The DelCor Connection Blog

Culture eats strategy and processes for lunch - My interview with Avinash Chandarana

In preparation for the upcoming CESSE and ASAE Annual Conferences, I have been gathering information and scheduling interviews with some of the key speakers and thought leaders for the conferences. 

Today's interview (to be followed up with a video interview) is with Avinash Chandarana, MCI Group's Director of Global Learning and Development. He is the speaker for the opening keynote plenary at CESSE 2011 in Vancouver and I wanted to ask him a few questions about working with international cultures. 

 

KiKi: What do most people *not* understand about (connecting or interacting with) managing people from different cultures? 

Avinash: Underlying, "invisible" core values and attitudes often differ dramatically from one culture to another. One culture and therefore its people are neither right nor wrong than any other but just different in how they think, feel and act. This permeates into differences of communication style, etiquette, concepts of space and time and aspects of how business is conducted. Such differences are a source of great richness and diversity, but by not understanding what makes individuals from cultures other than your own behave in certain ways  can lead to frustration, broken relationships and loss of business opportunities.

 

KiKi: What is the best piece of advice you have for an association "going global" with new employees in other regions?

Avinash: Learn to play the game according to the rules of your target markets. Don’t assume what works in terms of member services, benefits and overall stakeholder needs in your country and region will automatically translate to other cultures. Learn which values, traditions, and social norms drive behaviour amongst stakeholders in your target regions of the world. Understand and adapt strategy based on what members and prospects want from the organization by conducting thorough qualitative and quantitative research with key stakeholders before embarking on a global campaign. Similarly, hiring new staff within the country requires a thorough understanding of what motivates and drives them to be successful based on cultural influences. What makes them tick? In most Asian cultures for example, continuing education and training represents a significant benefit which directly impacts recruitment, engagement and overall staff retention.  And if transplanting any staff from HQ to lead a local team in another part of the world, ensure they go through cultural immersion training and have them develop their CQ (Cultural Quotient)  

 

KiKi: How would you describe your presentation style?

Avinash: Energetic, conversational and personal. I enjoy the opportunity to communicate and share my passion for subjects that have impacted my life and that have shaped me into the person I am today.

 

KiKi: What is the number one message every person should get from your presentation at CESSE?

Avinash: ‘Culture eats strategy and processes for lunch ’ Cultural interaction is a business imperative that needs to be managed – it cannot be left to chance. Develop a global mind-set to make culture work for you rather than against you to achieve competitive advantage.

 

Please watch this space for the follow up video interview that I will have with Avinash following his presentation in Vancouver. 

 

"Hi! My name is KiKi."

The first time I attended the Annual Meeting for the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), I was as nervous as a new kid in town on the first day of school. I was geeked out to meet many people from the association industry and ASAE list serve whose posts I'd read. I was especially excited to attend the Component Relations Section Council meeting.  I had recently been chosen to sit on the council and I felt like good things were on the horizon.

At that point, I did not really know anyone from the association community. I followed the association blogs, association list serve and applied new ideas within my workspace, but had never really built relationships with other association professionals. I think it was my zeal for building up member communities that persuaded the Section Council to choose me to sit on the council, in spite of the fact no one really knew who I was.

I had energy, passion, and a desire to add to the compendium of knowledge in the association world. I felt I had something to offer - something I was learning from working with difficult chapter groups on how to turn relationships around and how to build unity and excitement within an organization. However, it took my volunteer placement on the council to bring me far enough into the association world to truly engage.

Volunteering for an association has the power to create mega-members. I know from talking to other high profile ASAE members that their experience is much the same...they became part of a volunteer effort and then an active and vocal part of the association's community.

We know (from studies like Decision to Join and Decision to Volunteer) that higher engagement leads to higher member satisfaction and retention rates. So what can we do to bring that experience to more people? And if volunteering for a council seat isn't an option, in what other ways can we provide that high level of interaction to build familiarity between association members so that the people become the biggest benefit and resource for belonging in the first place?

• Do you make it easy for people to volunteer?
• Do you follow up with people who volunteer?
• Do you provide multiple ways for people to volunteer?
• Do you treat your volunteers well (say "thank you")?
• Does your AMS/CMS support your members' volunteer efforts?
• Do you make it easy for people to meet each other at events?

