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[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to grow the reach, revenue, and impact of your learning business, you're in the right place.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Solisa Steele.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Jeff Cobb, and this is the leading learning podcast.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If your association's learning business boils down to an annual meeting at a catalog of content, give this episode a listen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's about how to co-create something more valuable and more lasting without abandoning what already works.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Our guest in this episode, number 491, is James Young, founder and chief learning officer of product community and writer of the weekly newsletter, The Innovative Association.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Jim focuses on helping associations rethink how they develop and deliver value.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And this is his third time as a guest on the leading learning podcast.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Jeff, you and Jim talk about Jim's book in progress, perennial connection, and it's central idea of compound value.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When people learn something, meet someone and solve something together over time, they build trust, and that trust keeps them coming back.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I also asked Jim what an association leader should do in the next 90 days, and his answer is refreshingly simple.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So be sure to listen for that as we roll this conversation.
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[SPEAKER_02]: At the last time, you and I talk, you emphasized product development, learning communities, and the potential for associations to move beyond the typical one-off offerings that they have in their catalogs towards more lasting relationships with members.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You've now had a few more years since then to kind of develop and apply your thinking.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So for you, what's changed and how you think about what associations need to do to thrive?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks Jeff.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's been a deepening in my understanding and accumulation of evidence around a set of core problems that lead us to largely what we're going to be talking about in our dialogue today.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So additional evidence around three things that I find are like almost all associations you're struggling with.
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[SPEAKER_01]: One is diversified revenue, I teach an experience called how to design a product portfolio, I've run it with like 400 different association professionals over the last three or four years, and nobody has diversified revenue.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And what I mean by that is it's largely driven by one or two
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[SPEAKER_01]: or membership, sometimes it's learning, so there's a learning enterprise, because 90% of our revenue is locked up, we struggle to innovate, to do different things, our capabilities are locked up in more of a calendar cycle than it is any notion of innovating.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's number one.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Number two, without a doubt, consumption, passive consumption of content and information still is ruling the
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[SPEAKER_01]: There are glimmers of lots of people doing things that are meaningful, that kind of fit the model we're going to be addressing today.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So the evolution I'm starting to see is from a consumption model toward a contribution model, towards ultimately an evolution towards how do we operate as communities?
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[SPEAKER_01]: is an evolution I'm saying, but I'm still seeing with the people that I work with that I present with that I work with as clients, design system design projects, we're still trying to get out of those cash cows, get out of the explicit content and moving more towards what would as a more robust engagement model.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The third thing is authority.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and what I mean by that is it's pretty easy to create content nowadays.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of associations are in the world of AI and if they are not, their members are for sure.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I do think what comes around goes around and what we do as communities can be deepened by becoming a particular
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[SPEAKER_01]: we do it in a particular niche around a particular industry, a particular profession or a particular problem, and I've seen that as being a real prominent driver to help position ourselves for what's coming as as as learning organizations.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think that last one is really interesting.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We've started talking a lot in terms of credibility capital that organizations have, these different aspects of what they do, probably different aspects of their portfolio as I think you probably think of portfolio that helped to establish and maintain their authority and make them the source that people are going to go to within that profession or industry.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I know you are starting to encapsulate a lot of this thinking, some of the points that you just enumerated in the discussion into a book.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You've had e-books and things like that in the past, but this is a full-blown book.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If I understand correctly, it's going to be called perennial connection, as that's still the title of that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Great memory.
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Load full transcript
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Brandial connection, community design for striving organizations.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so what's this central argument there?
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[SPEAKER_02]: How is that sort of coalescing these things that you're thinking about?
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[SPEAKER_01]: two words compound value.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So what we do in product community and what I write about in the innovative association, I write about learning, I write about systems and I write about community.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And those three things are really becoming independent in my world and the clients and associations I work with.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So the notion of compound value comes down to the simplest way to define it as as a design construct.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you're designing your learning or your experiences in which people learn something, meet someone and solve something, just a real simple three-step process, it can actually change the way you think about engaging with your members and you would even change the lexicon over time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You would say, well, we don't serve members, we facilitate the forever member journey.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so the notion of compound value works from the association or the organizational lens, but it also works from the individual person who wants to engage in a community.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So from the organizational lens, we've designed something called good revenue.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what is good revenue?
