In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Sharon Pare, director of partnerships at HighRoad Solutions and co-host of the Rethink Association Podcast, is joined by two dynamic leaders: Christina Lewellen, MBA, FASAE, CAE, CEO of the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools, and Preet Bassi, CAE, CEO of the Center for Public Safety Excellence. Together, they explore how associations can thrive in an era defined by disruption and opportunity. Drawing on new themes highlighted in the upcoming fifth edition of the Professional Practices in Association Management, the conversation dives into the rising importance of governance and trust, building human-centered workplaces, and the skills association leaders need for the future. Lewellen and Bassi also share insights on the role of AI, the next wave of professional development, and how associations can adapt to create resilient, attractive, and future-ready organizations.

Check out the video podcast here:

https://youtu.be/V_j94oIM_IM

This episode is sponsored by the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.

Transcript

ASAE_ep14

Sharon Pare: [00:00:00] Welcome to this month's episode of Associations NOW Presents, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. Before we begin, we would like to thank this episode's sponsor, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau. I'm Sharon Pare, director of partnerships at High Road Solutions, a HubSpot Agency “associafying” the way associations go to market with, well, their marketing.

I'm also the co-host of our monthly podcast, Rethink Association, where we talk about how to reimagine the way you association, which is the perfect lead in to today's discussion. So enough about me. Today, we're excited to welcome Christina Lewellen, CEO of the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools, and Preet Bassi, CEO of the Center for Public Safety Excellence.

Welcome to the show, Christina and Preet. Hey, good afternoon. Thank you, Sharon. Thanks so much for having us. Absolutely. Welcome to the show. [00:01:00] Before we get to introductions, I'd like to level set before we get into it. On this podcast today, we'll be talking about the future of associations, evolution, innovation, and leading through change.

We're also gonna talk about some of the new themes in the fifth edition of the Professional Practices and Association Management book, but we'll talk about some of the insights that challenge business as usual. And also this podcast is for you if you're leading a small but mighty team like Christina is, or a schmedium association, like Preet likes to call it, a national organization.

Or if you're simply just curious, there are some pop tracks in this podcast that you don't wanna miss. Preet and Christina are two leaders bringing deep experience in the field and fresh thinking on where associations are headed next. Well, they certainly need no introduction. I'm excited to give them the floor for a quick hello.

So we'll start with you, Christina.

Christina Lewellen: Hello everyone. I'm Christina Luwellen and I am the president and CEO of ATLIS. As you mentioned, [00:02:00] ATLIS is technology leaders in independent schools, which basically means that we are CIOs and tech teams, tech directors that serve private K 12 schools primarily in the states.

And we are growing really fast. We're a relatively young organization, about 10 years old. We just celebrated our 10th anniversary, but we are growing between 30 and 35% year over year, so we're definitely adding. Lots of new schools to our community every year.

Preet Bassi: Hi everyone. I'm Preet Bassi, the CEO for the Center for Public Safety Excellence.

Been in that role. It'll be 11 years this September, and our organization has gone through a fix it phase and also a grow it phase, and we're in our grow it phase right now. We work with fire departments all around the world, helping them and the professionals that work in those fire departments establish continuous improvement methods to make sure that they're serving their communities better.

Sharon Pare: That's amazing. I'm really excited for today's conversation. And just from what you said, [00:03:00] Christina, you're at a newer association being there for about 10 years, and then Preet, you've been at your organization for 11 years, so I think that's amazing. Today we'll be chatting on topics we're all grappling in the space, so without further ado, let's jump in.

So associations built around people, knowledge and exchange, creating a collective knowledge. I know you've both contributed to shaping where associations are headed. Christina, let's start with you. What do you think will be foundational in the next era?

Christina Lewellen: As we think about that, I like to boil things down in terms of associations and what they are, and I love this very simplistic way of thinking about it that Peggy Hoffman offers us, which is that the formula's pretty simple.

Associations are simply a combination of content. Community, and I feel like that is likely to remain the foundation of associations, but how we build on that foundation is probably going to have to change. There's a couple ways that I envision this happening, one for sure is that I [00:04:00] think that how we redefine and evolve the.

Workplace of associations will likely become foundational to how associations succeed. We have great opportunities there, but I also think that a lot of associations have some governance cleanup to do, and that is something that will really amplify this idea of the foundation being content and community.

