Wes's Weekly Wisdom Archives

Try flowcharting your processes Working with a client recently on their membership join process reminded me of the tremendous value of putting your processes into a flowchart. In their case, a single membership join (organization) requires asking three questions before the correct “join path” is determined. Drawing a flowchart of this decision process will help provide them […]

“I just want a system I don’t have to fight with.” I asked my client: “What are you looking for in a new AMS?” She responded: “I just want a system I don’t have to fight with.” And it struck me that this is how A LOT of my clients feel about their data management systems; that […]

Inertia Contributes to Bad Data Without knowing anything about your organization or its data, I’d be willing to bet you have data in your system that you are no longer actively managing/using (e.g., data that was collected long ago for some initiative at the time) or, worse yet, actively collecting data that you aren’t actually […]

What Are You Doing with New Contacts/ I was very interested to read in a recent report from McKinley Advisors that, with the shift to virtual events, many associations are reporting “up to 70% new participants in their ecosystem.” What that means is these associations are introducing new names to their databases. (Click here to […]

Be Aware of Selection Bias I wrote recently about the mistaken perception of older members not being tech savvy. (You can read that here.) One of my astute readers, Will Slade at Protech, pointed out the following (I’m paraphrasing): “It’s possible that the reason many associations perceive older members to be not tech savvy is […]

Some Things Just Take Time I learned recently that an elephant’s gestation period is 18 months. It takes 18 months for an elephant to have a baby elephant. It’s also a fact that three elephants can’t make a baby elephant in six months. There is no shortcut; it takes one elephant 18 months. The same is […]

Sometimes It’s the Least Bad Choice Just like in life, sometimes when we’re making technology or management decisions, we’re faced with few good choices. And very often I’ll tell my clients, what we’re looking to do is make the “least bad” choice. For example, during a new system implementation, the vendor will ask for “blackout” […]

Our Members Aren’t Tech Savvy Having worked now in the association space for more than 30 years, I’ve heard my share of association executives utter the phrase “Our members aren’t very tech savvy.” This phrase is often followed with (or preceded by) “Our members are older.” (And this is typically related to the members not […]

Motion vs. Action One key to successful data management is understanding the difference between motion and action. Simply put, motion = planning but action = doing. Too often we spend a lot of time planning out all the different ways we’ll improve our data management. We make plans to clean the data, to establish clear business rules, […]

There is ALWAYS a Trade-off I’ve written many times about trade-offs (you can read a bunch here). In short, every decision you make, whether you realize it or not, involves a trade-off. And recent news reminded me once again, that not only are there always trade-offs, but often they are unseen. This article explains how […]

90% of your data is never touched a second time I heard recently on a podcast that 95% of all the art New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art collects is never actually displayed in the museum. It’s stored in a warehouse in New Jersey! Which got me to thinking; how much of the data that we […]

Newton’s First Law Part of Newton’s First Law states that “…an object in motion stays in motion…” What does this have to do with data management? Quite a bit, actually. One of the many challenges of data management is the constant grind of keeping data clean. (I refer to this as “weeding the garden.”) With most […]

Data Accretes One of my very first jobs in the association world was managing the production of a printed directory, a buyer’s guide. Within this buyer’s guide was a list of over 500 different “categories” of equipment. And each time the directory was updated, the number of categories expanded (members always had some new super-special category that didn’t fit […]

Don’t be so lazy… One of the things that attracted me to the software world is how good software can really make your life easier. As I like to (half) joke, I’m incredibly lazy, so I like the software to do as much of the work for me as possible. But the reality is, sometimes […]

Don’t Try to do Everything at Go-live When implementing a new AMS, there is a tendency to try to get everything done and “in the system” prior to go-live. After all, you’ve got this shiny new system with all kinds of new functionality. Why not go for it and have it do everything it can […]

Make sure your system has broad support An AMS vendor pointed out to me recently the danger of buying a new AMS (or any enterprise software, for that matter) based on the passion of one person. As he put it, “I have seen this more than a handful of times, but when that one person drives […]