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[SPEAKER_01]: I ask this a lot and it's a laugh line because people are like, any revenue is good revenue.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What do you kind of question is that?
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[SPEAKER_01]: So good, we've defined good revenue as revenue that brings in more revenue to us in product community that basically means we're designing a community in which there is trust built in which you have a set of conditions in which people are in a room moving beyond that passive content that I was talking about at the beginning of our dialogue.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and more towards what is a contributory skin in the game model look like around a set of problems.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So how do we create journeys and from journeys come compound values from a association perspective?
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have the numbers tightened up yet.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But if you run a robust early career cohort program, and it's designed around a set of community-based conditions, learning community-based conditions, in which people are in a room grappling with a problem, and they're in personal supplemented by online stuff, and they meet over time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We find that compound value effect goes into motion.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They meet people.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of like how you and I met and Sleesa and I met.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Over time, we see each other at these conferences.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We share a meal together.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're raising teenagers.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We have all these things that emerge simply because we're in a similar business and we're sharing a meal in anapolis Maryland.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So the notion of compound value basically means I'm earning trust from our community
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[SPEAKER_01]: they will want to buy membership because the set of conditions have been developed in that association that cannot be replicated anywhere else in their professional life, and it is based largely around community.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The consumption model of education can work, but if it's not supplemented by
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[SPEAKER_01]: to liberate design around how we engage as peers, peer professionals, it ends up having a much lower shelf life without a doubt.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Just wanted to say, so the book is, it's a simple metaphor, so it's called perennial connection.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's basically the grand metaphor as a garden and perennials are plants.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you garden or you don't garden, your grass is a perennial.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Something that comes back year over year,
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[SPEAKER_01]: And again, it's viewed from the association lens, but also the member lens, members will want to come back if there's value in a garden if you have Hosta or if you have black eyed Susan's, they'll come back every year without an enormous amount of maintenance, I'm not saying that associations don't have maintenance, but most associations operate like annual gardens and which replant every single year.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're pretty, they're attractive, they're a lot of work, you're almost starting over every single year.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So the whole notion of perennial connection is based off what is our unique value?
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[SPEAKER_01]: How do we extend that?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then how do we use that extended value to create long-term community?
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[SPEAKER_02]: delivering value to actually creating value with their members.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think it feels like there has to be a shift in mindset because associations have typically talked about benefits.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You deliver benefits to members.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what they're paying for is those benefits you're
delivering to them.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You're talking about really something different.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I suspect most dissociation executives would not their head at and say, yeah, that sounds good, but it really does require a mindset shift.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So what are their specific types of associations even countered that we're this seems to be easier than others?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what are the barriers you run into in this conversation?
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[SPEAKER_01]: The core conditions in which this works, because everything I'm
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[SPEAKER_01]: makes sense.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's a timelessness in our world of associations, even learning businesses, that it all comes around to, well, how do we get?
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[SPEAKER_01]: A group of people together who have like interests or a particular set of problems that they're all kind of focusing on, how do we get together and address and solve those problems.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of the crux of like the corner coffee shop or the local pub and just community life has always been a part of that function and associations of like carried that mantle for a very long time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What's happened over time, however, as we've become professionalized.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And when we come professionalized in the way we operate our learning businesses or membership functions or events, this whole notion of commoditization creates benefits to me or remember when someone says member benefits, I think of that as a transaction.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think of that as an exchange of value.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'll go even further, Jeff, there's a core concept in my book.
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[SPEAKER_01]: that moves away from value in exchange, which is kind of a quid pro quo, I will offer you part of my hard-earned paycheck or my company's professional development budget, X amount of money, and then you will provide me some value in exchange.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Where the world is going is something called value in use.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a different value conversation,
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like you get a magazine, you get a journal, you get content, you get webinars, you get a discount on the annual event.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's much more, what are the big ideas that we put in the middle that allow us as a community to come together, create new knowledge?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Value in use is a much more proactive approach to how we think about
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[SPEAKER_01]: What we offer, how we offer it, whether we offer recorded courses, versus engaged cohorts, which, to me, are really different.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Value and use would put your members in a mindset and a practice set of engagement with peers seriously over time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it is doable.
