Welcome to Association Chat, an online discussion where we warm ourselves by the virtual fire with topics of the day, welcoming thought leaders and trailblazers alike to join up in this online home for the community. I'm the host of Association Chat, Kiki Loutalien. My question for you today, can understanding core human values revolutionize how associations connect with their members and perhaps Joining me to answer this question is David Allison. He's a human values expert.
He's been on the show a time or two before. He is a two time best selling author. And founder of something called the Value Graphics Project. David's groundbreaking research has transformed human values into actionable data, helping brands like PayPal, Google, and the United Nations Foundation build meaningful connections. His latest book, The Death of Demographics, is called Revolutionary.
And in this episode of Association Chat, we're going to explore how his insights apply to association leaders working through today's challenges. So here we go. What's your origin story? How did you get here?
how far back do you want me to go?
Um, when you were five years old? No,
here
we are talking about value graphics. But you didn't start out that way and was not what you were You were not preaching that story. In the beginning,
I was an ad guy. Uh, I, I grew up, uh, when that television show called 30, something was like top of the charts. And I just thought that looks like the coolest possible job in the world. And so I went to school and tried to get myself into working in an ad agency because I thought it was all about staying up really, really late the night before the big creative break.
Pitch and throwing pencils in the ceiling and eating too much pizza and then winning the pitch and going out and getting drunk with your friends from work. And that's what it just seemed like a glamorous career. Uh, and it turns out it wasn't so much of a glamorous career. You got paid for
sometimes.
Uh, so fast forward through realizing that I'd made a terrible, terrible mistake. Uh, and so I thought that, uh, the next best thing I could do to get myself out of working in ad agencies was to start my own cause I could got to be more fun to be the boss than just an employee. And, uh, that lasted for about 10 years. And then I sold that company to management and it was during that 10 years that I started to notice something and it was.
A repeating pattern and it had to do with the kind of ad agency it was. I was able to, uh, we, we only worked with, um, large scale real estate developers, so like resorts and condominium towers and downtown Gotham city and all that kind of stuff. Uh, and the nice thing about that is that it has a beginning and a middle and an end. Like in the course of a. You know, a year and a half, you've created a campaign out of thin air. You've gone out there and spend a bunch of money.
And then you get to see the people who bought the condos or the resort homes or whatever. So, you know, if you're doing advertising for Coca Cola, it just keeps going on and on and on and on forever. Uh, but this was like a constant sort of experimental start, middle, and start, middle, and, and so I saw patterns and the pattern I saw. Was that the way we were defining people and talking about people, uh, was with demographics and who are we to, who are we doing this campaign for?
It's for, um, you know, uh, 25 to 34 year old women who have a household income of X and they're married and they have a kid and they were white collar, whatever the demographic description might be. And if we were lucky, we had a few psychographic facts about them. Is this a first home, a second home? Are they leasing an office for themselves? Is it for all that kind of stuff? Uh, and then we go spend a million bucks and get them to buy or lease or rent these things.
And then I get to stand in a room with them and look around and go, uh, wow, this is who responds. This does
not match. This is not my beautiful house.
This is not my beautiful car. Persona. Yeah. Um, who are you people? Thank you for coming and making us look great, but who the heck are you and how'd you get here? Uh, we, we didn't think about you. We didn't make creator for you. We didn't buy in your channels and yet, and yet here you are. And it happened over and over and over again.
So when I sold the company, I thought, you know, I'm going to kind of poke around, see if I can't figure that out because my, you know, thumbnail sense of it was, it was about 10 or 15 percent of the people in the room matched the target audience that we'd spent all that money against. So that's a massive waste of time and effort. If we're talking. To these folks and only the, you know, 85 percent of them are not the people we thought we were talking to.
So it's getting long and boring now, but, um, it quickly go into behavioral science and you see that the only reason those people were in a room. In fact, the only reason any of us are in any room metaphorically or real is because it aligns with our values. We look at behavioral sciences, you know, like neurology, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, they all, they all fight like cats and dogs about what makes people. do stuff.
Um, but they agree that the way the human brain operates is to figure out what option is in front of me that best aligns with my values. And that's the one I'm going to go and pick. And even if you don't know you're doing it, you're doing it thousands of times a day. In fact, here's the big news. It's the only way. Our brains know how to make any decision of any size is right, which option aligns with their values.
You talk about this and I think it's fascinating because it's easy. It's easy to just say, um, you know, the common question I've heard because now I've, I've been in, uh, Rooms with you when you're talking and then I hear people talk to you and ask you questions over and over it's like Well, you know, there are a lot of different types of values What do you mean by values and it goes into into that sort of thing?
Yeah, but um, I just think it's it's really incredibly interesting because um, we do get this idea that we can kind of sum up people on on these different um Um, data points that it turns out really aren't the, the, you know, aren't really leading to a lot more than just, you know, when they graduate from high school doesn't really turn out to have a whole lot to do with, um, things like what they're going to be drawn to, why they want to be in that
room, why they want to, you know, I'm going to be a part of your association. And so, I mean,
just think about it. Think about it like this. You have a room full of, uh, professional white collar women who earn, uh, at least a 200, 000 a year and, uh, went to college and have, uh, uh, yeah, white collar career. So you have a room full of them. There's a thousand of them in a room. How similar do you think they are to each other?