Because if organizations are struggling to either clean up their components or wrestle with some unhealthy governance practices that have gotten into the mix, it's tough to stay really true to the mission and to deliver on that value proposition of content and community. So there's some opportunities there for sure, and I think that we'll continue to unpack that as this conversation goes along.

Sharon Pare: Preet, is there anything you'd like to add or something shifting even more dramatically?

Preet Bassi: I completely agree with the content and community comment. I would add connection to that, how we bring it together. [00:05:00] But my perspective on associations and CPSE is 28 years old, and about eight years ago, right as we were becoming a true adult at 21, we had a conversation in our board meeting about needing to self disrupt. If we were Blockbuster, we needed to figure out how to be Netflix, not have some other Netflix come in and overtake our market. Historically, associations haven't needed to worry about competition, startups, mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcy, right? Those are common terms that we think about in the private space, but not in associations.

But if you look around over the last five, 10 years, there have been associations that have started up because they did not feel. They had a home, they had a voice, they had a space. You've seen associations that unfortunately have dwindled, those that have been friendly, merged, or perhaps hostile takeover bought out.

And [00:06:00] in looking at that, some of the things that we've been trying to do at CPSE is. How do we diversify who we are, how we're formatted to make sure that we're very agile and we're adapting as those societal, technological, economic, environmental, political changes come in. We've launched a subsidiary, we've started a new program.

We are incubating an association. Those would be words that you typically would hear, once again, in the private sector, but you wouldn't hear for associations. I think that the time has come for associations to not take their membership market for granted and make sure that they're scanning the entire market and how they best conserve it.

Sharon Pare: Yeah, that's great. Preet, and being on the industry partner side of things, we've seen that, of course, in the association side and seeing some of these hostile takeovers, if you will, or some of these mergers. But I'm seeing it on the industry partner side too. Almost on the monthly, maybe on the weekly, you hear some new news of [00:07:00] some of these larger conglomerates in our for-profit side of our association business, the industry partners respectively, where they're doing these mergers and acquisitions and they're creating this monolithic corporation, if you will, within our own space.

So this brings me into my next question. What do you think will fade or transform in terms of roles and skills and the futurescape of associations?

Preet Bassi: I believe that we'll have a few doer roles that consist and event coordination. We have an amazing staff member that makes sure that the sponsor booths are set up and all the way a few of those will stick, but those that have historically been in thinker roles.

If they can grow that particular skillset, I see that as a kind of a skillset that is going to shift, whether it's because you're gonna do some automation through AI or even some outsourcing of things that are related to your [00:08:00] mission, but not core to the mission and just really don't need to do it. And it's interesting.

InCPSE, we do outsource a lot of core back of house tasks: finance, IT, legal. And thank God for partners in the private space that work with associations specifically on it, on legal. We are also thinking about how we outsource some front of house operations, events, communications. But what we're not considering is our very core programs, which are accreditation and credentialing.

And so that is more about associations. So I think we'll want to retain the skill sets and the roles that directly touch the member, but those that support the touching of the member, which sounds very weird, is I think where we'll see. A lot of change, whether it's through automation outsourcing or even potentially sharing of resources.

Christina Lewellen: If I could just draw an underline under [00:09:00] what Preet said. I think that you're right. The job functions and skills that are core to the strategy are likely to be the ones that really stay home at the association, but I'll just note that can change. So it could be that if you're launching a new program or something that is really high priority on your strategy.

You might need marketing and communications to be on your team, but then once it becomes rote, once it becomes the chug, a chug of work that we always do, just trains leaving the station, then you might reevaluate that. And I would say that it won't be that those skills are no longer needed at associations, but I think it's gonna be.

The chief staffing executive's job is to take a pause, take a beat, and go, okay, I understand why eight years ago we needed the marketing team because we were launching this new thing, or we went through a merger. But now that we've got that settled down and things are a little bit more business as usual, do we still need that function in house?

I think that's where you'll see some of these fringe [00:10:00] tasks like accounting or HR, but even some member programs and services like what Preet was saying that they're considering, that is likely to possibly shift just depending on where it falls in your strategic plan. Organizations that can be fairly nimble are probably gonna be the ones that really leverage having the right skillset in-house.

