Transform Culture

I remember years ago when people in the association world began to freak out when they learned Generation X were “not joiners.” True, Gen X does have a strong bent towards independence, and roundabout the time “Bowling Alone“ was a popular book, many associations were seeing a decline in membership. Help! Gen X isn’t joining! But […]

ONCE A MONTH, I’LL ROUND UP SOME LINKS TO POSTS FROM AROUND THE INTERNET ON OUR CULTURE TOPIC OF THE MONTH. HERE’S THIS MONTH’S READING LIST FOR YOU ON GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES. First of all – if you want actual data on Millennials – go to Pew. Millennials And ‘Their Destruction of Civilization’ (Forbes) This is a great […]

It doesn’t take a lot of searching on the web to find essays, posts and articles that declare generational differences a big lie. Many of them center around Millennials, particularly because that generation has been covered in the press with many different names (Gen Y, NetGen, etc.) and many different start and end dates. I […]

I saw a story in the Wall Street Journal about Millennials in the banking industry. Short version: Millennials don’t seem to agree with the banking industry’s suggestions that they keep their heads down, focus on their work and learn how to pay their dues, so they’re moving to other jobs. This apparently “confounds” the banking industry. […]

For the last 10 years or so, we have been complaining mightily about Millennials. It’s honestly one of the reasons I got involved in the whole topic of generational diversity in the first place; I was sick of all the complaining. They’re spoiled. They’re entitled. They wear flip-flops too often. They got too many trophies. They’re […]

One of the truths about generations that doesn’t get much attention is the basic, demographic fact that organizations always have been — and always will be — made up of multiple generations. I mean, even in the small-staff associations, you’d be hard pressed to find an organization without at least two generations represented, and as […]

Every now and then, I get some serious pushback when I write about Millennials or generations in the workplace. People get almost mad when I imply that these differences are (a) real and (b) important to running a really good organization. The biggest objection seems to be the fact that I make generalizations about huge […]

So this month we tackled the overlap of culture with strategy. We challenged the notion that culture eats strategy for breakfast and we asked you to at least think about what our beloved-process of strategic planning is actually doing to your internal culture. Then we might have made you even more uncomfortable by talking about how associations need to […]

Last week, I sat down at ASAE’s Great Ideas Conference with well-known association contrarian Jeff De Cagna, chief strategist and founder of Principled Innovation LLC. Jeff challenges association decision-makers to think differently about the future and embrace the generative work of transformation. Q. We’ve all heard the cliché that “culture eats strategy for breakfast,” but […]

This comes straight out of the book Awesomely Simple by John Spence. In each chapter he identifies critical areas (communicating properly, conceptualizing your vision, recruiting talent, etc.) and gives concrete advice on how to improve upon them. There is then a quiz at the end of every chapter pertaining to the items he lays out previously, which […]