Yeah. Hopefully not. Hopefully they aren't. Right? They're not going to be very similar. It's going to be all over the map. Right? There's going
to be all kinds of different personalities and things that get them excited. And because the only thing they have in common is a couple of demographic characteristics. Yeah. And yet. That would be enough of a target audience description to go and spend a bunch of money and try and get them to do something you want them to do.
You have a really great statistic that you share that is, and I don't know what it is. I don't have it in front of me. I imagine that you've got it that you can pull up right away. Yeah. It's the statistic that you share. It's, um, about the percentage. If you're just looking at the demographic of like age and how, how. Right on you're going to be how on on target and effective you're going to be with your messaging Versus if you know their values, is that right? I think I'm
you got it. You got it You got it, and it's shocking. It's shocking So first off the way we got this is we've gone out and talked to a million people around the world in 152 different languages about who they are and what makes them tick and what their values are. And the way we collected all that data, uh, is super accurate proportionately and representationally so that it's kind of like we have our own little Lego model of the population of the world.
So we can slice and dice it in all kinds of different ways. And one way we can do it is demographically. And when we did that, when we went, okay, cool, we got all this data and we know all this stuff about all these people, 180 countries, 150 languages. Um, and, uh, what happens if we just look at Gen Z? How similar are they to each other?
Cause there's a lot of people out there right now trying to convince us that Gen Z all like this, or they're all going to behave that way, or the way to get them to join a professional association is to do this stuff as if they're some kind of giant hive mind. Uh, so Gen Z. Like every other demographic cohort out there, age, income, gender, uh, gender, uh, marital status, number of kids, education, all those labels we're all familiar with.
Anybody in any one of those buckets, they resemble each other on average, 10. 5 percent of the time. So that means, yeah, it varies a little bit. Gen Z's a little higher, boomers a little lower, women, men, you know, different, but it's all averages out. Let's just round it off and say 10%. So demographic groups are 10 percent similar. And yet we believe the way we operate inside our boardrooms is that somehow if we understand the demographics of a group of people, we know who they are.
We only know that with any level of accuracy is about 10%. We're 90 percent wrong with all of our assumptions about people based on demographics. So anytime you see one of those surveys coming out that goes, Gen Z all wants this. It's not, can I swear? It's bullshit. It's bullshit. It is bullshit.
It is total bullshit. And I feel that when I see it, it's like, yeah, uh, that's not how they all feel. They all, they're just, and it seems ridiculous. And yet we see those headlines. I see them all the time. The headlines, the names for sessions all the time is that sort of thing.
And, you know, there's a lot of speakers out there and, you know, I do a lot of, Public speaking.
So I have no ill will towards speakers, but, um, and they don't like it when I say this, these particular speakers, because there's a lot of speakers out there who make a living running around saying, I'm a Gen Z expert, you know, for a long time, it was, I'm a millennial expert and there's consultants who go into companies and go, I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about Gen Z or about millennials. You can't.
Uh, they're, they're, you know, I forget the number off the top of my head, but there's like 40 or 50 million Gen Z in the United States alone. Forget about the rest of the world, just in the United States. And we think that somehow they're all going to be, uh, like, they're all going to be similar to each other, that many people. So, you know, people will argue with me and go, well, yeah, but they're way more technologically savvy than people who came before. I'll go.
Sure, in their own way, but you know, my baby boomer, uh, friends, their version of being technologically savvy was they had the first microwave on the block, right? That was the technology that they had available and some of them needed to be the first one with a microwave. And today, some of these Gen Z's are got to be the first one with the new iPhone. So really what's different is like the toys have changed.
Yeah.
You know, the, the, the environmental conditions are different, but what's driving people, who they really are on the inside, it's the same, it's the same.
Yeah. And when you get to that, that's when, and, and this is like, you know, plot twist, you know, it's like you get, you get to that and it's like, Oh, guess what? It's not about when you graduated from high school. It's not about. Uh, anything to do with that? Maybe we're all more aligned according to what is driving us in this values. And when you put the values number, that, that percentage in there, you get a lot closer, right? When you didn't give you a lot more effective, you
didn't. So here's the other number. So if we look at people demographically, you only get 10 percent similarity in a group. And that means, by the way, if you stack a bunch of those groups on top of each other, like women about 10 percent similar, earn 150, 000 a year, about 10 percent similar, um, white collar job about 10%. That's like just three groups of people stacked on top of each other to a bigger group of people who agree with each other about 10 percent of the time.
So that's, that's, that's all that is right now. If you look at it from a values perspective and say, what if we put people and forget about it. Their age and income and gender and all that other, those typical old fashioned labels and instead put people in groups of that are based on values, similarity, then how often do they agree with each other on all the different things that happen in the course of a life? And it goes as high as 89%. So it's almost a complete inverse.
Here's a cool way to think about it. If you've got a 1 budget and you spend that money trying to get people to do stuff based on what you think, you know, about them demographically, the best you can hope for is a 10 percent return on investment on that dollar. You got a 10 cent dollar. Uh, but if you do it based on values, you got a 90 cent dollar. Same dollar. It's so good.
