplanned events that cause businesses to fail. It is an actively hostile environment complete with a variety of factors with behaviors of every shade. From annoying (to demonstrate just "how smart" they are) through to the outright criminal (to gather monies by stealing from others).

You may recognize some or all of the following. They are not made up examples, they are occurring and are current. Source URLs are provided for your further reading:

Stealing your Identity; by means of software you loaded using a USB connector:

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/consumer-security/public-usbs-are-not-power-points-kaspersky-warns-of-phone-hacking-danger-20160531-gp8myy.html

Stealing your ATM PIN; by means of your Smart Watch movement Tracker. http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/consumer-electronics/gadgets/your-smart-watch-can-spy-on-your-pin

Stealing your Password; by means of collecting your password when you used it on the "wrong" site: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/07/password-reuse-tool-makes-it-easy-to-id-vulnerable-accounts-on-other-sites/

Stealing your Bank Account Details; by means of Trojan Software running on 1 million devices: https://it.slashdot.org/story/16/06/19/226250/one-million-ip-addresses-used-in-brute-force-attack-on-a-bank

Stealing your Corporate IP; from your Air Gapped secure PC by means of Trojan Software that manipulates the speed of its fan: https://www.wired.com/2016/06/clever-attack-uses-sound-computers-fan-steal-data/

Stealing your Money; by means of fake Pokémon Go software:

https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/18/beware-the-fake-pokemon-go-apps/

Stealing "something not yet identified"; by means of a botnet of three million Twitter accounts: http://www.securityweek.com/botnet-3-million-twitter-accounts-remains-undetected-years

More engagement, higher attendance, better reporting…the all too familiar (and often annoying) phrases when it comes to Professional Development. And while we are constantly told what we need to do, we are very rarely told how to do it.

This is where online CPD comes in. In a recent survey, 72.3% of respondents indicated that online education and webinars are valuable resources. Why? Because they help them to interact, engage and remain accredited without having to leave their home.

So how can you leverage the online world and reach and engage more members? Our partners at Redback Conferencing have put together the top tips for delivering Online CPD Programs - everything from creating your events to maximising them once they’re done.

Download your copy of the 101 Webinar Guide: Tips for Delivering CPD and CPE.

Fitness Australia have today (Friday) unveiled the results from the recent Board of Directors election, with one fresh face set to serve, while two other members have been re-elected to their positions.

Newly-elected Board Member, Rod Harvey, will take his place at the peak body’s table for the first time following a successful campaign. Rod is a highly respected and well recognised member of the Fitness Industry with a strong connection to Fitness Australia.

With over 20 years of experience within the fitness industry, Rod’s personal vision in taking on a directorship, is to improve the professionalism of the Fitness Industry, build Fitness Australia’s profile within the Industry and extend its reach to consumers, ‘to get more people moving’.

Meanwhile, both David Allan and Michael Jordan will resume their place on the Board.

David has been an influential and tireless member of the Fitness Australia Board since 2011 – being elected Chairman in 2015. His recent re-election for another term shows his commitment and passion for the fitness industry and Fitness Australia.

Michael has been a Board Member with Fitness Australia since 2014. His vision is to see fitness clubs become the heart of communities, which he believes will drive a healthier nation.

Fitness Australia CEO, Bill Moore, welcomed today’s results and is now looking forward to an exciting period ahead in collaboration with the Board.

“This is a fantastic result for Fitness Australia and the Fitness Industry,” said Bill.

“We’re fortunate to have some incredibly talented and experienced people on our board and these three gentleman embody that.

The new board will come together for the first time on 14 October for the AGM, signalling the beginning of #FASymposium16.

Congratulations to Rod, David and Michael on their election to the Fitness Australia Board of Directors.

This article was originally sourced from Fitness Australia and was written by Tom Skolarikis.

AuSAE has welcomed new members from the following organisations this month.

Is your organisation on this list? If your organisation is on this list as an AuSAE organisational member but you are unsure if you are part of the membership bundle, please contact the friendly AuSAE team at info@ausae.org.au.

Not on this list? To join AuSAE today please visit our membership information page here.

Artificial intelligence is the next big thing in the IT world, and we’d all better be prepared for where it’s going to take us.

According to the founder of the US based Geek Squad, Robert Stephens, all of the big IT players are investing heavily in AI to improve efficiency and provide enhanced customer service.

Messaging is the fastest on-line behaviour in the history of IT and Robert predicts that 85% of all interactions with an organisation will be messaging by 2020. This will have profound implications for Associations.

Have you heard of Deep Text (Facebook uses it to customise your newsfeed and ads) or Machine Learning (a type of AI that provides computers with the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed)? These are two of the game changing developments being fast tracked by the likes of Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft.

So why the buzz around this? The whole world is going mobile. Less and less phone calls are being made while messaging is trending upward on a steep trajectory through applications like Facebook Messaging, Whats App, Skype Twitter, SnapChat etc.

The question Robert posed to the audience at the ASAE Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City in mid-August was “where would we use messaging to take steps out of a process, reduce time and effort for customers and provide a better service”.