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[SPEAKER_01]: over time, it's an operational shift.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I also would say this as a trained librarian who was raised in the world of serve serve.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think in the future, us as association learning professionals or professional staff, serve is going to evolve into facilitate.
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[SPEAKER_01]: we're going to facilitate long-term learning journeys, almost to the point of associations and their members own a 40-year dialogue, an evolutionary dialogue, and the value of that proposition becomes apparent over time, is that people aren't receiving things.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're contributing to the enterprise.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're contributing to an ongoing
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[SPEAKER_01]: dialogue and a community and a body of knowledge.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's quite different, but at the same time, it's timeless.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's why we started these things in the first place.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's people coming together to solve problems.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So let's talk practically about what this really looks like them because you mentioned the perennials versus annual, the big annual for an association is the annual meeting.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You've got the annual meeting, and you've got the catalog.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Those are the mechanisms that associations have for what they think of it as engagement.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So if you're going to move from that from this sort of traditional education portfolio, which is cataloging annual meeting, maybe there are a few other things in there, but that's kind of the deal.
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[SPEAKER_02]: How do you move from there to what you've characterized as a learning architecture?
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[SPEAKER_02]: You've written about this recently, we'll be sure to link to that article.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What's a learning architecture?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And how does that come about?
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[SPEAKER_01]: The first thing is I want to underscore what does it make sense about the annual model?
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[SPEAKER_01]: I like events.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not anti-evente.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I love the people who do these things.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're uniquely skilled at running this kind of carnival of value.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But my claim around things like the annual meeting and basically running an association of undiversified revenue is what
kind of company or organization
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[SPEAKER_01]: 50 to 70% of its revenue on four days out of the year for 20% of its market.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of like the claim that we make around the annual model.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I get a laugh line, but it's also, it's true.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Painfully true.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And we are like anchored around this.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I'm not saying, let's dump events.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't say that at all.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What I would like to see us evolve from
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[SPEAKER_01]: So when you say educational portfolio, let's call us, that's our offering.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So you said catalog and annual event.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Over time, when I go back to my original three arguments, un diversified revenues.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So over time, we want to diversify our revenue sources.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Number two, we want to evolve from a consumption model, more towards a contribution model.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then as we do that, part of our value comes from our authority of what our association functions around our mission, but also our authority in facilitating forever member journeys.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A learning architecture has a number of different features that I think wouldn't be alien to anybody running in association.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Number one, I'm finding more customers, a lot of associations have a body of knowledge.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's a full spectrum of types of body of knowledge.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We can't win in content anymore, but we can win with authority.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And what a body of knowledge does is it basically outlines our practice as members as part of a proactive community with staff as partners.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Having this body of
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[SPEAKER_01]: put an additional stamp on us as authorities, but also it creates the entree, the architecture for curriculum.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll just throw out there and I'm happy to get hate mail for it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Best in class of dot learning is really rare in the world of associations.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Best in class learning just based around how adults learn.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's still a lot of watch, a lot of listen.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's many, many, many examples of
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[SPEAKER_01]: proactive learning communities, but they tend to be kind of smaller or marginalized.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They don't kind of rule the day as an architect, set the platform out for how professionals working adults actually learn, which is around problems over time together, trial and error, often very social.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's a different learning model than the traditional, you know, I need to consume a lot of
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[SPEAKER_01]: I need to know how to do things.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I need to try things, see what works and see what doesn't work.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I need to engage with a community to understand, well, where's the bleeding edge?
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[SPEAKER_01]: I need to be a learner almost across the board.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Any follow-up on that?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, what you're, a lot of what is driving you're thinking is,
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[SPEAKER_02]: What actually works from the standpoint of learning?
