Embrace the future by scanning the present.

The ASAE Foundation's environmental scan can help you open your association to a future of multiple possibilities.

Liz Jackson, chair of the board of the ASAE Foundation, doesn't want to share information with you. She wants to share knowledge that sets in motion a chain reaction of change.

"There's so much information out there, nobody is able to get a grip on it," says Jackson, president, Associated Luxury Hotels, Washington, D.C. "Information," explains Jackson, "is all the stuff that overflows from your in-box, that you end up storing in a file somewhere. Knowledge," she says, "is information synthesized for your use to make changes, to plan for the future. We're not in the information business anymore. The foundation's goal is to gather information, study it, and create a knowledge format for association executives' use. Our association community won't have to start from ground zero; executives can take what we've prepared and apply it to their planning and decision making."

Creating a landslide effect

That's exactly what Linda E. Christopher, CAE, president and chief executive officer, The Christopher Group, Santa Rosa, California, is doing in her several professional roles. As executive director, California Coalition of Nurse Practitioners (CCNP), Santa Rosa, Christopher has latched onto the ASAE Foundation 1998 Environmental Scan - the foundation's most extensive effort to prepare associations for the future - and is working with her board to apply many of the scan's ideas.

"The scan was conducted during a two-year period and involved association executives and suppliers from all over the country, who assisted in analyzing demographics, economics, technology, workforce issues, and other factors," explains Sherry Keramidas, CAE, executive director, Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society (RAPS), Rockville, Maryland. Keramidas served on the 1998 ASAE Foundation Environmental Scan Task Force and is the incoming chair of the foundation's research committee. The research resulted in the identification of 14 trends - from governance to globalization, from responsiveness to revenue resources - shaping the future of associations. The executive summary of the findings was released in 1998 and has since been enhanced by two publications intended as tools for association leaders to use in working with board and staff to prepare for the future. (See sidebar, "14 Trends That Foretell the Future.")

Says Christopher, "CCNP's exposure to the environmental scan trends has had a landslide effect on the organization. It began with a trickling down of the information to our incoming president, Deborah Maragopoulos, who took the first trend - leadership's role - seriously and made a commitment to take risks. Since I made a presentation to the board, discussing the importance of the scan's 14 trends, the points frequently come up when new projects are proposed, and the trends are guiding CCNP toward a number of major changes."

For example, the trend concerning value and return on investment inspired CCNP to launch a major membership campaign in which the association incorporated new membership categories and revamped benefits - all with a focus on providing members with a return on their investment in the organization. CCNP is doing exactly what the ASAE Foundation leadership was hoping association executives would do with the scan - "applying the trends to their own organizations," explains Keramidas.

Christopher and her board are not the only ones unwrapping the knowledge package and focusing its contents on an organizational future. Rob Paterkiewicz, CAE, executive director, American Society of Home Inspectors, Inc. (ASHI), Des Plaines, Illinois, first considered the foundation's research report as FYI material for himself and his staff. But he found himself going back and reviewing the trends, finding them more valuable with each reading.

He now shares the knowledge with a wider audience through presentations he delivers at ASHI chapter meetings. He also distributed copies of the study to all of his association's board members, encouraging them to read and review it. Says Paterkiewicz, "I'm trying to convey to the board that these are significant trends that we, as trustees of the organization, need to be cognizant of and to factor into our decision making."

Paterkiewicz reports that while no specific changes have taken place yet, "many of the directors and officers are more aware, for example, of the need for responsiveness (one of the trends). They have begun informal discussions on ways to become more flexible in governance."

The knowledge has helped ASHI board members realize that they are not alone - many other associations are struggling to keep up with the rapid-fire pace of industry and professional changes. "The rate of change has hit us and some other groups dramatically," Paterkiewicz says, "forcing us to step back and review the way we do things."

