The FORUM Effect

An almost universal groan: Keeping up with frequently changing student addresses

2009-12-14T16:07:41-06:00

Asking for suggestions on handling the frequent moves of students and recent graduates generally elicited a groan as well as some useful suggestions.

Having student leaders update contact information using their access to peers with Facebook, MySpace, face to face contact and school lists is very successful while the students are still in school.
Collecting additional email addresses without .edu is encouraged by some associations.
Trying a student address drive with the first chapters to submit updated contact information receiving an incentive for their chapter was doing very well at one organization.
Requesting the effective month of address changes and using the home, not training institution, as the primary contact is recommended by another association.
“Holding hostage” a sought-after certificate for two months after graduation to be sent to the new addresses is another way of gathering the updated contact information.
Capturing email addresses at the next required professional step of searching the online training registry works in some situations.

If any other associations have any other helpful suggestions, please add them to the blog! Keeping up with students’ frequent moves is an ongoing challenge.

Five D's of Working From Home - Discipline and Diligence

2009-12-11T16:06:45-06:00

So last week, I wrote introducing the five D's of working from home. In that post, I talked about one of the most important of the five - dedication. Dedication, both to your organization and your craft, is the hallmark of someone who can effectively work from a home office. However, there are four more D's to get to, and today I plan on talking about discipline and diligence.

Without these two traits, working from home would be extremely difficult. Being a disciplined person and worker helps a great deal when you're first trying to develop a routine and figure out how to tackle working from a home office. Understanding that you need to be prepared and organized on a daily basis to come in and get your work done without any direct supervision is extremely important. And not everyone is that disciplined. When I first began working from a home office, it was difficult. I'll admit it - I wasn't as disciplined as I am now. However, over the last three years, I have really become a disciplined worker who understands what it takes to get the job done.

The other D I want to talk about today goes right alongside discipline, and that's diligence. This is one of the intangibles that you really need to develop if you're planning to work from home. To me, diligence is getting the job done no matter what comes your way. There are going to be days when the VPN connection is slow, the people at the office aren't returning your calls as quickly as you'd like, or something gets piled onto your already full plate that you weren't expecting. Working through these obstacles sometimes takes a great deal of diligence. As the person who works from home, you are often looked at with a magnifying glass. Your work might be scrutinzed a little more by the co-workers and boss. That's why being diligent in accomplishing your responsibilities is so important.

Next week, I'm looking forward to sharing the final two D's in the five D's of working from home, which are actually both included in one ability that you must possess if you want to work from home - the ability to deal with distractions... I'm looking forward to sharing that post with you.

As I close, I'd like to ask if you work for an association that allows working from home, and if you're someone who does this occasionally, do these D's make sense? What would you add to the mix of things you need to have in order to be an effective employee when working from home?

Thanks for reading.

Introducing the Five D's of Working from Home

2009-12-03T16:54:22-06:00

I recently wrote the What’s the Big Idea piece in the November/December issue of FORUM Magazine, which talked about my experience as a remote worker and how associations can integrate this into their work arrangement for some employees.

While I work fully remotely from Aurora, Illinois – about 200 miles from my organization’s headquarters office in Indianapolis – I think my experience is easily translatable to telecommuting. I essentially used the two words interchangeably in the piece, and probably should have just used the umbrella of “working from home”…

Anyway, I have learned a lot in my three plus years working from a home office, with my cats being the closest thing to another human that I often see throughout my workday. It’s something that I had to adjust to, and in this experience, I have developed five major traits that you MUST be possess to be able to effectively work from home. I’m going to post these each week over the next four weeks on this blog, and hope that you get something out of the posts.

The first of the five D’s of working from home that you must possess is dedication.

Dedication in the context of working from home is one of the most important traits that you can possess. If you are not dedicated to your craft, to your association, or to your boss and co-workers, you are not likely going to succeed in working from a home office.

When someone determines that working from home is something they want to do, they have to be dedicated to ensuring that they will work collaboratively across geographic and sometimes time barriers. They also must be dedicated enough to the association to know that at times they will have to work harder to gather the information that’s necessary to do their jobs than those in the office. Lastly, they have to be dedicated enough to understand that in certain instances (like mine), they will have to travel more often to accomplish the job they’re responsible for. (I travel to Indianapolis about once every other month for a week of in office time.)

Overall, dedication is likely one of the most important traits necessary to working from home. Next week, we’ll talk about the second and third traits necessary to work effectively from home – discipline and diligence. Thanks for reading.