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[SPEAKER_02]: You said, you know, there's not a lot of great adult learning going on in the association space.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, everything you're talking about is more in line with how people do actually learn, how value is created through learning.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And ultimately, you know, the question of having some some real impact on the people on the profession.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You're serving somewhere in there, though, you mentioned the concept of
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[SPEAKER_02]: winning and that sort of set off the bell for me that this is also about it's about business it's about strategy because associations have competition you know it's not like that they're not the only people out there in their their field not just competing for the learning and education dollars but competing for the attention just competing for the engagement the involvement of the people they want to serve so if you're not doing this well well what are you giving up your competitive advantage how does competitive advantage factor into this
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm smiling.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This is one of one of my favorite topics, and I know it's one of your favorite topics too, just based off previous conversations, but also your writing and the work you guys do.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Just like best and class adult learning is rare.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Also, strategy is rare in association.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, all these years later, there's, we're rife with strategic plans, but we're not really based in strategy, which is from my lens, from the theorist, I like named Roger Martin, comes around making focused, interdependent choices.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So who are we, who are we going to be, what capabilities do we need?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Where are we going to play and how are we going to win?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And even though it's somewhat controversial in the association space winning doesn't mean
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[SPEAKER_01]: crushing, winning means identifying and delivering unique value.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's with absolutely within our bounds to invest in strategy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Focus strategy is again, when I say the service model that almost says, we're going to do anything for you to make sure that you're happy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That to me is not strategic thinking, most of those associations cannot win because you live to serve, and it's almost like a staff burnout model.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I do think what works in the world that the most practical example that I can think of, and I'll say too.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's association I'm working with right now called the International Downtown Association, and they have invested
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[SPEAKER_01]: in a program called ELF emerging leaders Fellowship and I had an engagement with them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're basically, they didn't have the question, how do we create a learning community or how do we create a product community, but that's what it evolved toward once we started working together.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They wanted to create a business plan to invest in learning.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was really broad.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So what I learned, I interviewed like 35 people, I asked them lots of questions, but I mostly said,
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, what is a bent significant in your journey with IDA?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And how did you learn was trial and error figuring it out?
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[SPEAKER_01]: As I go along, calling my buds, sitting around a table and white boarding it?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody said reading, nobody said listening to podcasts.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody said webinar series, no one said take a course.
21:24.479 --> 21:27.101
[SPEAKER_01]: Not saying those things are important, they are really important.
21:27.741 --> 21:37.767
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm saying, if we don't design ourselves to be a more proactive learning community in which we're starting to grapple with problems, that's really how adults learning.
21:37.787 --> 21:39.488
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was the answer to that.
21:39.608 --> 21:45.352
[SPEAKER_01]: The other answer to what was most significant being engaged in this particular association.
21:45.912 --> 21:50.715
[SPEAKER_01]: And they all said, across the board, they all said, elf emerging leaders fellowship, all of them.
21:51.717 --> 22:09.238
[SPEAKER_01]: Across the board, so over the cohort program, it's been running for 10 years and it is absolutely what I mean by compound value, they've created in the association create a set of conditions, they designed a young professional program for people just learning how to run these business improvement districts.
22:10.352 --> 22:25.737
[SPEAKER_01]: And what they found over time is that they trusted the association, they learned from the association, and they met people they would have never otherwise met, and they now have a community within a community that they can rely on.
22:26.457 --> 22:27.538
[SPEAKER_01]: and they buy membership.
22:28.538 --> 22:31.620
[SPEAKER_01]: And they just they just they trust and they're just like autopay.
22:31.920 --> 22:35.702
[SPEAKER_01]: Just put a membership on autopay that has the set of the unique set of conditions.
22:36.202 --> 22:38.623
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's 5% of the revenue.
22:39.003 --> 22:44.186
[SPEAKER_01]: How might we model a cohort program like elf so that it becomes a
22:48.788 --> 22:50.849
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, the past is prologue.
22:50.949 --> 22:53.210
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the future design of associations.
22:53.690 --> 22:56.632
[SPEAKER_01]: They are like slow grown learning models.
22:56.672 --> 23:08.177
[SPEAKER_01]: They're ways of bringing people into the full communities of communities that over time will be compelled to continue on with the association as they build their professional network.
23:08.638 --> 23:09.198
[SPEAKER_01]: It's magical.