He is working on moving the leadership toward recognizing the value of responding to some of the other trends, leadership role and governance in particular. "Strategic plans are great," he says, "but our current reality is that a 3-5 year plan is only effective for longer-term goals and strategies. I'm focusing the board on how to plan strategically on an ongoing basis, issue by issue. And the trend study gives me the backing and the credibility to enlighten the leadership to the need for this type of management in our organization."

Deciding to do things differently

Patricia G. Kallsen, CAE. senior vice president, American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA), Washington, D.C., scheduled a presentation on the environmental scan at her association's annual state leadership meeting in January. She chose this topic, rather than the more typical regulatory or operational issue, to encourage the executives of state affiliates and their elected leaders to expand their vision.

"The association of today is not the association of tomorrow," she says. "We can't continue to do things the way we always have."

Kallsen tells about a recent use of the scan: When AAHSA's new president, Len Fishman, put together a strategic planning retreat for the leadership staff, he made the environmental scan required reading in preparation for the retreat. "The scan stimulated a lot of thinking and discussion," Kallsen says. "We got beyond today's operational issues and could start thinking of doing things differently in the future."

AAHSA is already moving forward with that new vision. Kallsen gives an example: "The staff suggested that we improve our internal communication and conversation by creating a staff Web site, which in turn will support new approaches to providing customer service." Other discussions have identified some creative options that AAHSA is considering in outsourcing or co-sourcing traditional association functions (another of the 14 trends). Kallsen reports that staff has readily accepted follow-up assignments, and "even more new strategies are on the drawing board as a result of AAHSA's adoption of the survey results."

Mark J. Golden, CAE, executive director, National Court Reporters Association, Vienna, Virginia, agrees that the scan stimulates creative thinking at a high level. "In strategic planning, no matter how hard we try to think outside the box, we tend to plan linearly," he says. "We start from what we're doing and try to see what we can know from there. The problem is, we end up with a matrix that analyzes our universe as it's currently defined. The trends identified in the scan make us begin to ask, Who or what is outside the matrix? Which are the organizations that we haven't thought of as competitors? What are the markets we could be serving that operate outside of our traditional way of looking at the world?

"The scan," continues Golden, "confirmed what our directors instinctively knew about how the world in which they were doing business had changed, giving them new confidence to jettison a stale governance process of endless reports and time spent on administrivia. A new board agenda format with time to brainstorm and deliberate was the result."

The trends, Golden points out, can give executives a fresh, meaningful perspective with direct relevance to their associations and careers. So much so that his use of the knowledge from the scan helped him to land his current position. When the search committee asked him for the traditional analysis of the organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, he complied. "But it didn't strike me as a particularly effective way to analyze or address the strategic position the organization was in," Golden says. So he also created another presentation that examined the association's experience against each of the trends.

"For 10 out of the 14 trends, the report was absolutely dead on," he says. "The association had already recognized as a critical issue the decline in new people entering the profession. The foundation's study findings on how volunteer attitudes toward membership are changing brought new insight into how to address the issue. Also, the foundation's assessment of the importance of strategic alliances would later cause us to place new emphasis on an underappreciated strategic alliance committee."

Needless to say, the search committee agreed that a brave, new strategy was in order and that Golden was the one to carry it out.

Tailoring the trends

CCNP's Christopher uses the trend study in other roles, too. As elected president of the Northern California Society of Association Executives, San Francisco, she is involved in educating association executives about strategic planning. "I focus on how planning has changed," she explains, "and how much more responsive it has become, and how executives can align their associations to be more proactive in anticipation of change."

Of the 14 trends, 3 stand out for Christopher.

1. Value and return on investment. "Rather than focusing on traditional methods to recruit and retain members," says Christopher, "association leaders are beginning to look at members and ask, What do they value, and what do they expect in return for their dues investment? Members won't just write a check every year because they receive a dues invoice."

