Today I saw one that probably should have been the cover graphic for our book.

But my biggest “Doh!” moment was this: at the end of the discussion, I was thanking everyone for giving up their break time and talking to me about it, and someone said, “No, we want to thank you for coming here – nobody has ever asked us what we thought about it before.”

I mean, I knew this was true, because I have made it my number one priority for us staff to have a real presence at all of our events and for all of our members to know who we are and be free to talk to us about anything. But to have someone actually say it, point blank, made me realize that there is a HUGE cultural shift that I need to make happen, where all members and students are made to feel part of our community, not just the core few who are involved the most. And all it takes to make that shift start to happen, is to be able to show that I care what each of them has to say. Which I do! So I will keep asking.

In the association space most of us in the education arena are very focused on one thing, education. And that tends to be defined in terms of conferences, seminars, and perhaps online education. A smaller population of educators focuses on certification or accreditation of professionals. This education focus is simply one very small piece of the overall human capital arena.

Human Capital cuts across every single traditional division or department within an association. It impacts IT, marketing, communications/PR, government relations, education/certification, meeting planning, finance, and research…every department or specialty. I have been touting for years the need for associations to start thinking about the shift from Education Director to Chief Learning Officer, and some organizations have made that leap. But the next evolution is a focus not just on learning, but on Human Capital.

The WHADITW might go something like this… It is time for associations to think in much grander strategic terms about how Human Capital is organized across the association’s entire trade or profession. Not simply themed conferences or seminars, but in the broadest, most global sense. Here are some questions to ponder.

How is your organization…

• Managing human capital across your entire trade or profession? Is it a cross-functional area (as it should be) or is it in a silo within the organization?
• Identifying and managing knowledge creation within your organization but outside of conferences and seminars? How about managing knowledge creation outside of your organization?
• Addressing the need to really know each specific job function within your trade or profession? Can you even identify them clearly? Can you map knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) to each job function? Do you even have the KSA’s identified?

Focus educational programs and services around the four values Mickie describes. Work very hard to provide as many of these values to your members as possible. But in the short-term, focus highly on the context and filtering aspects of content. Perceived value is what drives participants to education programs. Identifying what that perceived value might be is absolutely critical to the marketing and pricing challenge. Many times it is saving a member time and money by filtering out irrelevant content and explaining how and why that content can be applied to someone’s professional or personal life. Time and money are the two most common “value” items. With this in mind, here is a philosophy on pricing…

Free is not good. Unless you have some sort of legitimate reason for not charging for a program (a grant funded program, for example) you need to charge something to participants. The more you charge the higher the perceived value of the program. When you offer something for free, the buyer’s mentality is that it is not as valuable, even if it truly is. We also see significant numbers of no-shows for “free” programs versus paid ones.

Bundling products and services creates higher value. If you offer an education product, be sure to think about other products you can bundle with it. For example, you offer a seminar on how to build a great tree house. Your organization also happens to have a research report on new trends in tree house building. Bundle the products together to add value. You could even simply send an email out to everyone who attended the ‘how to build a great tree house’ course that lists all of your other tree house resources, with links to each. This links back to the filtering aspect of value creation.

Here is the ultimate issue… New staff members need to be educated on how your organization purchases products and services from third parties. How this is done is a direct reflection of your organization. It comes back to the bigger issue I have which is simply this. We spend huge budget dollars educating our membership but very few dollars educating our own staff. Professional development of our own staff members is absolutely critical in this knowledge economy, yet I can’t tell you how many times I hear staffers say, we don’t have the budget to attend that seminar/conference, etc. If I were the HR director of an association, here are the critical topics I’d have new employees go through.

• A 101 course on your industry or profession (if your organization doesn’t have one, you should)
• A course on the association and its role in the industry/profession
• A department-level and individual-level overview of how that individual’s job fits into the bigger picture of the organization
• A general association management 101 course
• A vendor/supplier management course
• A general association finance course (see my previous rants on this topic)
• A management course that reflects the organization’s philosophy of staff management, if the individual is going to manage staff

I’d also have a thorough conversation with a new hire about the areas of professional development that they want to focus on and create a learning plan for that individual. And yes, your organization should pick up the tab for this. Employees who feel their employer invests in them stay longer, are more loyal to the organization, and do not tend to turn over nearly as much as those who feel less supported.

My best advice…simply ask them. Get them involved. Empower them to participate and plan. A few years ago I was at an ASAE Annual conference and talked with a young Executive Director of a smaller association. During the cocktail reception he was telling me about his organization’s issues around attracting and retaining younger members and specifically, around new graduates. His solution was to use his current volunteer leadership to identify two dozen or so young professionals across the country. On the association’s dime, he had them all come to the headquarters for a weekend retreat. In essence he locked them in and gave them a simple directive. Design a program that would bring together young professionals in the industry. Something that was fun and engaging for their peers.

At the end of the weekend the group designed a parallel conference to the national conference, just for young professionals. They chose that design to be able to pull from industry experts that would already be at the national conference, but gave themselves their own learning space to deal with their unique issues. The Executive Director got vendors to sponsor the young professionals program as well as offsetting the registration fees. The group of 25 or so managed a word-of-mouth campaign and brought in over 300 of their peers to the first event. The association was thrilled with the turn out and the sponsors were thrilled at the exposure they got with these young professionals.

The key concept is that eLearning might be best “consumed” like Americans eat fast food. It needs to be convenient, quick, and taste decent enough. What I simply mean is this. Participants need to be able to find your eLearning products easily and it needs to be formatted in a way that is convenient to your participants. Strongly consider the participant’s work environment and plan the design accordingly. Second, people need to get in, consume the content, and get out quickly. eLearning programs that go on for hours do not typically get the results the organization is looking for. Finally, the program needs to be decent tasting enough that members will come back. There isn’t an expectation that it is a Kobe steak, just a decent burger will do.

Make the learning engaging but convenient, quick and decent.