Now even, even, even if that 90, even if that number of 89 percent is, is, is half wrong, which it isn't, it's plus or minus 3. 5 percent wrong, 95 percent level of confidence, but let's just pretend our data was totally a ridiculously horrible data, uh, and it was only half correct and it was only 40%. It's still four times better than using demographics, right? Yeah. So
it's kind of important to know, kind of good that we, we shifted and we're looking at values
now
and okay, so, and now you are working with the American Society of Association executives finally doing some amazing stuff with them. Right. And so, um, I want people to understand how you're beginning to engage with the American Society of Association Executives specifically this year and why this year is so critical because it's November.
Yeah, November's a big month in 2024 in the United States of America. If anybody doesn't know that they've been hiding under a rock.
Yes.
Uh, so earlier this year, the ASAE asked me to come and speak to the Executive Leadership Forum, which this year was held in Toronto. Uh, and uh, they, uh, had a great idea for a topic that our values data would be able to address.
And that was how do we help association leaders navigate some of the very uncivil discourse, uh, that goes on inside associations these days and that goes on inside society in the United States these days as Things seem to become more and more divided and divisive, uh, along party lines. Uh, and association leaders are continually finding themselves in this sort of role of being a referee and it's not in their job description. Frankly, it's not something they trained for.
It's not something that they have a lot of experience with. I mean, every association leader, uh, knows how to, um, uh, referee the normal day to day kinds of disagreements that come up in a boardroom, uh, level with their, um, and those sorts of things. Uh, but this is, this is different. This is a whole new level of divisiveness. That's not even about the business of the association. It's about the business of the United States of America, uh, and where people are at at this moment in time.
So what we did is we went out and profiled using our, our methodology. We went out and profiled, uh, close to 2000 people. across the United States, who are members of associations who have been members for at least five years, who volunteered at least once. So we know they're actively engaged as members of these associations, uh, and who are, um, uh, who we asked whether they were on the left or the right. Are they on team red or team blue?
Um, and then we were able to compare and contrast what their values are. And the way we do that is we take the responses from those couple of thousand people that we talked to. Uh, and then we compare them against the million surveys we've done in our benchmark database. There's 152 languages and hundreds of millions of data points in there.
So when we go and talk to those couple of thousand people, and this is the same thing we do for every keynote, no matter who we're talking to or what we're talking about is go and talk to a couple of thousand people who fit a Listen to what they have to say, but more importantly, pull the lookalike data out of this massive, massive global first ever database of what we all care about and what our values are and say, Oh, you know what people like that? People like those ones we just talked to.
Here's what we know about them. Here's all this great stuff that we can now use to understand how to engage and motivate and inspire those folks. And so that's what we did. And we found, um, these three values that are incredibly important and common across both sides of this political divide.
And in this keynote, uh, in Toronto, and then we're repeating this for a different select group of folks who are going to be in Vegas at IMAX, we're going to talk about these three power values, we call them. I
love that. I hadn't, Oh, nice. Yeah.
They're, they're super, um, they're super powerful, right? Remember when we started talking today that, uh, the only way the human brain knows how to make decisions about anything is based on values alignment. So if you know the values of a group of people, you know how they're going to think and decide and behave about everything. And then your job as a association leader or.
Anybody who's trying to engage and motivate and influence a group of people is to just be the option that gives them values alignment and their brains will kick in and go, whoop, that's the thing for me. So instead of guessing, wow, I think this might help us get people where we need them to be, or I think this might help us tone down some of the rest. We can say, no, this is the data. Here's the stuff you need to say and do to get folks to do the things you want them to do.
I mean, this, this sounds like incredibly, I can't imagine being an association professional out there listening to this right now and not just being on the edge of my seat going, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me what are the three, tell me, tell me, tell me now, tell me now. You know, so like, are you, are you going to tell us, are you going to tell us,
tell you, I'm going to tell you. Uh, that's good. But first, let me sing a little bit from the Mikado, or Pirate of Penzance, or like just a little musical interlude before we begin. Uh, uh, so yeah, let's do that. The first, the first one, uh, which, you remember, there's 56 values that could have been on this list. And, um, Each of those 56 values has hundreds of different meanings. So after talking to a million people, we figured out there's only 56 buttons. You need to learn how to push.
And only some of them are going to apply in any given situation, but they all mean different things to different people. So I'm going to give you a little bit of context before I tell you what these three power values are, right? Oh, you're
such a tease, David. Oh my gosh. No, no, I want the
nuances here and that these aren't just like big clunky words that we made up and you know, we, we didn't even ask anybody about their values and those million people we talked to. We asked them about their life. And we listen to what they say and we listen and we see the patterns and the know, I would go, Oh, look, all of these people are reacting to the world in this way. And, and some in this way and some in this way, and there seems to be 56 things that drive us to do what we do.
But for each of those 56 things, like the value of belonging, for example, which is the number one, most important value in the United States, more important than family, by the way. There's 912 definitions of belonging. So when we see in our studies, a value pop up as being over index, more important for the group we're studying, we can also see exactly what does it mean to them?
What are the conditions that need to be present in order for them to feel like values alignment is there and get them to move in the direction we want them to move. So all that being said, here's the first value of the 56 values. The value is loyalty.
