“Don’t let your imagination and enthusiasm be dampened by organizational politics or institutional caution.”

This is from a white paper on guerrilla social media strategy by Colin McKay (shout out to Mads for the link), but I think it’s applicable FAR outside social media strategy. Every organization has institutional resistance to change. EVERY organization. In some places, it’s greater than in others. But every organization has at least one person who fears change. And most have a LOT more than one. If you are the change agent in your organization (and the fact that you’re reading this means there’s a better than average chance you are), don’t let the forces of “we have always done it that way” steal your thunder.

So Fellow Change Agents, how to you keep your spark in the face of “no”?
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I’ve been sitting on this quote from Aaron Brazell (@technosailor) since BlogPotomac back in June.

A few thoughts about branding:

NACHRI is currently going through a major branding initiative – consultants, fonts, colors, phrases, brand book, the whole nine yards. But, as Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff remind us:

Marketers tell us they define and manage brands. Some spend millions, or hundreds of millions, of dollars on advertising. They carefully extend brand names, putting Scope on a tube of toothpaste to see what happens. We bought this brand, they say. We spent on it. We own it.

Bull.

Your brand is whatever the customers say it is.

Groundswell, p. 78

Which of course leaves me with a lot of questions about branding consultants, the number one being: Are they even providing a useful service? If they’re helping an organization IDENTIFY what their constituents think about the organization, great. If they’re helping an organization figure out what they can do to help their constituents think better of them, great. If they’re trying to tell you what your brand should be, um, not great. I came into the process here too late to be able to tell which one our consultants did, but I sure hope it’s option 1 or 2.

But the larger point is that I think “brand” is too constructed a concept for people. A company has a brand. A person has a reputation. And it’s the sum total of who you are. Ever seen those Facebook pages that show NO personality? Guaranteed that’s someone who’s decided anything other than 100% professional information is bad for his “brand.” You know what else is bad for your “brand”? Coming across as a cardboard cut-out.

Furthermore, in an era where we’re all trying to become stars in the social media firmament, personal brand starts to eclipse corporate brand. Not to name names, but there’s a car company that rhymes with Mord that has a socmed star on staff. What happens if/when he leaves? Whose “brand” suffers? I’m just guessing, but probably Mord’s.

I’m not sure what the answer is, so I suggest you read Maddie on it here, here, or here, and then tell me what you think.
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Top 5 Lessons Learned at ASAE 2009:

1. Want to foment revolution? Forget the board. “The Master’s tools will never dismantle the Master’s house.” (courtesy of @lindydreyer and Audre Lorde)
2. The membership model of associations is dying. How will your organization respond? (courtesy of @maddiegrant, Clay Shirky, and the cocktails at our unsession in the Azure bar at the Intercontinental)
3. Want more and more active, engaged volunteers? Meet them where they are – young professionals, certainly, but really everyone. (courtesy of Bob Wolfe)
4. The things that make us successful today will blind us to what will make us successful tomorrow. (courtesy of Jason Della Rocca)
5. If you’re scheduled opposite Clay Shirky, fake your own death so you can attend his session in disguise.

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• JNott talks about failure, innovation, and how much he loves his peeps (awwww…..)
• Renato’s mantis-style note-taking fu knocks my socks off.
• Maggie couldn’t go, but she has some great thoughts on virtual attendance.
• Maddie wraps it up without coming across as a TOTAL fan-girl.
• Peggy reminds us that we don’t have control, we have the illusion of control. Isn’t it time to let go?
• Kevin can’t understand why it was so #@$%ing hot in Toronto (me either), but he also has a lot of other interesting insights to share.
• Frank has 14 take-aways, but the common theme is the importance of connection (or at least, I think that’s the theme).
• Acronym has, seriously, 57 posts about the meeting. Many of them are pre-meeting, but still, that’s a lot of good information, particularly when you realize that several of them are, like this post, roundups.

And a suggestion: as ASAE membership demographics shift towards (my snarky, cynical) GenX, y’all need to cut WAY back on the cheese in the general sessions. WAY BACK.

