Five Silent Organizational Killers

By Steve Blue

High blood pressure is a silent killer. Combined with other risk factors it can lead to death. Similarly, in business, there are five silent killers that if combined can lead to the death of an organization. Here are the warning signs the health of your association may be at risk.

  1. Life is great. Things have been going well for a long time now. You hardly ever hear of any problems. The numbers look good, although lately they have been getting a little soft. You are not too worried because your people will tell you if something is wrong, although they didn’t the last time you lost a member. You found that out by accident. Right about now you are feeling like you have this executive director thing down cold! Maybe it is finally time to work on that golf game. You couldn’t be more wrong.
    • When you feel like this it is time to be on your guard. Dig hard into your operation to see what’s wrong. Peel back the onion of your financials and find out where the issues are. They could be buried deep so look hard.
    • Do a deep dive of every department. Remember, you are not trying to determine if you have problems; you do. You are trying to find out where they are.
  2. Everyone makes nice in meetings. When staff has a meeting, they look more like an oil painting than an engaged team. Your meetings are oh-so-nice. No disagreements, no conflicts, no lively debates. If things do start to get a little heated, someone offers to "take it offline." When there is a discussion, people look to you to see what your view is before they take a position. They are more concerned with being nice than moving the organization forward. They live by the old Abraham Lincoln mantra of "better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt." But you can’t move the association or nonprofit forward without conflict. So the absence of conflict should not be your goal. Productive conflict should be. Here is what you need to do:
    • Encourage, insist, and even demand that people engage in conflict. Make it clear that the absence of conflict is not okay, but just be sure it is the productive kind.
    • Conflict needs to be managed, measured, and meaningful. Otherwise it turns destructive in a hurry. Train everyone on the team in conflict management skills.
  3. Innovation is DOA. Innovation has been a little slow for a while. The association used to crank out new ideas, new member benefits, new meeting themes all the time. These days, most of your ideas are minor enhancements that don’t yield better results. But that’s okay, because the member expects benefit improvements. Still, it bothers you that while they expect improvements, they won’t pay for them. You are on a death trajectory, just waiting for the competition to make you irrelevant. You need to re-energize innovation-fast.
    • Make innovation the number one goal in the association, and just don’t make it a goal, make it an absolute requirement. Don’t restrict this to new member benefits and offerings. It can and should include internal and external processes and procedures.
    • Train everyone in the tools and techniques of innovation. This is a process that can be learned and applied by everyone, not just the creative types.
    Throw a challenge down for an annual innovation award. Whoever comes up with the most innovative product or process gets a cash award or extra vacation days.
  4. Your toxic employees are killing off your members. Have you ever met a rude flight attendant? Or how about a front desk clerk at a hotel who could care less about your problems? Have you ever walked into a restaurant and been ignored by the hostess? These are just a few examples of toxic employees. One toxic employee can destroy years of member loyalty. One toxic employee can chase dozens of members or donors away every week. Imagine how much of the association or nonprofit they can destroy in a month or in a year. Don’t let his happen to you. Do a toxic employee checkup:
    • Go toxic employee hunting. Take this one organization layer at a time, and start asking who the toxic people are. Don’t buy the excuse that no one knows who your toxic employees are. Someone knows.
    • Once you have identified them, tell them they must change their behavior immediately or they can’t stay, and terminate them if they don’t come around. Don’t wait too long on this, because your members/donors aren’t waiting around for you.
    • Set a new standard of behavior for the entire association. Once you have cleaned house, be mindful that weeds always grow back, so be prepared to prune the garden often.
  5. Your cost of doing business is under control. Every association has a staff member who has been doing his job for what seems like forever. He knows exactly how to run that meeting department. He does a great job in scheduling the work, doing site inspections, arranging for speakers, and coordinating the trade show. However, it seems like a long time since he talked about cost reductions. He cites good reasons why cutting costs is hard to do, and he tells you that the answer to the problem is to raise member attendance or exhibitor fees. He tells you costs are under control. Under control is not good enough.
    • Set a goal for improving productivity by 10% per year, and don’t play the shell game of where did the savings go? When you improve productivity that much, you either need to raise the top line or reduce the workforce.
    • Be willing to invest in technology or equipment to create better work cells and implement lean methods.

With more than three decades of management, executive, consulting and speaking experience in markets all over the world, Miller Ingenuity CEO Steve Blue is a globally regarded business growth authority and "turnaround specialist" who has transformed companies into industry giants and enthralled audiences with his dynamic keynotes. He may be reached at www.StevenLBlue.com.