Now hundreds of different meanings for loyalty But what the particular meaning for this group of people for folks who've been in an association for at least five years volunteered at least once It's about People they have already had a shared experience with. It's not loyalty to a brand, or an idea, or a party, or a routine, or a family member, or um, any of those other ways that you might interpret the word loyalty. It's about loyalty towards people they've already shared an experience with.
So if you're an association leader and you're trying to build this into the way that your association is perceived and the way that you are serving your members so that they feel aligned, both sides, red and blue, feel aligned around this, and they don't want to disrupt that because the association is, Delivering common ground for them. Uh, there's all kinds of different ways you can do it. One thought starter idea. And please, anybody listening, uh, remember that I'm not an association leader.
And so these ideas I'm throwing out, or this is like what David thinks is cool. And you're, you're absolutely allowed to go. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. But I see where you're going with that. And we could do this instead. So that's the whole point of sharing these ideas, right? So loyalty towards people you've already shared an experience with, uh, why not experiential professional development?
Let's put professional development programs together that aren't just sitting in a room that are, uh, go out and do stuff. And learn how to do those things while you're having an experience together because now you're baking loyalty into the membership who are going through those professional development programs, right? I'm
thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking about. What I was talking about earlier, David, the association chat road trip to ASC annual that we just did for, I mean, association chats, not admittedly, not an association, but has members and for those fans and members of association chat that were on that. road trip bus. That's six and a half hours of all kinds of experience that we had shared.
You told jokes, you saw stuff. You didn't never forget. We made
handshakes. We had a handshake. We had our own secret handshake.
There you go. That's exactly what I'm talking about. So for the association leaders who are listening to this, figure out ways that professional development can be an experience because that will trigger. The value of loyalty, which will work for both sides of the house.
And
the more of that they feel when they're interacting with and being part of, uh, what it means to be a member of your association, the more of that they feel, the less likely they're going to want to have a fight. The less likely it is that they're going to have those, um, uh, disruptive, uh, divisive, um, issues pop up around the boardroom table or at the lunch meeting or whatever it is that we're talking about because you're delivering on something that's incredibly important to both sides.
And so this is sacred space for them. Now this is common ground. They don't, I don't want this to be a place where I end up having those because neither side wants to have fights. Nobody, no human wants to fight. Right. So if you can be the place that's safe, that's giving them both what they're looking for, well, the chances of these things turning into bad moments, uh, becomes less and less and less and less.
So professional development, but again, the same disclaimer, remember, that's just my idea. Anything else you can come up with that's about giving people an opportunity to experience things together because it will trigger loyalty. Is going to be, uh, uh, magic. It's going to be magic. And what we've done there, that process of saying, okay, the values data point is loyalty to people I've already shared an experience with that's the data. Now, from there, we came up with one idea.
So kind of that leap to, Oh, if that's true, then we could do this. We call that values thinking. It's kind of like design thinking we take a design thinking is a way of making decisions where you keep design at the center of the decision making process. That's what values thinking is. It's a way of making decisions and coming up with ideas that keep values at the center of that decision making process. So these other two values that I'm going to share with you. Same thing.
Think about, okay, if that's true, I heard David's Stupid idea. But here's what we've got. What else we could do with that. I get where he's going. I see what he's trying. He's well intentioned. He's trying to help. Uh, his ideas are not great, but, um, we see what he's doing. Maybe
they're great though, David. Maybe they're great. Okay. They probably are. I just, I
think it's awfully courageous of me to get up in front of any of the audiences I talked to and say, here's what you should do. You should do this. I don't know what it is their lives are all about, right? So, uh, so yeah, they're just meant to be, um, illustrative ideas, we'll say. Yes.
I appreciate that. So we have number one, loyalty. What about number two? Number two,
personal responsibility.
Um,
uh, these are people who like to, um, feel like they're the ones getting stuff done. And the specific definition for that value for this group of people is personal responsibility, getting things done. Cause it makes them feel stable. If I get stuff done, my boat's not tippy. If I get stuff done, the things that need to be done, then everything's going to just be fine.
And we're all going to move along at a nice stable pace and nothing's going to be surprising and there's not going to be any craziness.
Oh, they're trying to manage, they're trying to like balance, provide themselves with stability. They see that through personal responsibility. Okay. Tell me how this plays out. This means that they, they're doing something. If they do something that makes them feel this sense of personal responsibility, like they're masters of their own domain and some sort, they have some sort of, uh, Some sort of hold on creating more stability in their world because of this. You
got it. So anything, including your association that gives them the ability to feel like, well, this is a, this is a thing that makes me feel responsible. And I see how this is helping me be more personally responsible. And I like that because it makes me real stable. So. Here's my idea. Um, I, I, it's not the snappiest name for an idea ever, but I call it the practical, tactical, practical, tactical, actionable, social series.
So we're always sitting around in every organization trying, well, what should we be putting out on social? What should we be pushing out on Instagram? What do we put on LinkedIn? Why not push out a social series? Uh, that's about how the organization, the association has make stuff happen. Uh, and because you're a member of this association, you have access to this tool or that tool or this thing or that thing, but all of these things are really about empowering you to. To get stuff done.