It’s certainly made me think about the future IT infrastructure and capabilities for AuSAE and not just relying on a website, LinkedIn and Twitter. For those of us who are Gen X or Baby Boomers, it’s going to require a lot more thought, discussion and consultation with thought leaders and our IT providers.

Click on the below links for more insights and learning from the ASAE Annual Meeting:

Listen to the Key Insights from some Australasian attendees

Brendon Ward

Chief Executive Officer

Australasian Society of Association Executives

On Sunday morning, opening keynoters Mark and Scott Kelly galvanized thousands of #ASAE16 attendees with stories recounting their dual rise to space and encouragement to avoid taking the easy route.

Astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly kicked off the 2016 ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition on Sunday with a double-act keynote speech that encouraged association professionals to rise to challenges, persist despite failure, and embrace “doing the hard thing.”

Surrounded by projected images of stars and planets and viewing photos taken from Scott Kelly’s recent year spent on the International Space Station, thousands of attendees heard how the lessons the brothers learned as fighter pilots and astronauts resonate in nearly all walks of life, including association management.

The identical twins born in 1964—Mark is six minutes older than Scott, a point the two repeatedly sparred over in jest—said they owe their success, including their combined 550-some days in outer space, to the example of their mother, a New Jersey secretary and waitress-turned-police officer.

They recalled that in the 1970s, aspiring cops were required to pass a grueling physical fitness test, which included climbing over a seven-foot wall. Night after night, the young brothers watched their mother attempt to traverse a replica wall their father had built. After months of practice, she finally did it, in half of the allotted time—and later became one of the first female police officers in that part of the state.

“This was one of the first times in our lives that we saw the power of having a goal and a plan—and what it meant to work really, really hard,” Mark said.

Years later, Scott would become a Navy captain and go on to pilot four space flights, including one that lasted 340 days—a journey that ended when he returned to Earth in March. Mark would fight in the Gulf War as a naval aviator and serve as a NASA space shuttle pilot on four missions.

But when they’re asked what they loved best about their time in space, Scott said, they don’t respond with the launch, the landing, or the view—but rather with the opportunity to accomplish something that was hard.

“That’s what we’d like to talk with you about today,” Scott said. “Doing hard things—and how to successfully accomplish that. We want to talk about having a goal and having a plan with very small manageable steps, about—at times—testing the status quo, about taking risks and not being afraid to make mistakes, and about how, if you work as a team, you can accomplish anything.”

Overcoming setbacks and failures comes with that territory, the brothers said. During his Navy flight training, as he struggled to master difficult skills, Mark was repeatedly asked by his superiors, “Are you sure this career is for you? You didn’t do well.”

But he persevered—and learned a valuable lesson. “How good you are at the beginning of anything you try is not a good indicator of how good you can become,” he said. “I’m a prime example of somebody who was able to overcome a lack of aptitude with practice, persistence, and just not giving up.”

Another important lesson came several years later when Mark found himself in an A-6 Intruder airplane about to drop eight 1,000-pound bombs in Iraq. As he maneuvered the aircraft to dodge surface-to-air missiles, his bombardier navigator kept his sights on the target—his main responsibility on the mission. While Mark’s alarm grew over the possibility of a missile strike, his navigator stayed calmly focused on his target.

“In the Navy and at NASA, we call that compartmentalization,” Mark says. “Focusing on the stuff that you can control.”

Scott learned that same lesson as the commander aboard the International Space Station, when he got word that Mark’s wife, then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, had been shot at a community event in Tucson. He had two months remaining in his space mission, with no possibility of coming home to comfort his loved ones.

“I had to understand that I really couldn’t help [Mark] … and I really needed to focus on what I could control and ignore what I couldn’t,” Scott said.

Several years later, when Scott was departing from the Space Station for the last time, after spending 500 days of his life there, he reflected on it: “If we can do that—the hardest thing that we have ever done—we can do anything.”

This article was originally sourced from Association Universe and was written by Emily Bratcher.

During the ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition in Salt Lake City, a trend of discussion during different sessions was that innovation quite often requires quick work, something many associations are not known for. How can we make the big, hulking machine a little easier to turn?

When it comes to what the corporate world can pull off, do association executives ever get jealous of how fast many of their for-profit equivalents can move?

That’s not to criticize the work that associations do, which is often monumental. One look at the lauded American Society of Plant Biologists platform Plantae highlights the potential associations have to do something big and bold that gets people talking. But, let’s be honest, the average association turns a corner about as effectively as a tour bus, and switching gears is by no means easy.

Let’s be honest, the average association turns a corner about as effectively as a tour bus, and switching gears is by no means easy.

I’m of the opinion that, at an event as large as the 2016 edition of the ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition, themes eventually appear in the subjects that get discussed during the event, and one that loomed particularly large on Sunday was the idea that associations can’t always move fast enough to innovate, or even, in some cases, keep up.

