An Eye Toward THE FUTURE.

What the ASAE Foundation has learned through its futures scan and how you can learn about your future too

WHAT OPPORTUNITIES WILL THE FUTURE hold and how will your organization capitalize on them? Planning how to prosper amidst the swirl of forces affecting the future of your organization is a challenge of leadership. And it's a challenge made doubly difficult by the fact that there is rarely time to stop to see what's going on around us, let alone to consider where we've been or where we might be headed.

As a leader, you are challenged to anticipate changes in the environment and be flexible enough to adjust your strategies to creatively seek out new opportunities. Most associations have limited time to plan and rely primarily on the perspectives of the board and staff in making planning decisions and identifying significant changes in the environment. Applying the process of environmental scanning creates the opportunity to weave together the past, present, and future to identify potential impacts on your association and to develop resources and tools to lead change.

Future focus

Responding to the critical need of preparing for the future, the ASAE Foundation commenced an expansive environmental scan in March 2000 with the Institute for Alternative Futures, Alexandria, Virginia. This second-generation environmental scan is exploring critical challenges and their future implications for associations and their business partners and is funded in part by earnings from the foundation's endowment. The foundation has received gifts and pledges totaling more than $10 million from associations, individuals, and industry suppliers. Hundreds of executives have invested their time and expertise to make this collaborative project successful.

In a free-ranging and provocative online forum, a core of executives is probing possible futures for associations. Within the virtual community, executives are exploring five areas: converging technologies and new economies; demographic destinies and human choices; global societies and local communities; learning organizations; and visionary leadership and aspirations. Here are some of the questions they are addressing.

Converging technologies and new economies:

* How can associations compete successfully on the emerging electronic playing field with its new rules and new competitors?

* How will associations need to transform themselves as economic restructuring causes the industry and professional boundaries on which they were formed to shift beneath their feet?

* Beyond new ways to do old things, what entirely new things will converging technologies allow associations to do?

Demographic destinies and human choices:

* How can associations make themselves relevant to the concerns and interests of the millennial generation?

* What are the new aspects of diversity--beyond traditional categories of race, ethnicity, and gender--that associations will need to attend to in the future?

* How can associations contribute to the development of a successful multiracial, multicultural society?

Global societies and local communities:

* How will association advocacy need to change as more public policy decisions are made at the state and local levels?

* How global will associations need to become as low-cost global communication, universal access, and automatic language translation become widely available?

* How can associations help their members succeed in the global economy and deal with emerging controversies?

Learning organizations:

* What structures and practices should associations adopt to create the optimal conditions for members to self-organize?

* What organizational arrangements are best for fostering rapid learning and agility in adapting to change?

* How can associations cultivate the new leadership skills needed in increasingly non-hierarchical and virtual organizational settings?

Visionary leadership and aspirations:

* What new measures of success, beyond financial and membership, could associations use to more fully assess their contributions to society, partners, members, and employees?

* How can the association community promote sustainable development that protects the global environment for future generations and lifts the most poverty-stricken nations and peoples?

* What changes in association workplace culture may occur as baby boomers move into the time of life when spirituality and values often become more important?

Current imperatives

As the online forum is generating provocative ideas and concepts, the foundation is starting to identify a set of key insights and opportunities as well as design tools and resources for associations. (Analysis from the scan will be shared through the foundation's Web site at www.asaenet.org/foundation and a final report will premiere at ASAE Philadelphia 2001.) The ASAE Foundation's scan points to several imperatives for associations.

Join the education revolution. What we call distance learning today is only a small part of the many changes that will unfold during the generation ahead. Interactive media, shared virtual environments, information utilities, semi-intelligent computational agents embedded in applications, and many other emerging technologies will create a distributed learning revolution, a major new program area at the National Science Foundation. The elements of this revolution represent the largest change in learning and teaching since the invention of public education. Associations can use these technological and educational developments to improve their training programs and to facilitate new kinds of self-organizing learning communities.

Succeed in the attention economy. The economy's center of gravity has shifted across time from agriculture to industry to information. Now another shift is under way to an economy focused on experience and attention. In the emerging economy, consumers are increasingly inclined to purchase interesting, meaningful experiences as opposed to physical products. In a situation of constant information flow, human attention is the scarcest resource. As a result, products and services need to be elevated to attention by inconography--stories and images, and the web of evocative meanings in which they are presented and bundled.

Attract the millennial generation. If generational social change theory is correct, the millennial generation--roughly beginning with the high school graduating class of 2000--will be the greatest institution builders since the GI generation (those born between 1901-1924). With low cynicism, high self-confidence, technical savvy, and a tendency to work in teams, this generation could rejuvenate and dramatically alter associations. The association community needs to study this generation to understand its interests, consciously recruit it, and give it the freedom to self-organize in its own way around its own priorities.

Adapt to changes in work and family life. Changes in work and family structure indicate that associations may become increasingly involved in personal development and lifestyle management. Associations need to take into account that more flexible cyclic life plans are replacing the traditional linear life plan. Increasingly, major career changes will be interspersed with periods of child raising, retraining, travel, and engagement in other non-work experiences believed to be worthwhile.

Leverage the aging of the boomers. The baby boomers will likely use the extension of years of life in good health to reconceptualize the roles and contributions of those who are 60-80 years old. As aging but active boomers move into the time of life when spirituality, values, and the desire to leave a legacy often become most important, associations will need to develop innovative ways to involve older members.

Deal with the new diversity. Fostering diversity during the generation ahead will require addressing the issue in a more sophisticated manner, taking into account factors such as socio-economic strata, age, and varied viewpoints.

Diversity itself will become a more complex concept.

Mobilize cultural creatives. Recent demographic research is highlighting the importance of a population subgroup labeled "cultural creatives." Representing 26 percent of adults, they are the leading-edge creators of a new culture in America. They volunteer and give to good causes far more than most Americans. They are seriously concerned with lifelong learning and growth, meaningful work, spirituality, and creative self-expression. They enjoy new ideas. They like the foreign and exotic. And they demand authenticity. Associations that make conscious efforts to attract and mobilize cultural creatives will gain major advantages in terms of creativity and innovation.

A scan of your own

The ASAE Foundation's environmental scanning tools are a starting point to help you identify the issues in your environment worth monitoring. Keep in mind, there is no right or wrong way to conduct a scan. It can be as simple as regularly surfing Web sites and reading magazines. Or it can be as sophisticated as conducting formal literature reviews and convening focus groups. Your organization's financial and human resources will determine the size and scope of your initiative.

As an association leader, you are well positioned to help promote environmental scanning initiatives in your organization. Environmental scanning fosters a shared understanding of priority issues and a view of the dynamics that are changing your environment. By conducting informal scans of your operating environment, your association will be in a position to bring important trends to the attention of members and business partners--and at the same time, protect the value proposition of your organization.

Michelle Mason is vice president of the ASAE Foundation Research Programs.

Start a Simple SCAN

As a volunteer leader you are well positioned in your industry to help identify trends. Here are five ways to cost-effectively scan your environment:

* Scan resources, such as journals, magazines, newsletters and newspapers.

* Surf web sites.

* Join online communities of practice.

* Discuss emerging issues at staff meetings.

* Regularly interview your members.