Here's an example of here's Ted, Ted came and took our course on whatever, whatever. And as a result of that, Ted made this happen. Hey, Ted, he got stuff done. Uh, so just be the source of, uh, stories, uh, that relate to. People getting stuff done and feeling stable as a result. You're you, you provided the learning, the development, the opportunities, the, the, the, the networking, whatever it is.
Uh, and then that becomes the source for your social stories, uh, for a series on practical, tactical, actionable, social, uh, stories.
I mean, how many times have you had to practice saying that? Because I have to tell you that I would not even dare. I wouldn't even put that. I'd just be like, no, I'm scratching that out. We're calling it something else.
Now that I'm looking at it on my screen here, it's, it's PTA, it's the PTA social series.
Different kind, but okay.
Different kind of PTA. Yeah. So there's, there's, um, there's loyalty and there's personal responsibility. Now, the third one.
Okay. I'm very curious about what the third one will be.
Yeah. Uh, this one is, um, it's interesting. Uh, we don't see this one show up very much. Now I want to make the point here that, uh, as a keynote speaker and as a, as a research company, we've profiled, um, We're getting close to a thousand now, different organizations, different kinds of people for different purposes. Sometimes it's a leadership keynote. Sometimes it's a sales keynote. It's a employee engagement, workplace culture, all kinds of different purposes.
Everything from wall street hedge fund managers to, um, uh, doctors who, uh, work in, uh, malaria and other tropical disease, everything you can possibly imagine we've touched. And this one value, comes up so rarely I can, I can count on my hand, uh, on one hand, how many times I've seen this. So this is quite unique. It's the value of independence.
Uh, and the exact definition for this value for this group, uh, is there want to be independent, whatever offers them this ability, this, this value of independence, but it's because they don't want anybody or anything having any unnecessary control over their lives.
Interesting.
Uh, don't tell me what to do. Don't put me in a situation where some expectation is there around what I'm supposed to do. I'm the boss of me. Uh, and I don't know, you know, I'm often mystified about why do certain values show up for certain groups of people? Sometimes it's obvious. Um, You know, uh, for example, event planners, uh, they have an overindexed value around financial security and look at the budgets that they have to manage. Look at all the budgetary detail.
They love the idea of being secure. So it's an obvious connection for me. He's like, well, of course you have financial security. You're an event planner. It's a big part of what you do. It's why you chose what you do. This one I'm like, wow, independence. Uh, and remember this is accurate enough. For a PhD, this is like plus or minus 3. 5%, 95 percent confidence.
So something about people who belong to professional associations have been in a membership for at least five years and have volunteered at least once in the United States of America, something about their over indexing on the value of independence. And it's all about avoiding unnecessary control over their lives.
That's so interesting. I'm so curious about the why and like, Making those connections.
Yeah. So
yeah,
we could have a whole podcast about that. Um, but I'm just going to see if I have the, um, uh, I do. So independence in the U S general population is down in the 20th percentile. It's like only important to about 20 percent of the population. Uh, but for this population, It's important, uh, depending on whether we're looking at team red or team blue, they're pretty darn close to each other, but basically they're hovering around the 60th percentile. So that's a 40 point spread.
That's a massive Delta between these two. So compared to everybody else in the United States, people who belong to associations for at least five years, no volunteer at least once it's insanely more important. The amount of independence that they want to have in their life.
It's so, it's so wild. I mean, I, I like, I'm thinking about the people I, I know who I've met are, who are members and the different associations I've worked for in the past. And. I can kind of, that makes sense, you know, when I think about it, I can't think of contradictions to it, you know, as far as, but I mean, I mean, I'm just, I have to, like, I'm going to sit and think about this for a while. So what does that mean for how we apply it though? Like my
idea there was, um, a thing I've called the disruptor awards. Uh, and again, you're allowed to say this is ridiculous, but I see where you're going with that. If there's this fierce sense of independence, this fierce sense of don't tell me what to do. I'm going to do it my own way. Then every association I've ever been a part of, they always have an award show. There's always a, a big annual general meeting.
Why isn't one of the awards that you, you have the whole membership vote on is who's the person in this organization who's been the biggest disruptor who's done it their own way. I love
that so much.
Let's honor it. Let's make a big deal out of it. It should be the source of a social theories. It should do everything you can just like make it. Part of how people see this association in their lives. This is the place that celebrates our independence to the point where we're picking out the most independent as this of all, the biggest independent test of all, uh, and giving them a trophy at the end of the year. Wow.
Yeah. These are, these people are people who want, they want their, they want. Uh, their personal responsibility, they, to like have things be, to feel more stable, they care about loyalty. Um, with the people that they've already had a shared experience with, and they also are fiercely independent because they don't want unnecessarily control over their lives. That's a, that is an interesting group of values,
you
know,
now that's just three, uh, you know, and in the space of a keynote, that's all that we have time to share. Um, there's this, there's a list of about 10 or 12 that are, you know, Not equally, but those are the ones I chose that I thought were the most powerful and interesting to talk about. But there's another bunch, um, in there that, uh, could also be used as, um, thought starters and the basis for values, thinking exercises to tackle, uh, challenges and achieve goals.