23:16.753 --> 23:28.978
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm hearing in there a tightening of that connection between strategy and learning, because a lot of what you're describing, I mean, you and I both know, I think most of our listeners know that the vast majority of learning is informal.
23:29.418 --> 23:30.238
[SPEAKER_02]: It does not happen in the last three.
23:30.258 --> 23:30.998
[SPEAKER_02]: That's exactly right.
23:31.019 --> 23:32.619
[SPEAKER_02]: More webinar or anything else.
23:32.659 --> 23:38.701
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of what you're saying is, if you're not connecting with them in the informal, you're not going to get them to the formal, most likely.
23:38.721 --> 23:39.762
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not going to come to the meeting.
23:39.782 --> 23:44.564
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not going to come to the webinar because there's an annual connection and they're not seeing the value there.
23:45.464 --> 23:45.724
[SPEAKER_01]: Correct.
23:45.744 --> 23:46.465
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an annual garden.
23:46.485 --> 23:47.426
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a perennial garden.
23:47.466 --> 23:55.292
[SPEAKER_01]: The perennial garden keeps coming back as you shape it and evolve it and you introduce new plants and new ideas new colors new textures, you split it and you move it.
23:55.392 --> 24:04.140
[SPEAKER_01]: It's I'm not an expert gardener, but my wife and I have a perennial garden in the backyard mostly because we've been raising kids and it's easier to make.
24:10.959 --> 24:18.523
[SPEAKER_01]: So the metaphor in the book plays out as a nice metaphor for, it's not to tear on associations that has nothing
to do with it.
24:18.543 --> 24:25.607
[SPEAKER_01]: And it just says, we've kind of adopted and evolved into a model and a system that we can't, that doesn't really work for us anymore.
24:26.107 --> 24:36.293
[SPEAKER_01]: And the new evolutionary system is in some ways going back to our original knitting of, you know, how do we get people together to grapple with problems to evolve value?
24:37.273 --> 24:42.276
[SPEAKER_01]: for individuals, for groups, teams, and then for the association that large.
24:42.757 --> 24:45.178
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know of a book that's addressed this.
24:45.879 --> 24:52.263
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I wanted to really wrestle with all the big ideas that I'm now calling community design.
24:52.303 --> 24:55.885
[SPEAKER_01]: So what does community design look like in our world?
24:55.965 --> 25:02.850
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of community design literature outside of associations, but most of when we talk about community
25:07.838 --> 25:27.111
[SPEAKER_01]: and is a really good book by a man, the man to leave Cazer around engagement, events, or software, all of which are pieces of the puzzle, but I don't know of one that actually addresses community from the practical architecture perspective, and that's what I'm trying to fill like four years of my thinking.
25:27.131 --> 25:29.093
[SPEAKER_01]: It's taking a long time to get there, right?
25:29.153 --> 25:32.095
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, well, we're looking forward to- That's on to me.
25:32.635 --> 25:36.299
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm looking forward to reading it when it is set in the stage here.
25:36.660 --> 25:40.104
[SPEAKER_02]: A couple of questions before we wrap up.
25:40.585 --> 25:47.433
[SPEAKER_02]: One is just, we impact came up a little bit earlier in the conversation and thinking about measuring progress, measuring impact.
25:47.473 --> 25:50.257
[SPEAKER_02]: When we're talking about things like informal learning and community.
25:50.697 --> 25:56.639
[SPEAKER_02]: That can start to get a little sort of fuzzy and smushy, you know, nice thing about a conference is you give them an evaluation form.
25:56.919 --> 26:00.160
[SPEAKER_02]: It may just be a smile sheet, maybe it's not the greatest measure in the world, but it's there.
26:00.460 --> 26:03.662
[SPEAKER_02]: You get it, you get your numbers, you can report them to the board and you're kind of done.
26:04.082 --> 26:08.903
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you think about measuring progress and impact in the model that you're talking about?
26:08.923 --> 26:11.244
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a great question.
26:11.464 --> 26:12.805
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, we're not abandoning.