• Staff directory stuck behind the member wall? Kevin Holland thinks it’s weird (and so do I).
• Is management by consensus killing innovation? (thanks to Lori Methia for the link).
• Maddie Grant gives us social media strategy in 4 slides or less.
• Twitter FINALLY throws those of us trying to make the case that it’s useful for more than “what I had for lunch” reporting a bone. Now if I could just get them to respond to one of my 25 or so emails over the last several weeks trying to straighten out a problem with NACHRI account, I’d be REALLY cookin’.
• Something’s rotten in performance reviews. (I actually wrote about this myself about 9 months ago.)
• A bunch of apps for making Outlook more social. Dear Microsoft: we iz in yr yard eatin yr lunch.
• And I’ve finally cracked open Groundswell (if you’re a regular reader, you know my frequently expressed antipathy to business books, so it’s not too surprising that I’ve resisted so far) and am still working through the Benjamin January mysteries (now on Die Upon a Kiss).
• Finally, training camp started this week, so I’m picking back up all my football blogs – both reading and writing (and trying to work out some syndication deals).

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OK, first let me warn you that this is a little self serving, but….

Are you planning to come to the ASAE Annual Meeting in Toronto in August? Or are you even planning to follow it on Twitter (#ASAE09)?

Then there are 3 sessions you should know about:

1. What *was* an unssesion and is now a formal session on new business models Sunday afternoon, August 16, at 3:15 pm, Counterintuitive Paths to Success: Upending the Status Quo. Jason Della Rocca will talk about an article he has coming out in the August issue of Associations Now on this topic that details some of his unorthodox experiences at IGDA. Maddie Grant will facilitate. Then a bunch of us are going to facilitate table discussions/exercises. Weigh in on the session and what you think we should do at the tables through the ASAE online community.
2. Tuesday morning, August 18, at 9 am, Kathy Wilson and I will be talking about Membership Marketing on a Shoestring Budget. She’ll relate tales and lessons from her experiences as a small staff association exec, and I’ll do the same about my time at APSA and CoSN. If you have particular questions or issues you’d like us to address, once again, join the group on the ASAE online community and let us know what you think!
3. Tuesday afternoon, August 18, at 12:45 pm (yes, the last damn session), Frances Reimers will moderate a discussion panel consisting of Bob Wolfe, Kevin Whorton and me as we discuss Practice What You Preach: World Class Engagement Strategies. We’ll be focusing on our experiences as volunteers and managing volunteers. The awesomely smart Peggy Hoffman has given us some things to think about in preparing for the session, and we’ll definitely be asking for official backchannel reps, so even if you can’t be there, prep your questions and get ready to tweet!

And of course, if you have thoughts, ideas, questions, suggestions, etc. about any of the above, feel free to post ‘em in the comments or hit me back at ewengel at yahoo dot com.
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• I was going to write a big recap of Jeff De Cagna’s rockin’ session on Strategies for Association Success in the Era of Social Business that took place last week, but he just announced that the video’s out, so just go watch. Or read Jeff’s coverage on the PI blog. Or Maddie’s coverage at SocialFish.
• Jared shares more really good thinking, this time on the difference between pillars and dominoes and how that relates to what we want for ourselves in life.
• Acronym and David Patt have both pointed to Ethisphere’s list of the world’s most ethical companies. The list itself is interesting, as is the selection criteria.
• The Philadelphia Eagles’ 2009 season schedule has been announced. We open at Carolina, have an early bye (which sucks) and only one appearance on Monday Night Football, but we do have several Sunday prime time games. E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!
• Did you know that NTC is SOLD OUT? Did you also know that Beaconfire’s going to do some great sessions there?

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• Twitter. But not excessively. But I’m still not really “getting it” outside of conferences, where I can DEFINITELY see the benefit.
• A bunch of deliverables for clients. Actually, writing and reading those.
• Kevin’s great post about the success of the ACCA annual conference. Meetings professionals should check out the lessons ACCA learned and think about how you can apply them to your own organization.
• The new Hourglass Blog, particularly the post about Gen-x and leadership. Very active comments – go weigh in!
• Posts about changes to FB pages and terms of service. Is your organization on FB? Educate yourself.
• Speaking of FB, Maddie’s rant is hilarious. How do you know FB is over? When your mom sends you a friend request. Wish I could take credit for that, but it’s a paraphrase of a recent tweet by @BstTwt.
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I used to belong to a book club (until everyone started having kids and wanted to meet at 8 am in Silver Spring on Saturdays rather than downtown over dinner on weeknights), and several members were BIG fans of Kingsolver as a fiction writer. Me? Not so much, to the point that I’ve given away or sold my copies of her books that I purchased to read for the book club, and that’s QUITE unusual for me, as my many overstuffed bookcases can attest. AVM is different – it’s a non-fiction, essay-style account of her family’s year of eating only local, in-season foods. It’s kind of preachy and her “aren’t we the coolest family EVER?” tone can get more than a little annoying. But her larger points about the hidden costs of the “cheap,” out-of-season goods provided by industrial agriculture are quite good.

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