But, uh, those three are a pretty darn good start. You know, here's a fun. Uh, I don't know if I should tell you who this is or not. I'm not gonna, because I don't know if they would be upset with me, but a very large association, um, has saw me speak, um, and was so taken with this notion of values, driving behaviors and decisions, and it resonated so much for them that they've engaged me to come in, uh, in the new year and sit with their board of directors and some committees.
And they have one annual event that is a, the most important event for them. And it's a very big event. Uh, and we're going to rip that event apart from start to finish from marketing and advertising to registration, to programming, to everything. And we're going to build the whole thing based on a profile that will develop of the values of the people who go to that event. So it'll be a values driven from. Tip to tip. Oh my gosh. Uh, you have
to pro, you have to promise me that you're going to tell me all about it after, like, you'll come, you'll tell me how it went, how successful it was, what, well, you know what? It's a great case
study. And, and as long as, as long as my client is willing to, uh, they come on too. Yeah. They can come and, and we'll share, we'll talk about it together. Yeah.
Yes. Well, okay. So before I let you go, you know. I want to be able to tell people, uh, some things that they, you know, basically some insights that they're only going to get here. That is going to be super special. And I know that, you were telling me some pretty, I was calling them spicy, some, um,
things
like what are some of these little interesting data points that you can share with me that might be useful to, Oh, say the association chat entire audience here.
Sure. I'm like rubbing my
hands together. If you're hearing a weird sound, I'm rubbing my hands together in greedy, in greedy, , contemplation and expectation and anticipation as I'm waiting.
So here's what happens when I've talked about this before that in order to get ready for a keynote, we go out and talk to a couple of thousand people and ask them some questions and then. extrapolate the data from the benchmark database and say, here's what we know about people like that around their values. But since we're out talking to a couple thousand people, which is a statistically representative sample of a particular audience that we're studying, we ask them some other questions too.
Uh, and so in this case we asked a couple of questions that are more psychographic in nature, not value graphic in nature. And we're able to. Learn some other things about these people. So one of the things we always ask is what are your preferred media channels? So talking to a couple thousand folks across the United States who have been input with an association at least five years and volunteered at least once.
What do you think their number one most preferred media channel is for hearing information about their association?
Oh, um,
you won't guess. It's a trick question.
They don't, they don't care.
No, not at all.
What is it?
One 70 percent of this audience said Facebook
actually based on the association chat audience, not necessarily surprised, you know, that's where I have more engagement for, for the chat. Yeah.
Facebook then LinkedIn and by just a, just a hair. So they're almost tied neck and neck, Facebook and LinkedIn. And then the next one down was personal recommendations. So word of mouth gets way up there. So if I was an association leader, I'd say, okay, cool. This has helped me rationalize the money I'm spending on social media, engagement, and, and continuing to put our messages and our stories out there on Facebook and LinkedIn, uh, Instagram way down the list, by the way.
So we're really just talking about Facebook and LinkedIn. Um, but personal recommendations, networking, professional recommendations, uh, those are in a clump. Those are the next thing. So I've got to bundle those all up and say, that's, that's a word of mouth. So what are you doing as an organization to get people to talk to each other about the stuff that they need to know that's going on inside the association?
I think about, you know, back in, Growing up as a kid in, in, in, in Winnipeg when, uh, we had like terrible, terrible winter snow storms, uh, there was phone trees, uh, and you know, the one mom's responsibility was to call three moms and each of them called three moms. And when the school was shut down for the day, this is how they got word to us. Uh, there wasn't any social media. You couldn't just like post something on Twitter and the, or on the internet. Right. Um, I'm that old.
Uh, so what are, what are we, what are, what are the ways that you can activate word of mouth inside your association to get people to talk to each other about the important stuff?
I think that that gets lost so often because, um, what I've seen with like online communities for associations specifically is like, uh, there'll be a focus on getting everybody onto a platform. There'll be a focus on. Pushing content out, but there's not as much focus on how do we get people talking to each other? And it's not like, you know, I think that sometimes associations and association staff will, we'll be thinking about like, Oh, well, we need to provide all of these resources.
And like, if we give it to them, that's enough. And it's like, no, how do you foster. connection and, conversation, you know, like how do you get people talking to one another, not necessarily talking to, just back to you,
and, and yeah, give everybody some resources. I've seen this so many times, like here's a PDF that you can forward easily to all of your friends. No one's gonna do that. Why, why would I bother my friends with another PDF that they have to download and read? So yeah. Thinking outside the box, uh, around how do we just get some good old fashioned kind of Chatter going on, uh, amongst our members. Uh, yeah. And, um, harnessing that power of human interaction. So, so that's one.
Interesting. That's a good one. Yeah, that is
a good one. So another one of these, uh, more psychographic questions, um, that we asked is what we call the deal maker deal breaker. Question. And again, we do this with every industry. It's not unique to this particular study. Every speech I give, we always have this information. It rarely makes it into the keynote because there's so much else to talk about. But here it is sharing it with you. So the dealmaker deal breaker for professional associations. What's the one thing?
