The Executive Director’s Toolkit is built to provide both professional and personal resources that will assist Execs in building a life and a career that is fulfilling. It is Friday, time to take stock and pause to consider how to recharge for next week. From CEO.com, here are five Ted Talks every CEO should watch.
Category Archives: Executive Directors
When Teammates Collide
Good read on personality challenges in teams.
Forward-focused teammates clash with foot-draggers. But, foot-draggers aren’t the problem.
My approach to an opportunity is grab it and go. Planning isn’t high on my list. I know it’s important but can’t we plan as we go. “Just do something” is my motto. Build the airplane in the air.
“Just do something people” drive planners crazy. But “just do something” isn’t the problem.
Example:
A planner on my team sent me an e-mail that included, “I don’t want to frustrate you.” I was pushing for a next step. He was explaining why we can’t move forward, at this time.
Every team experiences collisions between team members pushing for the next thing and those reluctant to move forward.
*Heidi Grant Halvorson and E. Tory Higgins explain motivational collisions in their new book, “Focus.” They explain how some tend to promote and others prevent.
Promoters play to win.
Preventers play not…
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Filed under Executive Directors, General
Three Questions Executive Directors Want Answered about Social Media
There is no hotter topic than association and nonprofit use (and metrics) of social media. The data of the latest benchmark report on nonprofits and social media takes a while to digest, and even longer to determine relevance for any particular organization. A benchmark does not provide any particular guide to strategy, especially if almost every organization is still struggling with issues of ROI and meaningful metrics.
I admit, as an Executive Director of 20 years experience I had questions about my association’s investment in social media. In talking with my peers, (most of whom are also boomers), I found that my questions weren’t only mine. One colleague said, “So, we get 10,000 likes on our Facebook page. What does that mean? And in the long run, how does that benefit our organization?”
Boiling down the conversations I have had with colleagues over the past couple of years, the questions come down to these:
1) How does our investment in social media lead to an increase in conversion or retention? Can we show that our investment in social media increases membership or product sales, or retains members? There can be a lot of discussion about engagement, but I’m sorry to report this fact: many Executive Directors may feel that engagement on social media only is a kind of discounted engagement. It is easy to click “like” or to follow a link, but if that doesn’t lead to measurable benefit for the organization in terms of revenue, there may be continued skepticism about the level of investment made by staff.
2) How does our investment in social media enhance our organization’s reputation as the preeminent source of information/expertise among our communities of interest? There may be many communities of interest…but of particular importance for many organizations (especially if the #1 question is difficult to answer), is whether others begin (or increase) their use of information provided by the organization. For example, as the association of which I was Executive Director, The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, increased its presence in social media, we directly increased calls from reporters for “mainstream” media outlets (the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.). These reporters want further information on material AAMFT had published or stories they were writing, or to use as sources for new articles. In addition to online links, pingbacks, etc., this created an external measure of impact for our social media activities. Social media led to earned media exposure for the organization itself.
3) How does our investment in social media translate into use and assimilation of the organization’s (or members’) positions, advocacy or public education initiatives, or member’s business/social interests? The key word here is translation. Can you measure third party use or adoption of positions, statements, or key strategic messages from investment in social media. This doesn’t mean that an organization has to produce something that goes viral, although that certainly could be one metric. The Oregon Dental Association created the public service announcement BRUSHY, that scored several hundred thousand hits in a number of days. By that measure it was a great success! Now, is there a way to tell how many kids watched it, as opposed to dentists? And is it used by pediatric dental offices for patients? As an Executive Director, that is one question I want an answer to: does the work translate out of the virtual world?
A social media strategy can be built that will aim at any of these three questions. Metrics can be established that are organization/campaign specific that will help define the value and success of efforts in social media. For many executive directors, who have to manage multiple priorities, budgets, and politics, the more practical the metrics, the more relevance of social media investments.
I’d love to hear comments or reactions to these questions and ideas.
Filed under Executive Directors, Social Media, Success Metrics
Three Core Elements of Executive Director Success
It has been axiomatic among Executive Directors that mishandling money or politics will get you fired. But what elements are absolutely necessary for success?