And then I'll just note that I think the AI right now is. Clickbait. The headlines are just getting our attention, getting us all wound up, and there is some voice coming through the clickbait noise right now that is bringing a certain amount of pragmatism and levelheadedness to the conversation because we have not gotten to the point where generalized intelligence is going to be able to connect the dots on all the content, community, and connection that we create for associations.

We still need to do that as humans putting those pieces of the puzzle together. But any jobs that do require those conclusions to be drawn and those dots to be connected are very likely to stay a part of [00:11:00] our kind of landscape for a while.

Preet Bassi: Yeah. And connecting with that, we've said we don't mind if AI proprietary tools are automating very rote tasks for us, but we don't want AI being the.

Connection point for our members. It's like AI can touch our members stuff and because we're a conformity assessment body, we're accrediting fire department's credentialing fire professionals. So there's a lot of checking of their application, verifying, ensuring that it's correct. Sure, the AI can do that, but I want to make sure that the person, the humans are central to the ongoing engagement because so much of what people are coming to associations for.

Isn't just, oh, I have money in my budget that I need to spend on an annual conference. They're looking for community. They're looking for connection. The content they could get anywhere, but those other two pieces do require that there's a human on the other end. [00:12:00]

Sharon Pare: Putting AI aside, are there any new skills rising that maybe we're not talking about enough in the space?

Christina Lewellen: I think that there's a lot of emotional intelligence that we are going to need because of AI. I'd love that we could just set it aside or set it on a shelf, Sharon, but that's not the reality we're living in. But I think that to your question, I understand the point of what you're getting to, and I think that we're gonna need humans who are super.

So many, you know, we need good emotional intelligence. We need to make sure that our workplaces are bringing balance and flexibility to the humans who work at them. And I think that all these things are possible, and it's not just because of ai. We should have been doing that anyway before ai. But I do think that in the emerging generations of leaders.

We're hearing about how emotional intelligence can be the antidote to burnout and how it can really create healthy culture. So I think that having some of those soft skills, having resilience to get through hard things is probably, [00:13:00] I don't know if they're skills, but they're at least a characteristic of the future workforce that we're going to need to develop.

Preet Bassi: Christina must have been in an amazing conversation we had at our all hands staff coordination meeting. We meet periodically in person and we looked at ASAE's, Drivers of Change around the more human humans to ensure that we were doubling down on that. Another skillset that I would add, and I think this has historically been something that's been reserved at the director C-suite level, but it may now need to promulgate the entire organization, is continuous improvement, creativity and small eye innovation.

Am I doing the right thing? Is there a better way of doing it? Not just can I do more of it? And whether that's a staff member that feels empowered to bring that idea forward. Obviously managers, directors, who should be looking at it, and the CEO, who should be creating that culture where that's the expectation [00:14:00] around to just improve it.

We actually redid our entire. Staff competencies list and there were core competencies for the entire organization. Some were considered to you. Gotta be aware, proficient and expert customer service was expert throughout emotional intelligence, was expert throughout, even for the most junior member of our team.

Sharon Pare: I think that's a perfect lead in to how we think about learning itself. Christina, maybe we'll bring it back to you, but how do you see professional development evolving?

Christina Lewellen: Look at the surface level. If we can get generalized content easily from ai, then associations have this imperative to do the deeper dive.

I think we're gonna have to do more customized professional development because members can go find information on. You know the chat bot du jour, right? So what we need to do as associations, as we think about learning and PD and [00:15:00] how we're gonna deliver that, is that we really should get in a place where we're offering specialized guidance to help them, the member, stand out in their shifting marketplace.

It's not just that associations are going through these changes, our members. To navigate them too. As far as how we do this, it is very likely that we're going to incorporate AI bots and gentech AI into our associations the way that we eventually embedded the internet into our delivery system in the late 1990s and early two thousands.

It's very awkward in adolescent right now, but it's maturing quickly, so we're going to have to walk this path, but we probably need to do so at varying rates to hit all of our members where they are and make sure that they're getting the delivery mechanisms that they need at the end of the day. In the education sector, when the internet was widely available, there was this massive fear that the end of school, as we know it was upon us.