This is the deal maker question. The one thing that would make you say, yep, absolutely. I'm joining that organization I'm in and I'm gonna be participating. Participating. Like, what's the one thing? And the one thing in this case, uh, that's a deal maker is, I'm gonna give you two, the top two. The first one is community. Mm-Hmm. . They wanna know that there, there's, there's a perception that there's gonna, that they're joining a supportive and welcoming community.
So. We all talk about community a lot. Uh, we all talk about, Oh, Oh yeah, we're, of course we're a community. Uh, but what's the proof? Um, how often are your members hanging out with each other when it's not the, uh, monthly luncheon? Right. How, how often are they, um, involved in each other's personal lives?
Do they even know what their spouse's Names are, uh, what their, their friends, I hope they all know what their own spouses names are, but they're, but they know what each other's names on
the association. Um,
but, but what's the proof there's a community here. And if you have proof, great. Talk about it loud and clear. Social media, put it on your website, you know, just like, you know, guess what? A bunch of our members went and formed a book club, which had nothing to do with us, but they're having a great time. And if you're all interested in joining me, you should go join that book club too. Cause they look like they're having a great time and yay guys go.
Uh, so what, what's the proof that there's community? And then the second one is, um, innovation. People want, they, they expect their membership, uh, in these organizations to be about, show me the new, the stuff I I'm not going to find out anywhere else. I want to, I expect you, I want you to help me be on the leading edge of whatever it is our profession is about, or the reason we have an association.
So if you can get community and innovation happening, those are two things that are like the absolute deal maker. Yes, I'm in. Yeah. Now let's go to the other side. What's going to make me light my hair on fire and run away screaming? Uh, the first one is high. Membership fees. Now that's a, to me, that's a value conversation. What's a high fee that depends on what I'm getting for it. Doesn't it?
Uh, so, uh, but, but as association leaders, what we have to listen, what we, what, what association leaders have to take away from this is if you're not. Talking about that value, uh, uh, equation, then you're going to be losing people because if it's not obvious that this is worth twice as much as I'm paying, then they're not going to stay.
Right.
It's an incredibly important platform plank in the platform, uh, to be focused on. And the second one here, um, is geographic. Bias. So this, you know, we're urban and you know, we're, I live in the outskirts when everything happens is for the people who live in downtown or, uh, this is supposed to be a national association. So why is everything happening in New York and LA and not here where I live? And why do I, the one who always has to travel?
And so geographic bias is number two thing that'll make me run away screaming.
I can see that. I can totally see that. It just kind of depends on how satisfied and how robust that membership is and, and, you know, happy they are in those sections. This resonates because I used to work with chapters, component relations, uh, back in the day when I started out
relations, that's what it's called.
It's called component relations because it can be sections. It can be, um, special interest groups that can be chapters. , so it's called all kinds of different things,
relations,
relations, and there's a whole. This is a whole, , segment of association professional. And if you know, you'll, you know, if you work in chapters, you know, component relations, what that means. Interesting. I learned
a new thing today. I'm going to start talking like I'm an insider. Like I, it sounds like
I smell like stereo pieces or like speakers or something, I know it does sound a little bit like component relations, but yeah, it's like, it needs
a new component. Uh, that's it. Yeah, and, and, and you know what, I don't want us to be super negative about this, but I do want to mention one last one around this. Cause I think it's really important. The third most important thing that's a deal breaker, the runaway screaming with my hair on fire, internal politics.
Oh yeah. Oh no.
So, uh, the value equation, the geographical bias and then internal politics.
That's interesting. That's, that's a, that's a good argument for why you should care about your culture and why you should, you know, pay attention to what's happening with the way that you relate internally and not just looking outward.
Well, and, and the, the data, when we dig in deeper behind, what does that mean? It's specifically about power struggles between leaders and hopeful leaders.
Oh, Ooh,
I know. Kind of. Kind of. Yeah. Interesting. Huh? Uh, we may think that some of that stuff is kind of just behind closed doors, but it's not, uh, it's not, it's a not, it's not enough. The 2000 people we talked to across the United States, uh, it was 40 percent of them said internal politics leaders versus hopeful leaders.
Wow.
So keep it friendly folks.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's, that is spicy. What about, there's one more, right? Yeah, the
third one. Okay, one of my favorite questions. We ask this for every keynote, every, every audience we study. What do you, we call it the love, hate, wish question. What do you love, hate and wish you could change about whatever we're talking about? So in this case, professional association. So love, number one response for thing I love. I don't think anyone's going to be surprised. Uh, networking opportunities.
Yeah.
Yep. That's seems pretty, pretty obvious. But then what I thought was interesting was number two and number three, number two was community above professional development. So networking opportunities, community, and then professional development. So that community piece, remember it also came up under dealmaker deal breaker. So that's twice now that it's reared its head, which just reinforces how important that is.
Yep. Conversation we just had around community really really is if you've got a good sense of community Find those little bright spots find those moments that illustrate how tight this community is and how you're going to just get Folded in here and feel part of this big happy family Uh and and elevate those stories make sure people know about those things that are going on because it's hugely important three things I hate about professional associations in order,
uh I've felt this one, uh, exclusivity feeling excluded from the inner circle.