I am writing this as I prepare to attend another ASAE Annual Meeting (in LA this year). It has been a few years since my first meeting and I am now incoming chair of the Component Relations Section Council, member of the Foundation Development Committee, an association blogger/web show host, and cannot begin to count the number of friends I have in the association world. For years, I preached to member groups about the energy spent on volunteering paying off in the energy returned and I can happily say this has been the case for me. I have received much in the way of education, support, and unique experiences because of my membership.

If you are new to associations or have not really met many people from the association community yet, let me be the one to say, "Hi! My name is KiKi. Let me tell you how you can make the most of your association membership...it will rock your world!"

Don't Shhhh...Your Voice Carries (and that's a good thing!)

When my little sister arrived home from pre-school with Kool-Aid stains on the corners of her mouth and a feisty swagger in her step, my mother followed behind with weary eyes and a slumpy sort of half walk. I was five years older than my sister and she, unlike me, was a natural born leader.

While I always tried to adhere to any semblance of rules I could identify (this habit dramatically reversed for me in high school), my sister had no interest. I was the good girl. She was the bad. I secretly approved.

On this particular day, my mother shared my sister's latest coup. It seems that when Mrs. Imey asked all the children to pick up the toys before the next activity, my sister refused. After multiple attempts, my sister announced to all the room "We don't have to do what you say!" and crawled underneath a piano bench. The other children took that as a call to action and followed suit and the room's dynamic became teachers vs. students in a religious preschool setting. My sister blockaded the other preschoolers behind a row of toys and eventually was captured and sent to the "baby room" to sit and think about what she'd done. She escaped and was subsequently recaptured and returned to her holding cell/baby room until my mother arrived.

My sister's words carried weight with her peers and before she even hit kindergarten, she had discovered the ability to lead.

Many organizations underestimate how many natural leaders are in their midsts, receiving newsletters, attending meetings. They fail to recognize potential ambassadors for their brands, often brushing aside casual email and phone exchanges with the very people who might carry the keys to rejuvenating a stale or plateaued membership.

My younger sister at the age of  three was able to coerce her companions to do what she did and today we see via word of mouth marketing and use of social media the power one strong voice can have.

What is your organization doing today to identify and work with those voices? Are you monitoring mentions of your association or keywords in your industry to see who is talking about you? Do you reach out to those key influencers once identified?

Your homework for today is to write down one thing you can start doing to identify your leaders inside your organization. (Hint: A member serach using job titles won't help you.)

DelCor Social Media Sweet Spot Summary: Episode 30

DelCor's Social Media Sweet Spot is a weekly webcast featuring news of social media conversations, events, and programs for the association world. Social Media.

I host the show. My name is KiKi L’Italien, senior consultant in technology management for DelCor, blogger on Acronym Soup and here on the DelCor Connection Blog. I also moderate the weekly Association Chat held on Tuesdays at 2 p.m. ET on Twitter, so the Social Media Sweet Spot web show allows me a chance to share a lot of what I come across of interest during the week.

Last week's show featured monthly co-host Maddie Grant of SocialFish and a long discussion about ASAE’s virtual offerings at their Annual Meeting, the new AssociationTECH community blog, and a report about MPI’s active discussion around their Social Media Guru Program among other things.

[By the way, Maddie and I will be co-hosting live in LA at the ASAE Annual Meeting (catch us in the "Engagement Lounge" Monday, August 23, between 1:00 and 1:30 pm PT).]

Elizabeth Weaver Engel, blogger on Thanks for Playing, posted on TED’s (Technology, Entertainment, Design) organization new decision to launch TEDWomen.

TEDWomen is described this was on its homepage:

How are women and girls reshaping the future? The first ever TEDWomen invites men and women to explore this question in depth: From the developing world, where a single micro-loan to a single girl can transform a village; to the West, where generations of educated women are transforming entire industries. The diverse international program takes a long look at women through the lens of change agent, intellectual innovator, idea champion ...

Elizabeth succinctly states that TED may be unintentionally "ghettoizing" woman by creating a separate space for discussions about their issues.What do you think?

There were 18 responses to this post and most of them appear to show similar concerns. This discussion has even gone into comparing articles and reports on women vs. men’s wages and includes many well-known names from the association blogosphere, such as Wes Trochlil, Ray Van Hilst, Shannon Otto, Maggie McGary, Maddie Grant, Lisa Junker, Lynn Morton, among others. In other words, this is a conversation that may pop up in LA and further down the road and it’s a good one to be aware of for association cocktail hours.