You may have heard variations on this statement in the past—and bringing it up again makes it kind of provocative, because, inevitably, organizations will wonder if I’m talking about them, specifically. (Not naming names or even criticizing specific tactics, honest.) But I think if anything is gonna change, we gotta bring it up and talk about it. A few things that got this topic on my mind:

At one point on the expo hall floor, I had a lengthy discussion with someone about how the startup-driven API model that has been embraced by the for-profit world was in some ways anathema to the lengthy, process-driven approach associations tend to take in deciding on a bedrock product like an association management system. As a result, products that might be well-suited to an association’s needs—say, an intuitive email platform like MailChimp—may be harder to embrace because the decision-making is more deliberate.

An excellent session on digital learning technologies started out with a bit of a spiel about how for-profit education firms are more adept and offering approaches like microlearning and microcredentialing, technologies that tend to be more compatible with the public’s busy lifestyles. When it comes down to it, the argument went, associations struggle to approach fast-moving platforms such as Uber and Waze. David DeLorenzo, a longtime association executive who is a recent addition to the DelCor staff, at one point emphasized that what he and fellow speakers (Bean Creative’s Layla Masri and EDUCAUSE’s Veronica Diaz) were pitching was by no means an extreme approach. “You don’t have to be revolutionary to do this,” he said.

A surprisingly small number of hands went up during a session on virtual offices, when the audience was asked how many of them used Slack, a piece of software that has taken the corporate world by storm. (To be fair, a few more hands went up on the next question, about whether people used a chat app at all.) That’s not to say that organizations have to use Slack, or that it’s even the best idea—but considering the nature of the session was about communicating with people separated by long distances, the lack of hands reinforced a point that was already on my mind by this juncture.

A TALE OF CORPORATE HUBRIS

Oddly, the thing that probably got this whole discussion on my mind happened before I even touched the ground in Salt Lake City. On my flight in, I caught a documentary I had been wanting to see for a while, the Colin Hanks-directed love letter All Things Must Pass.

It’s a film about Tower Records, the music-obsessed retail chain that started small and nimble—launching large, low-key record stores all along the West Coast, New York, and eventually in Japan and elsewhere—only to be brought down by a combination of hubris, mismanagement, and Napster.

At first, the company was well-positioned to turn vinyl records into a major subculture, at one point opening up a famed location on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California, that was frequented by Elton John. As the company grew, it handled risk aptly—it was willing to expand to the Japanese market almost on a whim, then doubled down when Japanese consumers proved big fans of vinyl records. But problems arose as the company matured: Tower was woefully ill-prepared for the internet; it found itself the target of a class-action lawsuit due to its high prices; and the company’s aggressive overexpansion, funded by $110 million in debt, eventually proved to be a company-killer. (Well, outside of Japan. It’s still big in Japan.)

“Tower, in almost 40 years, had always grown,” Hanks explained to NPR last year. “It had always made money. It had never lost money. … Well, I think there was a lot of stuff that Tower did not see coming.”

It’s a classic tale of corporate demise. And somewhat tellingly, the film was funded not through traditional means, but by Tom Hanks’ son putting up a Kickstarter and raising more than $90,000 to fund the project. It’s the tale of a company getting caught off-guard by the internet and failing to reverse course—a tale that wouldn’t exist without the internet.

Association executives have some big advantages that Tower Records did not. For one thing, Tower was a notoriously disorganized company, one that had some immensely innovative ideas (there’s another documentary, Art Gods, about one of those ideas), but was perhaps too complacent about its core business.

The company couldn’t zag because it had doubled down on zigging. And it became clear, at a point when it was too late for the company to reverse course, that zagging—i.e., jumping online—was what truly mattered.

WHY INNOVATION CHALLENGES ASSOCIATIONS

One big advantage that associations have over this slumbering corporate giant is that they’re very well organized. But despite that organization, many associations may find they’re poorly suited for zagging.

For the association space, what’s the root cause there? If you ask me, it comes down to an inability to make a decision quickly—whether through challenges with boards or a desire not to rock the boat by taking risks. And that ultimately can lead to decisions being made through the path of least resistance.

During their well-received opening presentation at #ASAE16, astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly repeatedly rejected the tendency toward complacency, with Scott explaining how it was the one thing holding him back from being a good pilot during his time in the Navy.

“I got too comfortable with the status quo,” he said.

Innovation is, almost by definition, a willingness to challenge the status quo. How can you ensure that the status quo isn’t holding your association back?

This article was originally sourced from Association Universe and was written by Ernie Smith. 

Did you know that 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text? Amazing!

Incorporate infographics within your association’s magazine, on your Web pages and in your emails to:

• Increase awareness of your association.
  
• Recruit new members and staff.
  
• Generate traffic to your association’s website.
  
• Show expert understanding of the subject and/or your industry.
  

The key to producing successful infographics is to offer good, relevant data in an exciting visual style, presenting information in a concise format that is easier understood than through words or video. The best infographics don’t strive to go viral over night, but instead beg to be consumed and continuously travel among members and non-members.

Check out our infographic for tips about how to use this powerful marketing tool to engage members in print, online and on social media.

This article was originally sourced from Association Adviser and was written by Brianna Lawson.