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[SPEAKER_01]: the old world we're just going to be operating and I see the old world traditional engagement predictors or traditional engagement metrics would be butts and seats how many people showed up how many people signed up how many people came to a particular session did they like it?
26:33.333 --> 26:37.736
[SPEAKER_01]: You are absolutely correct when you look at a higher order set of
26:39.098 --> 26:41.821
[SPEAKER_01]: which is, how does this change my job?
26:42.282 --> 26:43.663
[SPEAKER_01]: How does this change my life?
26:43.944 --> 26:45.545
[SPEAKER_01]: How do I become a better professional?
26:46.086 --> 26:49.730
[SPEAKER_01]: How do I run my organization better because I belong to this organization?
26:52.650 --> 27:03.314
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to invest in those higher order things if we are going to evolve our model from the shorter term content consumption, event driven, webinars, podcast content.
27:04.015 --> 27:08.877
[SPEAKER_01]: We will be stuck in the shorter term while our people showing up and do they like it.
27:09.657 --> 27:11.358
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, important questions, but not enough.
27:12.238 --> 27:19.161
[SPEAKER_01]: Over time, what we need to do is evolve people into journeys and then find out how they're doing in their journey based off their engagement.
27:20.085 --> 27:20.485
[SPEAKER_01]: with us.
27:20.585 --> 27:22.086
[SPEAKER_01]: They're unique engagement with us.
27:22.386 --> 27:29.129
[SPEAKER_01]: So what we're talking about here is offering unique value that is developed in part by the members.
27:30.050 --> 27:30.450
[SPEAKER_01]: The members
27:31.597 --> 27:35.260
[SPEAKER_01]: Community will only work if members contribute and participate.
27:35.360 --> 27:37.402
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not talking about sitting in a volunteer committee.
27:37.862 --> 27:46.009
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm saying, how do you actively evolve in a community of practice in the 21st century in the mid-20s?
27:46.289 --> 28:00.781
[SPEAKER_01]: So the impact statistics over time would be, does trust lead to long-tail revenue and does trust and belonging lead to long-tail persistence.
28:01.421 --> 28:10.646
[SPEAKER_01]: So our outcomes, our goals are never, I'd rather debate this with people when they say membership goals and revenue goals.
28:11.166 --> 28:13.808
[SPEAKER_01]: I never think of membership and revenue as goals.
28:14.168 --> 28:15.909
[SPEAKER_01]: I always think of them as outcomes.
28:16.229 --> 28:20.011
[SPEAKER_01]: They're outcomes of great superior practice.
28:20.871 --> 28:27.915
[SPEAKER_01]: What's exciting about associations is we do something unique, still to this day, we do something unique in the market.
28:28.696 --> 28:30.637
[SPEAKER_01]: And we don't have a lot of natural competition.
28:31.398 --> 28:41.308
[SPEAKER_01]: The competition is really kind of like nipping at us through creative alternatives, but it's not like buying a bottle of shardiné in a large wine store.
28:41.728 --> 28:42.629
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like hard to do.
28:42.649 --> 28:44.391
[SPEAKER_01]: There's like a lot of choice.
28:44.912 --> 28:53.841
[SPEAKER_01]: How might we design a future community that fosters trust and belonging connection and then a contributory model of learning?
28:54.875 --> 29:00.439
[SPEAKER_01]: that keeps people together, connected in this world of AI and alienation.
29:00.479 --> 29:03.201
[SPEAKER_01]: I think this is what we're talking about here's an opportunity.
29:04.062 --> 29:04.843
[SPEAKER_02]: Really exciting.
29:05.743 --> 29:06.244
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it is.
29:06.264 --> 29:14.710
[SPEAKER_02]: I do think associations are so uniquely positioned and are not necessarily capitalizing on opposition in the way that they could be.
29:15.311 --> 29:18.653
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's say then, we kind of wrap up with this, that you know, you're a
29:19.454 --> 29:40.825
[SPEAKER_02]: an association leaders just listen to this conversation your minds on fire now these ideas that you've heard from from Jim Young and you want to get you want to get something done at your association what are the next 90 days look like what do you got to do with your board your staff what what actions do you need to take near term to get that fly wheel sort of in in the first you know stages of motion
29:41.645 --> 29:43.947
[SPEAKER_01]: develop a design a super simple pathway.