When you boil it all down, it comes to these:
Create Results. No Executive Director will survive today without creating results. While there can be a lot of talk about meaningful, measurable goals, etc., you must understand how success is defined in your organization, and you must demonstrate your ability to lead successfully to that definition of success. Many times Executive Directors fail because they reach success in their eyes, but that is not how success is defined by key stakeholders.
Build Relationships. In associations and non-profits, perhaps more than any other enterprise, the ability to build relationships is vital to success. This is so because a major component of the work is with volunteers, who not only expect the organization to provide value, but also have a stake in it that in many ways is as profound as that of the CEO. For association and nonprofit leaders, those voluntary relationships represent most of the people with whom you will be interacting. If you cannot build relationships there, and even more importantly, if you do not have a plan to continue expanding your circle of influence, you will ultimately fail.
Today, with the multi-generational workforce, by the way, the same dynamic is true. While a CEO has no peer relationships on staff, if s/he cannot build collaborative relationships with staff, the possibility of success diminishes greatly. The model of “command and control” in a staff team is no longer a credibly viable way to achieve success in most associations and nonprofits.
Manage Transitions. Again, more than for profit businesses, associations and non-profits have more transitions. Aside from normative staff turnover, boards, committees, task forces, etc., all have defined terms of office. There is constant transition of leaders, opinions, stakeholder groups, etc. If an Executive Director does not pay attention to, plan for, and ensure smooth transitions, trouble lies ahead. And this is just in the internal process of the organization. Outside, there are changing conditions, shifts in political context and alliances, and changes with collaborators and competitors. Too many balls get dropped, with harmful consequences, when CEOs do not focus on the transitions and create opportunity with them instead of obstacle
All of these elements are necessary, but any of them alone–or even any two of them–is insufficient. And we could mine all of these for a lot of other embedded ingredients. But at the core level, these elements begin to give you a map of the territory that you must traverse to be successful as an Executive Director.
If you look at your work today, you can identify where you are in a continuum with these three core elements. You will then be able to create a plan to address them, building success not only for your organization, but also for yourself.
Carry on, and remember the big three!
Filed under Executive Directors, Success Metrics
The Life Cycle of the Executive Director
“Somebody once told me that it’s time to leave when you’ve gotten enough, when you’ve given enough, and when you’ve had enough.” So said Edward Bernstein, President of the Industrial Research Institute, on ASAE’s Collaborate Network, quoted in the March, 2013 issue of Associations Now.
How different that is from the advice I got from my mentors when I became an Executive Director in 1993! At that time, many execs spent a career at one association, so my mentors coached me on how to grow in my job and keep it over a longer period of time—which I did. I remained as the Executive Director of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) for 20 Years, and I could have remained longer had I chosen to do so. Many of my peers, especially in the mental health field, also are having or have had long tenures, from 39, to 25, to 20 years, etc.
Now we hear from executive recruiters that the average tenure is significantly shorter in associations—somewhere on the average of 7 years. Granted, the cycle of change is much more dynamic, and the demands and skills needed for one association may shift much more dramatically in 7 years now than they did in the past. It is also true that as the field of association management has matured, there is more “churn” in jobs as for many execs, the only way to grow dramatically in a career is to move from one association to another.
It would be helpful to have a career map—and a compass—in order to navigate a career as an association executive, both for those who are currently executive directors and those who aspire to be. This is especially true for those who have hit a period of uncertainty about their current context or their future. Executive recruiter Paul Belford, in a soon to be published book, The Association CEO Handbook, refers to this period as the “zone of great complexity” and defines it as “that special corner in association Hades where the CEO’s performance in a position is affected adversely by his/her inability (or refusal) to maintain the balance of professional fulfillment and Board enfranchisement.”
The question, of course, is what to do when one hits that period? Renew, or resign? And how important is the notion of “professional fulfillment” or “personal fulfillment” in building what one will look back on and say, “that was a career I can be proud of?” This notion—how to do a better job, and build a better person for the job, is something we will be exploring more. Sometimes it may be a 5 point list of ideas. At other times, it will be more narrative and thought provoking. Careers (and life) can’t be condensed into a short blog post—and certainly not a twitter post. It’s a long plot play, with nodal points of transition throughout. We intend to draw a map, and give the tools to use your own compass. But remember—the map is not the territory, and there will always be surprises…
Filed under Executive Directors
Executive Director's Toolkit 