And as it turns out, lo and behold, we still have [00:16:00] school. Right? So I don't think that AI is going to, in any way, hold. Fully eliminate association generated content or standard setting in particular, super customized, super niche, right? And even like our in-person gatherings, in fact, we may see that there's a greater need to have in-person or virtual communities of humans getting together because of these AI shifts that are taking place.

So. I feel like there's a lot of concern about what AI might do to disrupt us, but at the same time, if we lean into it, there's a lot of opportunity for us to get the the surfacey level stuff out of the way so that we can do a deeper dive, and that's what we're very well equipped to do.

Preet Bassi: I think for me, the greatest opportunity is if whatever format the professional development it is provides actionable insights, go do this.

Here's the tips for replication, here's why it would be a good idea. Provides flexibility for engagement and really understanding people like to consume information in very different ways. [00:17:00] I think about the subsidiary that we're launching as we've looked through delivering content in a handbook, in an in-person workshop through onsite facilitation, reading short case studies, searching through an LLM on your own.

But also picking up the phone and talking to an expert. That's the range of the ways that you could engage with this content. And I think then if you are able to provide some flexibility in the way that the engagement is your in-person experiences, no more lecture, leverage those for real good engagement.

Use that time together, let them read the stuff ahead of time. And there's always this sense of wanting to lead to the lowest common denominator. We send them the pre-read and we told them to after the pre-webinar video, but they didn't. Too bad. So sad. If the in-person experience is focused on [00:18:00] engagement, they'll keep coming back

Sharon Pare: Preet, you mentioned accreditations just a moment ago, so I'd love your take on this, especially considering some insight from Foresight Works.

Some skepticism around the credentialed experts. Would you be able to share what that might mean for certification in the future? And also for the listeners, if you could explain Foresight Works just a little bit too, and what their role is in sharing with us their insights.

Preet Bassi: Absolutely. So at CPSE, we accredit departments.

Credential professionals, and it's not a requirement that they be connected. They're two separate programs. There's significant overlap. We are well aware that rejection of expertise is a societal threat and it's no different for us. There is this unfortunate bifurcation within the fire service of the progressive responsive data informed departments and [00:19:00] individuals are going in one direction and the traditional, don't move my cheese or in a different direction, and it's becoming a culture war. Much pick a topic. You could have a culture war around it. Foresight works. It has quite a few drives of change, and so this is an annual effort through the research foundation, one of ASAE's subsidiaries that tries to identify.

Those things that are happening that are going to cause an impact to associations. We already mentioned the more human humans is one of the drivers of change that's out there. There are a few related to rejection of expertise, but also this impact on credentialing programs. And it has to be said like the workplace today is a challenged one.

A lot of requirements can become barriers to entry. For individuals. I know that we've actually been supporting a lot of work on how to create [00:20:00] a more. Open and equitable fire service that doesn't require somebody on day zero to pay an application fee and be able to do the physical tasks. Let's look for the attitudes that we want, that they have an aptitude to learn, and through an academy they can get to that point where they're able to do those tasks.

But at some point there is a line in the sand that has to be drawn that shows is there an industry standard? How are we performing to set industry standard and is that standard changing? So I think about this even in an environment where credentials, experts, there's public skepticism about it. CPCs credentialing program is growing.

We grew 44% in the last five years, and there were a couple of ways that we've done that. One, we've diversified our offerings. We don't just have a single credential. We historically had, it was the chief fire officer. We've added six for [00:21:00] individuals that are more junior in the organization. That's the fire officer, and also five specialty ones with two of them being typically held by people who don't wear a uniform.

They work in the fire department, but they aren't a uniform member of the fire department. So that's been really interesting. The other is, how are we making it? Easier to go through the credentialing process. So we've done significant technology changes in the application process. We also wanted to make sure that our credential was pushing for excellence.

Our mission is to lead the fire and emergency service excellence, so we wanted to make sure we did that. We do have some industry standards that we've historically relied on to pull technical competencies out of. We realize that. Scope of update was too narrow and not frequent enough. We then conducted an analysis of what are the skill sets that future leaders in this space need, and we added those to [00:22:00] our credentialing model.

Mental health and wellness. Health for the firefighters was really important as was data and technology because there weren't other standards out there today that were requiring those. We removed our own barriers to entry. We historically asked the supervisor to attest to the application. Unfortunately, if there was a relationship that wasn't great or.