Social Media Policies

2009-12-01T16:48:31-06:00

Employers continue to be uncertain about their "right" to access employees' social media sites and monitor usage. Certainly, the law is not well-settled in this area as of yet. One of the overriding concerns is "are our employees saying negative things about the association?" Has the increase in social media sites made your association more likely to consider a social media usage policy?

Read the November/December 2009 Digital Edition Today!

2009-12-01T10:54:55-06:00

Click here to access Digital FORUM.

This month features the American Society of Safety Engineers.

2009-11-24T15:42:47-06:00

Are you utlizing social media when connecting with your staff? If so, has it worked?

We're all in this together

2009-10-27T15:38:34-05:00

I've received a couple of interesting comments from the article in the October FORUM wherein I discussed involving MARCOM early in the planning process. Both were positive and expressed agreement with a couple of the points raised, along with noting that a lot of what I referred to as common sense wasn't all that common. It got me thinking. How often do we get so wrapped up in making sure our organizations are looking to the future that we miss what's in the here and now? More to the point, how often do we spend time and resources reinventing solutions that others have already discovered, simply because we failed to take the simple step of talking to our peers?

One of the most important resources I have as a manager is the advice and counsel of others -- both in and out of my industry -- whose opinions and observations I have come to trust. It has been my experience that most of the challenges I encounter are easier met when I engage others for input and suggestions. Although it's not generally as easy as getting the precise answer I need at that moment, I do find that such conversation usually leads me down a path to a solution much more quickly than if I go it alone. Such feedback is everywhere. From the blogs to the industry pundits, to the learned colleagues and (most importantly) my own team, I am never at a loss for useful input and information when what I need most is a second opinion. The trick is to remember to ask.

Read the October 2009 Digital Edition Today!

2009-10-16T10:35:44-05:00

Click here to access Digital FORUM.

This month features the Institute for Real Estate Management.

Making Culture Change a Reality

2009-10-11T11:03:37-05:00

In this month's article we outlined a process that helped the Academy of Dermatology move from organization-wide training on the principles of collaboration to making a culture of collaboration part of our everyday way of working. But how do you make the right decisions about what kind of culture you want your organization to have? We used feedback from staff surveys, combined with the desired state as defined by executive staff and senior managers. How have you successfully defined your desired state?

Measuring internal search

2009-10-08T17:08:01-05:00

Last week I wrote a post entitled Web site analysis in the absence of goals. The post described a different approach to measuring Web success - from the bottom up. The article I referenced in that post used internal search results as the example, but the concepts applied to all Web site metrics. Consequently I glossed over Google's powerful ability to track and report on internal searches.

So, I thought I'd dig in a little deeper to internal search.

To start measuring internal search, you need an internal search engine. If your site has one, then read on. If not, consider the following excerpt from the article Internal Site Search Analysis: Simple, Effective, Life Altering! from A List Apart:

Now when people show up at a website, many of them ignore our lovingly crafted navigational elements and jump to the site search box. The increased use of site search as a core navigation method makes it very important to understand the data that site search generates.

No matter how modest your site, internal search should be in place as an alternative navigation method for users. So, if you don't already have internal search, go get it.

For those with internal search in place, let's roll up our sleeves and start tracking it with Google Analytics.

The first step is to recognize how your site interacts with your internal search engine. You do this by performing a search and then examining the resulting Web address. To illustrate this, go to Google and search for Association Forum. Google presents a results page.

Now, look in the address bar and notice the Web address. It reads:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS249&q=association+forum&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10

To break this down, you are on the google.com/search page. The Web address contains a bunch of variables, each separated by an ampersand. There is hl=en, which indicates the results are in English. There is rlz, followed by gobbledygook. Then there is q=association+forum. There is your search term and "q" is the variable that serves it.

Now, do the same on your site. What is your search term variable? Once you have this in hand, visit this Google Analytics Help page for the complete instructions. It takes less than 5 minutes to set it up.

Tracking internal searches can be of great value. As the A List Apart article indicates, internal search is a direct reflection of user intent. It also lets you follow the path of this intent. Where does it lead? Does your site present a satisfactory user experience? Is there an opportunity to insert a call-to-action within this path?

Or does the search result in no choices? There is great value here as well. Besides providing the opportunity to create a new page or redirect the search result, a no-option search also uncovers some subtle issues. Sometimes users misspel common words or transpoes certain letters. In these cases, you can anticipate these mistakes and direct users to the appropriate page.

The A List Apart article goes into great detail on internal search analysis using Google Analytics. I highly recommend a careful read through before your next internal search analysis.