Another popular discussion item for this week happened on the ASAE Executive Management Section list serve. "An almost-Friday Question" posted on Thursday by Donna French Dunn, CAE with the Association of YMCA Professionals. She asked, “What happens to the introverts of the world when social networking and social media is all there is?”

This question prompted close to 14 responses, including some from Kevin Whorton, Vinay Kumar, Cecillia Sepp, and Jeff Cobb who all are quite active in the association community and blogosphere. The overall direction of the conversation seemed to highlight all of the ways introverted people could relate to the world using social networking and other online tools and the conversation actually continued into today…which is Friday…Donna posted her “aha” realization from the conversations which was recognizing her own preferences for downtime away from work.  Again, this was a popular discussion and worth taking a look at if you subscribe to the list serves.

There was another hugely active discussion on the Membership list serve that had to do with “Social networking site within your web site?” posted by Shaine Anderson, CAE, Director of Membership for PLANET.

He stated:

After attending the ASAE membership and marketing symposium recently, I
came away feeling like it was important to at least explore the idea of
having a social/professional networking component to our new web site,
which we are currently building.  I mean, after all, the biggest benefit
our members see in joining and renewing with our association is
NETWORKING.  So, what greater asset than giving them a forum to network
and share best practices/ideas right from their desktops.....makes
sense, right?

Our web master says don't act so fast.  He says that many of the
association social/professional networking sites (housed WITHIN their
own web sites....separate from FB, etc.) that are being launched these
days are not very successful because their members aren't using them.
But, what I heard at the membership/marketing symposium was very
different - that associations WERE seeing these sub-sites as successful,
and of course, everyone understands that it takes TIME to build the
momentum around them.  I certainly understand that "feeding the beast"
is key to launching the site successfully....

Terrance Barkan and about 9 others responded with their thoughts and comments, giving solid examples and reasons for establishing a private community. Check out the ASAE list serve for membership (and it was cross posted to marketing) and look at the discussion. If you don’t have access to those, then you can contact me and I will share a synopsis of the discussion.

Tuesday’s Association Chat discussed “Nonprofit Executive Salaries” and was inspired by the article in Monday’s New York Times article on “Lawmakers Seeking Cuts Looking at Nonprofit Salaries,” which starts out by sharing that a provision of New Jersey’s recently passed budget includes a limit on what nonprofit groups can pay their chief executives. As you can imagine this was an interesting topic and one that is far from over, I can tell.

[You can get a transcript of that conversation by logging into What the Hashtag.com and looking for #assnchat and the date, which was July 27.]

I reviewed “The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change” by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine.

I have read the book and I have to say there is some solid information in there. This is good for nonprofits wishing to be successful as they enter the social media realm.

What I particularly enjoyed was the section on “Mapping an Organization’s Social Network” because they actually shared the activity and process down to telling you what you need in the room, like a flip chart, etc, to do this activity on your own. Reading this book could save associations consulting hours in the beginning by getting their people more aware of where their organization stands social media-wise and where the organization should be.

They have a section on "Measuring and Engagement" which shares the importance of blogs and how you can track engagement online. They have a great glossary in the back and so I would say this is a fabulous guide for an internal team who has been appointed as a social media team for the organization…this can serve as a manual for thinking through the crucial first steps.

So my rating? I say make room for it if you are serving on a social media team or work to make things simpler for people just starting out. The way this book explains each area is simple in a non-condescending way which just makes you happy all the way around when it makes your life easier, too.
What Else is Hot?…

This week's suggested reading:

• Acronym blog’s “Friday Quick Clicks”
• Spash blog’s “Friday Top Five”
• Mizz Information’s “Increasing Demand For Social Media Managers”
• "Three 2010 Association Mega Trends" on the Midcourse Corrections blog
• A little bit of homework about the people online focused on measuring the effectiveness of PR (mostly online) and a set of guidelines they’ve established called the “Barcelona Principles” which you can read about on the MetricMan blog

This Week's Sweet Spot Award Winner:

Kivi Leroux Miller – a Nonprofit Marketing/Communications Consultant, Trainer, Coach and Blogger.