In some cases, if the member who was seeking the credential was in a more traditional setting, but they wanted to be a little bit more progressive, and especially if they were from an underrepresented group, they weren't getting that. We've now removed that requirement. We've also started offering scholarships and once every five years, we take every single one of our programs through our business process plan to make sure that.

We don't have any unintended breaks in what we're doing, so the rejection of expertise is there. It is a threat, but some thoughtfulness about how the credentialing programs are built and [00:23:00] how they're delivered can really go a long way to overcoming some of that initial pushback that may be rooted in an access barrier that then becomes a rejection of this credential.

Christina Lewellen: If I could just add Sharon. I'll throw a hand grenade kind of into the room or drop a truth bomb, whatever analogy you want is that, yeah, associations are facing this trust issue, both in the realm of certification and credentialing, but in other realms as well. But we also have a branding issue on our hands.

It's not just a trust issue, right? It's not just that folks are more skeptical of what we offer. I think that we need to shift our mindset from the sit and get certifications. Because anyone could leverage an LLM and get the answers out of a textbook. It's the same thing we're seeing happening in education.

Done credentials and certifications are likely to become very devalued in short order. So I think the important opportunity here is in those scenarios and experience-based [00:24:00] credentials, I think that's where the value will come into play because they demonstrate. That human centric and that human dependent expertise.

So if we're facing skepticism around our credentialing programs, I think that associations are gonna have to challenge the status quo of those programs. They're cash cows, right? They've been designed, and who really has the appetite to just chuck it out the window and start again, but equally important to making sure that the content is there and it can't easily be replicated by an LLM.

I think that we're gonna have to elevate our messaging and our branding around these programs to help the end user, whether that's from a safety perspective with fire departments, or whether it's someone trying to hire a technology director for an independent school. We need to focus on those aspects that are really unique and uniquely human, and I think that's where some branding and messaging might need to be elevated as well.

Sharon Pare: I think that's some great insight and you mentioned Don't Move My Cheese, and it really feels like [00:25:00] a big throwback to decades ago.

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Sharon Pare: I wanna move into the future a little bit, and so if we imagine someone thriving in the association world in 2035, what does that look like? Preet, I'll start with you.

Preet Bassi: Oh, first, acknowledging that everything is changing everywhere, all at once. Sounds like a movie, right? It is. It’s burned from a movie. I think the shift from, and I hate this phrase, being member-driven, I think it's being member-informed, board directed, staff executed, and that being a constant cycle, not a one-off, not just every five years, we're gonna do a strategic plan, which nobody should be doing that.

Really looking at it from the back of house standpoint, the association and Christina mentioned it earlier about how technology, the internet joined associations in the late nineties, and it had to be that every company today needs to be a technology company. Your systems and experiences need to be [00:27:00] just so seamless.

You have to effectively use your volunteers. I think the industry subject matter experts have to remain core. To what we do and we can't over index on staff 'cause that's why we're here doing my best. Oprah, everybody gets a KPI like if you're not measuring every single program, whether it's KPI, OKRs, pick your system, your metric format, you have to.

And I think at the end it's definitely seeing grounded in the mission, adapting to that change that's happening everywhere. Everything all at once. If those ingredients hopefully will set up the association to thrive if the board and senior staff are willing to do so, if they're willing to change, if they're willing to accept and if they're going to be an emu that puts their head in the sand. This too shall pass. And a lot [00:28:00] of that disruption and hostile takeovers that we talked about are just going to occur

Christina Lewellen: If we're looking 10 years down the road. I'll just amplify what Preet said, that we have to include healthy governance, whatever that looks like. It's the thing that sets us apart from corporations and government bodies.

Associations have this powerful partnership between the board, our industry experts, and. The staff are operational experts, and if we're looking long term, there are some organizations that we all know of that could probably do with a bit of a governance overhaul, and some organizations were ahead of the curve on this and trying to revamp things to be more innovative, to be more responsive to the need.

So the member, but if that hasn't happened already, I think that's what's gonna set apart the good from the great is when that one plus one equals three on the governance side, that it's boring, but it is essential and key to who we are and how we operate. It's what makes associations [00:29:00] really different and special.