29:44.468 --> 29:45.468
[SPEAKER_01]: What is a pathway?
29:45.709 --> 29:59.520
[SPEAKER_01]: A pathway can be something super complex and rigid and just you take one lily pad to the next and then in those work, those are really effective in K12, they're really effective in some professional learning sectors.
30:00.401 --> 30:02.223
[SPEAKER_01]: A simple pathway would be getting
30:03.826 --> 30:11.591
[SPEAKER_01]: creating a program in which you can get your members to do three things in a row over about a three month period.
30:12.651 --> 30:18.474
[SPEAKER_01]: So a super simple pathway to get started and again it has to fit everything we're talking about here.
30:18.535 --> 30:28.720
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like okay three like an engaged webinar, a mastermind call and a wine and cheese for the people who live in Baltimore.
30:29.281 --> 30:30.862
[SPEAKER_01]: Some three things in a row
30:31.714 --> 30:37.400
[SPEAKER_01]: that have a learn something, meet someone, solve something, component to it.
30:38.180 --> 30:40.483
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no magic around communities.
30:40.523 --> 30:48.310
[SPEAKER_01]: They're messy, but in and of itself, if you want to start seating them, you can design something that's fairly simplistic.
30:49.240 --> 30:51.481
[SPEAKER_01]: already kind of fits your operational mode.
30:52.222 --> 30:55.023
[SPEAKER_01]: What are these three things in a row?
30:55.183 --> 30:57.164
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't give you the greatest example of what they can be.
30:57.925 --> 30:58.705
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that.
30:58.725 --> 30:59.265
[SPEAKER_02]: They're simple.
30:59.285 --> 31:04.528
[SPEAKER_02]: Like any, you don't have to be some, you know, big domain expert in learning with a bunch of knowledge, you or whatever.
31:04.548 --> 31:06.109
[SPEAKER_01]: No, simple stuff that association.
31:06.189 --> 31:07.330
[SPEAKER_01]: One, two, three anyway.
31:07.450 --> 31:07.710
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
31:08.350 --> 31:12.012
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's, again, it isn't like, you know, three webinars in a row.
31:12.032 --> 31:15.294
[SPEAKER_01]: You can get some out of the annual meeting to do two more things in just a couple of months.
31:15.994 --> 31:17.615
[SPEAKER_01]: The annual meeting is, it's really
31:19.216 --> 31:23.484
[SPEAKER_01]: It never made anybody new at annual meetings that's been proven in the network science literature.
31:23.924 --> 31:29.414
[SPEAKER_01]: You just, you always go back to your chums, and you always go back to your familiar knitting, which is powerful.
31:30.015 --> 31:32.199
[SPEAKER_01]: But unless we're connecting those nodes,
31:33.108 --> 31:39.111
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not really creating a broader community, the nodes of, you know, this group of people who just meet over coffee every time.
31:39.832 --> 31:47.135
[SPEAKER_01]: We somehow have to say, okay, how do we create these small five person coffee groups or beer groups, whatever you want to call them, into something more full some.
31:47.355 --> 31:53.959
[SPEAKER_01]: And that that to me is a desirable design question at the annual meeting, so you leave the annual meeting.
31:55.035 --> 31:58.056
[SPEAKER_01]: with a Jeff Cobb and a Jim Young saying, hey, how are you?
31:58.636 --> 31:59.276
[SPEAKER_01]: How are the kids?
31:59.716 --> 32:00.977
[SPEAKER_01]: How's college going?
32:01.657 --> 32:03.938
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we've had a common experience.
32:05.058 --> 32:06.438
[SPEAKER_01]: And we just happened to me.
32:06.879 --> 32:13.501
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it would be, hey, Jeff, if I introduce you to, and then you would say, hey, Jim, of I introduce, which is what happened when we just recently saw each other.
32:13.721 --> 32:13.901
[SPEAKER_01]: So.
32:14.461 --> 32:21.563
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think so important to that, too, is people might hear you say that, we meet at the annual meeting, and then we have a conversation afterwards.
