2 out of 3 - time for a bit of a break

There are 3 life altering events that every young professional will undergo:

• New job
• New house/apartment, etc.
• New Baby

I got two out of the three - and, well I'm not planning to move - which means the next couple weeks/months are going to be crazy. I just recently found out my wife is pregnant (she's due at the end of November) and I've recently branched out from training into marketing, adding a new skill set for my association journey.

With that in mind, I'm taking another short spring break from blogging to pick up my new duties in marketing as well as to assist Heather and be there for her. I plan to get back to blogging around the second week of June. Thanks for reading and wish me luck, I'm going to need it,

Until the next post, stay young,
bob

P.S. You could take my old job. Here's the description: http://asi.careerhq.org/jobdetail.cfm?job=2890355 and you never know, we could be coworkers

A slight tangent - more than age

First and foremost - thanks to Lindy, carterv and rees for great comments from my last post - I definitely plan to build off of those comments - however I saw an interesting post by Maddie that stirred up some controversy that I wanted to weigh in on.

The way I see it - there's only 3 ages that matter:

16 - you can drive
18 -you can vote
21 - you can drink
(feel free to let me know if I missed any)

Every other age is just a mindset. Other than social security (I didn't mention this because you could retire earlier with proper investments) - there is no other age that changes anything about life. What affects life is the choices we make and the actions we take. So why would anyone really try to put a number on young? I don't recall any magic transition.

Good example - my grandfather who is 65 still kicks the crap out of me (I'm 25) when we play tennis on Saturday mornings. As far as I'm concerned, he's still young. On the other end, the creator of facebook is 23 and a billionaire - does that make him old?

Maybe it's the mindset of associations - in vs. out, member vs. non-member, membership A vs. Membership B vs. Membership C - that causes us to have a tendency to formally group everyone into exclusive groups.

As far as I'm concerned, your as young as you let your self be (I don't know the age of the other YAP admins - its useless info - I have too much else taking up my gray matter).

Thanks for reading,
bob

Innovation from a Yap's Perspective

In a recent post, Lindy gives an incredible piece of insight – “we all need to foster innovation in our own ways...but for those of us who are not CEOs or top executives, that means working within the cultural boundaries the leaders of our organizations have set.” This is an excellent point and really helps define the level of innovation to be expected by different levels within the organization.

As a non-executive, the only way for me to encourage innovation is through incremental steps. Hypothetically, if I were to go into the executive office or into a board meeting speaking of a revolution and declaring that the way we’ve operated for the past 40 years is wrong in today’s environment – odds are I’d be fired. Because at my level, disruptive innovation, regardless of how well based it is, can be seen as insubordination.

At my level in the organization, my job is to continue pushing the organization forward in the direction that was set before it by the board and the execs. However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t help us get their more efficiently – it just means working on small improvements on the train as opposed to completely shifting the track.

And I’ve done this - I introduced my execs to the concept of social networks and the added value they can add to the association and they’ve started to come around to the idea. I began to use wikis as a tool for collaboration so the execs and volunteers can see how they work – and now it’s been our web2.0 success story for the time being.

And I will continue to introduce new ideas and technologies, but the way I introduce them is by building off of our plan, because for me as a YAP and non-exec, I have to make it fit into our current strategy. I don’t have the ability to totally redefine the organization’s operations and goals; I can only help us achieve them more efficiently while adding some new value. It will take time, but it’s coming.

Innovation has to come from somewhere though, whether it’s an innovative exec or a board member, a third party to the organization, or a mid-level staffer or lower, someone has to serve as the agent of change, and depending where on the org chart they sit determines the level and intensity of the change inital change and the level of buy-in needed.

Be patient though, it will be worth it.

Thanks for reading,
bob