And I think far too many associations just don't. Wanna bite that elephant. They just don't wanna tackle it. But I think that's gonna be an important way in which associations can thrive moving forward. I also think that there's an opportunity for us if we don't exactly know where a lot of technology and content is gonna go.

I would imagine that 10 years from now we become the distilling experts. If there's an overabundance of information, then being able to connect the dots and being able to sift the macro factors and how it affects the industry you serve. I would anticipate associations are gonna play a more intricate analysis role when it comes to all this content and.

I guess I would just add that the community side of things with associations, we've always helped people find their people. That's not gonna change, but I would imagine in 10 years we may have to help our industry's voice stand out again with. So much information, the evolution of AI, we're [00:30:00] probably gonna have to help our industries navigate their own shifting landscapes and make sure that their voices are coming together to get that critical messaging and or work out in the public sphere.

So I would imagine that there's also something, and not just bringing community together for the sake of community, but for amplifying voices in a really noisy room.

Sharon Pare: As you're talking about helping the industry ship that landscape, and we're talking about thriving, we also have to talk about value, right?

So what will make associations truly desirable to future members?

Christina Lewellen: More than we do right now? We have to understand the nuances of our members because there's a really wide variety of jobs to be done by associations. So too often we segment our communities either by the positions that they hold or the certain.

Stage of their career that they might be at. But they come to us to do a job. Each member, each individual member comes to our association looking for some kind of job that we [00:31:00] are gonna do for them, and we might need to revisit that jobs to be done methodology in the context of a really unsettled and evolving landscape.

The job we're supposed to do for them yesterday is unlikely to be the job they're gonna pay us to do in the future. And whether that's onboard to my new career or help me get a new job or. Help me make connections in my industry. Whatever those jobs were yesterday, they're likely to change tomorrow. So I think that we need to stay tapped into that on the value side for members.

And I also think that we may wanna talk more about the emotional connection that members have with our associations. So it's not just that we're gonna be their special library, that they go to pass a certification exam or that we’re their voice on the hill or their. In person conference of choice. I think that increasingly humans are gonna seek other humans, and we have this opportunity to evolve our role in making that connection, maybe making more personalized connections, smaller cohorts and things like that.

So [00:32:00] I think there's a couple of ways that we can not upend the apple cart entirely, but maybe tweak the values that we're bringing to the market today to be more responsive and flexible in the future.

Preet Bassi: I wanna pick up on one of the comments that Christina made actually to the previous question that it was about helping our industry, and I'd add sometimes when they don't even know that they need to be.

So are we a trustee for our members or are we a delegate? The trustee acts in the best interest of the members, but perhaps doesn't do exactly what we want them, they would want us to do. The delegate does and a lot of that is looking at trying to predict what's gonna be in the future. A phrase that I'm sure my team is quite sick of using recently is just in time.

So what are the “just in time” solutions, but also what is the “just in time” volunteering? I actually would love to hang out with this organization for the next three months and do a thing, but I'm really not interested in doing it every single day. [00:33:00] So how are we building our programs in that way? I think also there's gonna be this sense of brand connection and is this an organization that you want to belong to?

Does it speak to who you are? The governance comment, I only, my only addition to what Christina had is I wish we were in Zoom and I would've put the 100 underline emoji on what she said 'cause it's so true. Radically transparent governance. If the members can't figure out why the organization made a change, whatever said changes, you have a problem.

So they don't necessarily need to know how many people voted X versus Y, but every decision needs to be done in this really transparent way. And I also think there's, for associations, like there's perhaps a number of associations that a member interacts with. They might want you periodically to collaborate but not necessarily partner with the other associations.

Like it's fine for you to do your [00:34:00] own thing, but. Really looking at how do you collaborate on those big issues, those once every five year big efforts, they're gonna want to see. That was an industry-wide effort and not just a you association effort and from a member, their ability to buy, whether that's driven by the point in their career, beginning of their career, end of their career, or do just what they want.

I think we need to be okay selling them margarine, but also butter. So if we're like, we always want the best in class offering, we want this high touch, really glossy educational deliverable. Wonderful. Also, are you delivering similar content in a boring on-demand webinar that they can buy for $29? If you aren't delivering at both of those price points, you are going to make it so that you've automatically isolated some of your members.