32:22.303 --> 32:24.464
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people would react, well, that's not learning.
32:25.498 --> 32:26.098
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would differ.
32:26.118 --> 32:27.679
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say that is happening.
32:27.699 --> 32:30.061
[SPEAKER_01]: That is that is that is hell learning happens.
32:30.221 --> 32:31.101
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all learning happens.
32:31.201 --> 32:31.502
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
32:32.062 --> 32:33.683
[SPEAKER_02]: So count that that counts.
32:33.883 --> 32:35.264
[SPEAKER_02]: I think absolutely counts.
32:35.624 --> 32:35.844
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
32:36.365 --> 32:42.268
[SPEAKER_02]: I think a simple mantra, you know, or campaign based on what you said is annual plus two.
32:42.568 --> 32:43.609
[SPEAKER_02]: I could see anybody.
32:43.689 --> 32:44.970
[SPEAKER_01]: Annual plus two.
32:45.150 --> 32:46.270
[SPEAKER_01]: And there you go.
32:46.390 --> 32:48.552
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you're creating a simple
system.
32:49.852 --> 32:57.839
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a somewhat complex topic, but to me, when you create a simple system, you can evolve that system, you can test that system, you can see what works and doesn't work.
32:58.360 --> 32:59.260
[SPEAKER_01]: But I can tell you this.
33:00.234 --> 33:02.915
[SPEAKER_01]: Without a equivocation, it's a fact, it's physics.
33:03.595 --> 33:08.297
[SPEAKER_01]: If you get, just had a call about this this morning, somebody is a little overwhelmed by what we're doing.
33:08.317 --> 33:10.518
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's like, well, here's what I'm noticing.
33:10.558 --> 33:13.599
[SPEAKER_01]: Is the people in the early 20s and people in their 60s are meeting?
33:13.979 --> 33:17.381
[SPEAKER_01]: And after they meet, I noticed that the annual meeting they were talking to each other.
33:17.441 --> 33:20.022
[SPEAKER_01]: They never, ever would have otherwise known each other.
33:20.642 --> 33:36.231
[SPEAKER_01]: But the learning journey continues, the opportunity for them to engage the potential reality of people engaging in who wouldn't otherwise know or talk or even have any common ground emerges and you can do that at scale.
33:36.751 --> 33:39.433
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like two people at a time at scale.
33:45.577 --> 33:51.060
[SPEAKER_02]: That wraps up my conversation with James Young, founder and chief learning officer of product community.
33:51.580 --> 33:52.861
[SPEAKER_02]: Stay with us for our recap.
33:53.241 --> 34:05.847
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll find show notes in a transcript for this episode at leadinglearning.com slash episode 4-9-1 along with links to product community, gyms newsletter, the article he wrote on learning architecture and more.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We'd also be grateful if you'd share this episode so more people can benefit from the leading learning podcast.
34:12.738 --> 34:18.780
[SPEAKER_02]: One idea I'd like to underline is Jim's distinction between value in exchange and value in use.
34:19.480 --> 34:22.881
[SPEAKER_02]: Member benefits, as Jim sees it, are a transaction.
34:23.481 --> 34:29.723
[SPEAKER_02]: Value in use means putting big ideas in the middle and bringing members together to create new knowledge.
34:30.323 --> 34:35.965
[SPEAKER_02]: It's why he thinks the work of association professionals is evolving from serving to facilitating.
34:36.327 --> 34:43.472
[SPEAKER_00]: Jeff, you asked Jim what an association leader should do in the next 90 days and his answer was to design a very simple pathway.
34:43.893 --> 34:47.295
[SPEAKER_00]: Get members to do three things in a row over three months.
34:47.735 --> 34:51.518
[SPEAKER_00]: That might be a webinar, a mastermind call and a local get together.
34:52.099 --> 34:54.320
[SPEAKER_02]: And I appreciate Jim's take on measurement.
34:54.741 --> 34:59.724
[SPEAKER_02]: He doesn't treat membership in revenue as goals but as outcomes of great practice.
35:00.445 --> 35:04.548
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks again for listening and see you next time on the leading learning podcast.