"Even the newest type of member, the single-transaction member, has intrinsic value," says Christopher. CCNP put this idea into practice by conducting a recent campaign to recruit new graduates. To respond to the financial constraints felt by many graduates, CCNP suspended its policy on payment up front and allowed graduates to pay at any time during a three-month period following graduation and to join at a significantly reduced student rate for a full 15 months.

2. Competition and alliances. "Traditionally, associations are independent of each other," Christopher explains. "Today we understand that the resources are not there to support that level of autonomy, and associations that compete for members are more likely to collaborate and form alliances."

Responding to this issue, CCNP dealt with requests from other advanced practice nursing organizations that might have been considered competitors by instituting a new membership category: affiliate member. This category's dues are much more affordable for smaller organizations, because their interests center specifically on access to CCNP's effective legislative program; so the benefits of the category focus almost entirely on access to those resources.

3. Change loops. Christopher says, "If people understand and are aware of the concept of change-loop consequence - that for each change implemented, a variety of unanticipated consequences result, in turn, allowing associations to respond to new circumstances - there might be less resistance to change. People are uncomfortable with change because it appears unstable and complex. It's important to understand that there is a natural process to change and that it is manageable."

ASHI's Paterkiewicz found the trend about change loops to be enlightening as well. After his board members had reviewed the environmental scan, they were faced with a tough vote on a membership issue. Finally, one board member volunteered, "You know, won't our decision create one of those change loops?"

Everybody looked at each other. A few chuckled. Yet, after a brief discussion of the ramifications of their decision, the board members sent the issue back to the membership committee with the question, How will this influence other issues?

"The scan opened their eyes to the fact that there are bigger issues out there," Paterkiewicz says. "My goal is to continually keep in their minds, Let's not get too caught up in the minutia. Let's not focus on micromanaging. Let's lead."

Keramidas, at RAPS, concludes, "The way associations have embraced the scan research demonstrates the cornerstone of the ASAE Foundation's mission: to be an indispensable association resource for the future. All of our research and other efforts must focus on that future orientation. We want ASAE members and our community to use this new knowledge to be successful planners and implementers in a future that is racing faster and faster.

"In fact, the environmental scan has been so well accepted by the association community that it reinforces the foundation's sense that this is something that has to be done on an ongoing basis," Keramidas continues. "It's a powerful research and operation tool for all associations, and we'll be building on it with ongoing research with Scan 2000."

14 Trends That Foretell the Future

In 1998, ASAE and the ASAE Foundation teamed up to conduct their most extensive scanning effort to date, doing so to clearly identify the severe and immediate challenges that will impact the future success and viability of associations. The ASAE Foundation 1998 Environmental Scan involved 2,500 association executives from all over the country, surveying and involving them in a number of trend-analysis panels to arrive at a list of 14 trends shaping the future of associations. See the ASAE Foundation Web site at www.asaenet.org/foundation/scansessions.asp for detailed explanations of each of the trends.

1. Leadership's role

2. Value/return on investment

3. Responsiveness

4. Governance

5. Revenue sources

6. Technology usage

7. Change loops

8. Generational issues

9. Workforce

10. Outsourcing and co-sourcing

11. Competition and alliances

12. Consolidation and mergers

13. Globalization

14. Image building

The ASAE Foundation offers two publications to help association executives apply the results of the scan in planning for an organization's future. Order your copies by contacting the Member Services Center by phone, [phone]; fax, [phone]; or e-mail, [e-mail].

* Facing the Future: A Report on the Major Trends and Issues Affecting Associations identifies the 14 trends influencing associations. Request product AMR218082; $35 for ASAE members and $42 for nonmembers, plus shipping and handling.

* Embracing the Future: An Action Guide for Association Leaders provides the tools to work with board and staff to prepare for the future. Request product AMR218084; $75 for ASAE members, $90 for nonmembers, plus shipping and handling.

Margo Vanover Porter is a freelance writer based in Locust Grove, Virginia. E-mail: [e-mail].