So those are some of the things that really came to me, but I think that big one is, are you. Able to act as their [00:35:00] trustee. We got your back versus we're just gonna do what you tell us to do so you'll buy more from us. And that's going to require some guts on behalf of the board and the CEO to be willing to make that shift.

Sharon Pare: I think that’s some really great coins. And that's one side of the coin. And of course there's the other is who will wanna work for associations. So I'll keep this open for both of you, but what does an attractive association employer look like in the future?

Christina Lewellen: This is my favorite topic because I really think that associations have this opportunity to stand out when it comes to designing the workforce and the workplace of the future.

And we have what a lot of people are looking for. We have mission, we have this purpose, and a lot of folks are trying to connect. If I'm gonna spend this many hours of my life working at a job. What in the world is it all for? So I think that we have a great message to sell, but I also think that we can shape what a workforce looks like and be an example for our members.

[00:36:00] Companies like whoever joins your association, you can be the one setting a great example. That's one of the things that Atlas tries to do. I have my way of doing things as a CEO, it. Pretty well known at this point, so I'll just run the laundry list really quickly. We do not send internal emails. We have zero internal emails.

We are entirely based in a project management system. I run a permanent four day work week. We have unlimited PTO. I'm even entertaining some really creative additional offerings to my benefits package that are really out there, and I don't wanna go on public record saying it yet because I gotta get my budget passed.

But I basically, my whole goal. My whole lens for all of this is that my members, Atlas's members, deserve an effective, efficient, and inspired workforce. Simply put, it's good ROI for them to have a ridiculously loyal and happy staff. I believe in that. And so I think that your employees certainly deserve a healthy environment, and we might as well go [00:37:00] about removing obstacles to their continued excellence.

Let's put them in a position to succeed. Not everybody is going to do it my way. Not everybody's gonna do a four day work week. Not everyone's gonna be decentralized. I understand that. But I do think for the associations who choose to accept this mission, both in terms of attracting and retaining the staff that we get, but also like influencing all of the industries that we serve.

Can you imagine the fingerprint? We would leave. The associations decided tomorrow that we were going to create best in class workplaces, and then our members started following suits. Think about the influence we would have. So this is an area where I have a lot of passion and it's not just because it works for Atlas, I'm seeing.

So many of our peers take these nuggets. Well, Christina's kind of crazy and she'll try these things. Maybe I could try 'em too and see what that does for our team. And I think that the benefits have been really incredible. So I know I get worked up and really excited about this topic, but I think it's not just for the sake of being recognized as like somebody cool [00:38:00] to work for.

I don't care about that. It's not what it's about. I don't care if they wanna work for me. What I want is I want employees. Who are obscenely committed to our mission, and that's what I believe our members deserve.

Sharon Pare: Preet, is there anything you wanna layer onto that?

Preet Bassi: All the praise that Christina is well known for all of those amazing things.

And to say how she has been an inspiration, speak to it. So we've done the basic. We're remote first. We outsource where we need to. We contract where we need to. We're creating new and additional world, but we have our 2024 to 2027 strategic plan, and one of the four tenets of that is to be people focused.

Christina Lewellen: Yay. That's really cool. Tell me we are about that and it's, wait, hold on. We're taking over. Sharon, I wanna hear about this.

Sharon Pare: No, please do a deep dive.

Preet Bassi: We want a people-focused organization, and I can't even begin to quote all of the great statements, but it was something that came through in, in a given year.

700 people between [00:39:00] our volunteers, contractors, and staff do a thing that. Add something to the board. So if they're reviewing a application, they're conducting a site visit, thinking about our volunteers, contractors, the world that they do and the staff. So what would it look like if we thought about being that best in class?

We've been doing org culture surveys that are actually not terrible for a while with our contractors and staff, and making some actionable changes based on that. We're currently engaged with a project with a. Volunteer expert to do a complete overhaul of how we manage our volunteers, which we have about 650 of them, and it really is knowing that on any given day, any of them have a choice, whether it's the volunteers, many of our contractors are soon to be retiring.

Chief fire officers, so they've got a retirement, they're looking about giving back. They're sure [00:40:00] everybody likes an extra dollar, but they're not motivated by the monetary. They're looking about how they continue to continue to commission, and I actually believe we've extended. Many of our fire professionals, livelihood and contributions by giving them a place within CPSC and those that are and have been progressive, continue to be.