I have listened to Kivi’s webinars with interest and I have to say she is remarkable – super professional, yet human, and fresh in the way she approaches giving these presentations. She truly is a master of her craft and fortunately her topics cover those we all care about – she recently discussed “Personal-Professional Mix in Social Media with Geoff Livingston” in a vimeo video interview (which you should watch…since she discusses the implications of associations with a social media rockstar who may one day leave…). I absolutely adore her book, “The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause” and her blog and webinars provide a steady diet of learning for the nonprofit community.

Congratulations to Kivi for finding the Social Media Sweet Spot! Thank you for providing service to the association community by continuing to provide useful information about how associations can best use social media!

NEXT WEEK I welcome Jessica Sidman of Association Bisnow as a special guest co-host for the Sweet Spot.   Associations Bisnow is a popular newsletter in the nonprofit community distributed widely by email by Bisnow Media, so we should have a fun time talking with Jessica and getting her perspective on attending all of these association parties and meetings.

Be sure to tune in next Friday at 12:30 EDT!

Make It Easy to Give - UPDATED!

In a consultancy firm, you can't throw a rock without hitting someone who is a massive reader. At DelCor we have the library of professional books for browsing and a library of books for pleasure reading. Mostly, though, we all read our own literature varying from journals to blogs to the latest business management book on the market. There is a good reason for this...we are expected to be informed and knowledgeable in many areas and that means constantly educating ourselves along the way.

One great book that more than one consultant has suggested our clients read is titled, "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. The book is all about making it easy for someone to do what they need to do for your website or program. I had to purchase this book on my Kindle after my boss, Jam Master Dave Coriale, suggested it during a meeting.

Although the principle seems simple, if you have ever been through a website redesign or tried to put together any kind of program, you soon realize how easy it is to forget the mission of simplicity. Ultimately, you want your audience to be able to act on your call to action.

Recently, I received an email asking for me to donate to the Annual Fund for Reasearch & Innovation from ASAE & The Center - a worthy cause and one I have given to previously. The message included a call to action: "Invest in Your Future Today!" and I was curious to see if they had made it easier to give than in previous years.

But when I looked for a link to the page for online donations, I found that it wasn't included. I then contacted ASAE & the Center staff to let them know they might want to resend with a link...because I really love ASAE & the Center and want to see them get the donations they are looking for.

My message is this: Make it easy. No matter how talented your staff and no matter how much you look at something, mistakes can still happen... but if you are constantly looking for ways to simplify a process for your members, you will end up with a much greater return.

UPDATE: ASAE contacted me to say within MINUTES of my posting this to say they had corrected this oversight and they even thanked me for the suggestion! Super FAST response. I'll have to blog about awesome customer service and quality monitoring next time! :) You can donate here: http://bit.ly/87mCBA.

What It Takes to be a (Successful) Social Media Manager

When a person's job is to be responsible for social media on behalf of their organization, it is bound to be frought with unique challenges and oportunities others in their association would not likely see. The Social Media Manager is often a hybrid of public relations/marketing/membership/customer service. My friend, Maddie Grant, has a great series of interviews with some Social Media Managers and the interviews provide great insight into how these individuals do their jobs.

Social Media Managers can be found in a variety of departments and their jobs may also include other duties. There are Social Media Managers in Publications, Marketing, Membership, Development, IT, and Public Affairs and many times they oversee a cross-departmental team of people also engaged in social media for the organization.

The salaries and experience level can often vary widely, but here are some common characteristics for successful Social Media Managers:

• Strong Interpersonal Relationship Skills
• Deep Understanding of Corporate Culture
• Political and Social Savvy
• Excellent Communication Skills
• Ability to think Strategically
• Understanding of Basic Marketing and Customer Relations Concepts
• Creativity
• Management Skills
• Ability to Learn New Things...FAST
• Passion

It will be interesting to see where the people in these roles today end up in 10 years. I already know many who have quickly moved on to higher positions in other organizations and it is fascinating to watch as the field tries to balance itself out in regards to salary, experience, and professional development.

The biggest mistake an organization can make is to throw an intern or bottom-rung staffer into an official or unofficial Social Media role and then expect things to go well.

Who oversees social media for your organization and how do they connect their efforts to the overall mission?