Wes's Weekly Wisdom Archives

Action produces momentum Another great quote from James Clear: “Motivation often comes after starting, not before. Action produces momentum.” One of the greatest obstacles to cleaning up data, or choosing a new AMS, or establishing good business processes (or absolutely anything else) is getting started. And the best way to get started is to just […]

My #1 Best Practice… A client recently asked me: “If you had to pick a single best practice for data management, what would it be?” Without thinking, I blurted out: “Don’t be stupid.” What I meant by that is too often we are our own worst enemies when it comes to data management. We make business rules that are […]

Encourage engagement with prizes! One of the biggest challenges any organization faces when implementing a new system is user adoption. It’s difficult to get users to engage and make significant changes in their behavior, and user adoption is probably the single most important key to success with a new system. So to address that issue, one […]

Inertia One definition of inertia is “to remain unchanged.” My sense is that many association processes, projects, or programs are the result of inertia. That is, the process, project, or program was begun with all the best intentions, but years later, it continues because no one has really asked the question: “Should we still be doing this?” Actual examples […]

When’s the “least bad” time? When working with clients on a new project, especially a new system launch, the question is always asked, “What’s the best time to do this?” And after a long discussion about all the possible dates and how none of them will really work, I usually suggest “How about we find […]

Have the courage of your convictions Having the courage of your convictions means you’re willing to do what you believe is right, even in the face of others disagreeing. I remember really hearing this for the first time from a coach early on in my consulting career. In that context, the coach was saying “You’re […]

Start small When I work with my clients on projects that involve measuring member engagement, business intelligence, or data analysis, my advice is always the same: start small. Any one of these types of projects can be overwhelming, which is why it’s important to start small. This will allow you to focus and will provide opportunities to […]

Some context, please A pet peeve of mine: A report about associations (e.g., marketing benchmarks report) where the report defines associations by the number of members, but fails to discriminate between trade associations and individual associations. In other words, the report will talk about “associations with fewer than 500 members” as if a trade association with 450 members is somehow the […]

Eventually automated emails get ignored During the discovery and development phase of implementing a new AMS, it is not uncommon for staff to ask for automated emails from the system to alert staff to certain changes that are occurring. A couple of common examples: I’d like the system to send me an email when a […]

The challenge the AMS providers see Over the years I’ve asked AMS providers what they see as the biggest challenges their customers face when it comes to successful data management. Two issues always rise to the top: Not knowing all of the features available in the system. I see this a lot with my clients. Very often […]

Be careful about “solutioning” too quickly One of the great things about software developers is that they tend to be “solutions-oriented.” By that, I mean that if you give them a particular data management challenge, they want to figure out some way the software can address that challenge. This is a good thing! But too […]

Don’t automate for the sake of automation I’m the laziest person in the world. I LOVE it when I can make the computer do the work for me. For example, I have all kinds of macros set up on my computer to type words for me faster than I could type them myself. So I’m […]

Don’t forget about what got better Negativity bias is the tendency to focus on only those things that aren’t working, rather than focusing on what has improved. I’ve observed that during a switch from one AMS to another, frequently staff will fall into this trap. The result can be as simple as spending too much time on […]

Give a little at a time rather than taking away I’m sure there’s research somewhere that explains this phenomenon*, but in my experience, most people are more bothered when you take something away from them than they are when you give them very little to start with and add as needed. Here’s what I’ve seen: […]

First, you gotta have the data When I work with clients on a new AMS selection and we’re discussing what they want to be able to do with a new system, it’s very common to hear something like: “We want to be able to report on a range of demographics about our members.” Early on […]

Work on your relationship with your AMS vendor It is no coincidence that my most successful clients are those that have a very strong relationship with their AMS vendor. I’ve written in the past about how buying an AMS is more like getting married than buying, for example, a new car. It’s possible (even likely!) […]

Dashboards for Data Integrity I’ve written a bunch on data integrity reports. (Click here for some examples.) The purpose of a data integrity report is to find potentially erroneous data in your system, so you can clean it up. I’ve also written a lot about dashboards. (Click here for some examples.) Dashboards are simply reports […]