So I think that people first concept, we're early in it. We're only a year and a bit into our strategic plan. But there's some seven or eight strategies underneath this focus area, multiple objectives, and really wanting to succeed through our people. We know that it doesn't matter what tech, doesn't matter what systems.

There is a human at the center of everything. So if they feel that we are the best place and we bring out the best from them, and so much of it is about culture in an organization, but I think you know that adage of culture, eat strategy for breakfast. I saw a better version of culture and strategy eat breakfast [00:41:00] together.

I think that is really true and. I was so happy recently. One of our team members, she'd been out on maternity leave and came back and just sent us this message of how she felt so supported and she had never been in an organization that truly embodied family first and didn't just say it, but then. Are you sure you need to go to that graduation?

Are you sure you can't make the time? So it really was important, and this is not an ego trip, but at some point I think the association needs to be attractive to A CEO to want to come to, and especially A CEO that's gonna have some positive results for the organization. So that then falls to the board.

We've talked about a lot of our staff and how we're gonna help them, but how does the board enter into this partnership with their CEO that makes it a place that the good CEO actually wants to work?

Sharon Pare: That's awesome. Preet, and I know we've gotta wrap up soon, but there's a common theme that I'm starting to [00:42:00] see in our conversation, A sense of belonging, connection, collaboration, humane, I love that word too.

People first, but we painted a really forward looking picture here. So where does the journey begin?

Christina Lewellen: Look, we're in an era marked with change, so we have to lean into time proven like change management techniques, right? And so whatever model you pick, I think that we're at this era where some of us might be concerned about change, and so some of us might feel like we need to double down on the way that things work.

COVID gave us this opportunity to be in a change mindset, and the associations that took advantage of that and continue to take advantage of it are gonna be in the best position to make the transition. So if we think about where this should go or what the first step should be, we are. Very good at setting a vision.

Associations are good at that. We are good at saying, where do we wanna go? Let's be proactive. Let's clearly define what we're gonna be able to do to add value to our community, and then let's pursue that vision with the intensity that we always have. So I think you know [00:43:00] where to start with all this is just to be comfortable with discomfort and the fact that we are in a change management cycle and then we can really stand out.

I truly believe associations have. This opportunity to stand out more so than private or public companies. We're not driven by the dollar or shareholders. We've got the space to think about long-term investment and commitment to our goals, and now we need to do that.

Preet Bassi: I love what Christina said, and we had a board member who really helped our organization at a time when we were moving from our fix it phase to our grow it phase, and he talked about runway, not-for-profits, associations, we've got a runway, we can make a plan and we can see it through.

Are we willing to do? That's the fortitude piece. And for an association that's trying to figure out how to change, I think you need to get good at doing the simple things so that there's trust, because all the changes and all the ideas. So if you aren't good at returning emails, phone calls, messages internally, externally.

If you [00:44:00] don't consistently deliver on your commitments, there's no trust there for you to make the next set of changes. That someone will be like, I don't know, that sounds a little weird. Are you sure we're going to do that? And I comment often about CPSE having had our fix it phase and now we're in our grow it phase.

It's not just, we're not just growing in numbers, we're growing in evolution of who we are. Like who do we wanna be when we grow up? Kind of growth. But what paved the way for us to be able to do that was consistent delivery commitment to what we were saying in the smallest ways. So that people knew we could do the next crazy idea that we came up with and that we were going to walk them along, which from a change management standpoint, just as Christina said, that's so big.

But I think the trust and how do you begin to measure the trust? How do you start going after those areas that there is potential, some distrust. It is the currency that any change is gonna need, and if it doesn't exist, [00:45:00] a great CEO, A great system, any number of great ideas just aren't gonna go anywhere.

How you do that takes communication takes. Calling the baby ugly when it needs to be called ugly, and making those small, but also big swing changes that do get you where you need to go.

Sharon Pare: I think that's a great way to round out this podcast. I appreciate you both being guests on today's show. Thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of Association NOW Presents.

Join us each month as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals. Discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field today and highlight the significant impact associations have on the economy, the US and the world. We would like to give a big thanks again to this episode sponsor, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau.

For more information, visit discoveratlanta.com. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, [00:46:00] and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Or go to associations now online at associationsnow.com. Thanks for listening.