So I call the bank/ phone company/… to ask a question about my latest statement, for example, and  I get a voice mail prompt to enter my account number. After several more auto-queries (and often quite a few expletives), I get a human on the other end of the line. The first question they ask is…”What is your account number?”

At a recent board meeting with one of our association clients, the board discussed how to reach out to local national members who had not joined the chapter. I can relate to the non-chapter affiliation. I recently joined a professional association as a member-at-large because I knew nothing about the two chapters closest to me, and wasn’t sure which would be a good fit. Within a week of joining, I was contacted by the president of one of those chapters inviting me to attend the next meeting, which was scheduled for the following day.

The Mariner blog has been a bit quiet lately, but that doesn't mean the Mariner office has been. Quite the contrary.

The countdown has begun to the #ASAE11, ASAE’s annual conference in St. Louis, MO.  There are many reasons I am excited including the session I will be involved in on Monday, August 8 at 8:45a. This session, “Design for the Future: Creating a Sustainable Local-State-National Member Community”, shares the journey the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) took to retool their local chapters for the future. With Nadine Merker, AADE director of volunteer services, and Scott Balthazor svp, customer operations, Socious, we will share AADE’s new chapter model and its new online member community.

The three of us probably had more fun compiling the “lessons learned” handout than any other part of the presentation. That’s probably natural since its fun to look back. There’s nothing like being a Monday morning quarterback. Four of the most telling lessons we’ll be sharing – by story – are: ...

There's a lot of talk about leadership succession planning for chapters. It regularly comes up as the top 1 or 2 pain points for chapters. Most associations provide a succession planning guide and tools forchapters. Many offer training at the chapter leadership conferences and webinars. So what's missing here? If we're doing all this talking, why is still the pain point?

Could it be that all this talk is missing the point? That these tools don't get to the point?

I looked at the succession planning tools provided by four national associations for their chapters. And yes, they are missing the point ... it's not succession planning, it's succession management. This is not a linear process with a starting point and an end point. And its not about filling positions. It should be about an ongoing focus on developing leaders.

By reducing this conversation to a "who's up next?' search to filling positions, we're missing the point entirely. And by giving our chapters lenghty plans and detailed charts, we're directing energy to paperwork rather than creating relationships.

My suggestion is simply that we step back and tell our chapters that succession planning isn't planning. It is creating a culture of service and leadership in our organizations. It is getting to know our members and engaging them in the work -- and fun -- of the chapter.Two strategies that will help build this culture are:

(1) Engage members ... talk about engaging first, volunteering comes next. Plug members in from the beginning (or at renewal if you're starting this now) by asking them (a) why they are involved and (b) what types of skill sets are they looking to develop or activities they would enjoy being involved in. The goal is to help your member create an individual engagement plan.

(2) Create a Volunteer Team ... this is your HR team that actively seeks "talent" and matches them to jobs. The team can be led by a "coordinator" and have a team of "talent scouts." The goal is to develop a talent pool and a "pool of activities". This pool of activities shoudl include big and small jobs. It should offer variety. The focus on connecting members.

Let's change the conversation...

Those Gen X and Y won’t get involved in our chapter!

There’s a mantra I’ve heard repeated over and over again.

Meet Ben Eubanks. Follow him on Twitter. He started a great conversation for fellow chapter leaders.

When I spoke to Ben, I was inspired. I think that there are many more Bens – but we have to open ourselves and our chapters to all generations.

Peter and I led an energizing discussion at ASAE's Great Ideas Conference last week and I'm still digesting the good ideas. The session was on embracing the unofficial volunteer leader. Who is this person you say? Well it's the hell-raiser and the quiet saint. It's the person who is doing work for the profession and maybe even the association -- but unofficially. By ignoring these folks, you could miss out on some good work or inadvertently fuel a disruptive force. Here are two examples we talked about where associations embraced the unofficial leader.

I’m taking part in the virtual book tour Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer are doing to explore concepts from Open Community: a little book of big ideas for associations navigating the social web. In this post, I asked Lindy and Maddie to dig a little deeper into the concept of sharing control, which they describe in the book.

Before I finished reading Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer’s book Open Community I was already raving about it. I passed it around the room of the leadership conference where I was speaking.

This past month I've found a bounty of resources for associations looking to improve their chapter, or their chapterl managemetn and support. Some of these appeared this month and others are ones I just discovered (sorry I missed them earlier!).