I was actually thinking about that. When you were talking about what people love is the community part. I was thinking about what makes people feel like they're not a part of the community and it feeds directly into this idea that. Only certain people, they only certain people get that, that exclusivity.
Uh, number two and number three, um, with a really fairly decent, I mean, it's outside of our margin of error of 3. 5%. So they're worth mentioning, uh, superficial relationships. So that's that, what that means is networking without purpose or. You know, just like, Oh, hi, hi. How are you? Air kiss,
but
not really value relationships that matter, which is a subset of community as far as I'm concerned. So there we are with that community piece coming back up in a slightly different way, and the third one is affordability, which goes back to that value equation. We already talked about around deal makers and deal breakers. So there, again, whenever we see those same, um, messages. In two or three different ways that you ask a question, that's a red, red flare. That's a, that's a three alarm fire.
So, uh, that value equation really needs to be thought. How do we tell people that this is worth more than they're paying? What's the proof. And that would be an amazing thing to sit around and brainstorm about because those proof points are. Um, in some cases, the most important ones aren't going to be financial proof points at all.
They're going to be about the value of those non superficial relationships and how someone because of this organization met this person and that person and that formed a partnership that this thing happened and then as a result of that, their kids were able to do this stuff and um, we all know those stories inside our organizations, but how often are we telling those stories?
We're not. Not like I'm not nearly enough like I and we want the stories we want to be able to that's to me that would definitely be one of those things where I'm like, I want that I want to be a part of that. That's a group I want to be a part of. And the stories
is all of these so far have been very much about How do we tell better stories about this stuff? And one of my favorite, favorite pieces of wisdom that I ever picked up was that stories are the currency of human relationships. We exchange stories and that's our currency. That's how we become like you and I, Kiki. We met the first time we met, we traded some stories. We kind of liked each other's story.
And then we met again and we traded some more stories and now we're telling each other all kinds of crazy stories. And it's the way we build relationships. And it's true, uh, between. Two people. It's also true between me and the association that I am part of, or that would like me to be part of, of, of them. And then lastly, the wish, what, what do I wish I could change now? This is where things always come up again, right? Because we said, what do you love? What do you hate?
What do you wish you could change? Sometimes it relates back to the loves and the hates. And it does, uh, number one, biggest thing that I wish I could change, enhance networking, meaningful networking opportunities, not just superficial. Oh, clink, clink. Oh, they're calling it champagne, but really it's Prosecco. Ha. Like that's not what I paid to do it. I paid.
I know I've been to many of those events. Oh yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and then number two, wish I could change affordability. Uh, it's that value equation again. And then lastly, um, accessibility, fewer inner circles and barriers to participation. So I will tell you one other story about another association. We profiled a long time ago, one of the largest in the world. I'm not going to name them because it's not a good story.
Um, they came to me and said, um, We're having a really hard time getting people in our profession to join our association, which has been around for an enormous amount of time and is the de facto organization for everybody in this particular profession. Why are the youngsters not joining? So we went out and profiled, uh, people who are of all ages and people who, who are young.
Uh, and people who are, yeah, just across the board, we was people who aren't members, but should be, and people who are members. Oh, and also people who are members, but left. Oh, we had all three
kind
of dig in there and see what those shared values are and what are their differences. And the big takeaway was it had been around for so long and it served the senior people inside the organization so well. that there was a, there were, there were fences up. Uh, the only way I was going to get any benefit out of this organization is, is was if I was a senior person too, I had to be a certain level inside this profession. I had to have a certain number of degrees.
I had to have a certain number of this and that. And the other thing in order to be taken seriously and to reap the benefits of this organization and the organization was run by Senior, senior, senior level folks, which makes sense. They're the smart ones.
They've been around a long time, but they did it in a way where the barriers to entry to anybody coming into the associate was like, we paid our dues, you pay your dues, and then you get to be with us and hang out with the big kids at the cool kids table. Right. Uh, and so when I presented this information, uh, I'd been asked to come to the board of directors, um, retreat in an exotic locale. We'd paid for a ticket. I was ready.
I was literally the day I was packing my bag to leave to go to the airport. Um, a summary of what my findings were made its way to, um, uh, the organizers who called me and said, do not get on that plane. This is not the message we want our board of directors to hear.
No,
do not get in that plane. I said, well, you know, it's non refundable and I'm still going to charge you for my time in the research. They said, we understand. Do not get on that plane.
Oh my gosh. Okay.
Got it. Uh, and that report, uh, was, uh, conveniently buried in the back of a file cabinet.
Amazing. Yeah, that is horrible. You know why? I think that. What you're describing happens in a lot of associations. , I, I see this happening for a number of reasons. Because when they get to that leadership, um, level where they are the ones that are sitting on the board they want things to sort of cater to them and they feel comfortable that way. Everybody is sort of keeping that going for as long as possible. Oh, I like a lot of things.
But I think that sometimes these systems people end up with their problem, which is like saying, why are the young and not saying that this hierarchical
systems like that are wonderful if you're at the top of the hierarchy, uh, and if you're not at the top of the hierarchy, they suck. And if the folks at the top of the hierarchy are sitting around going, why doesn't anybody want to come and play with this? Well, because you're making it terrible for them. It's because they're not at the top of the hierarchy. Flatten it out. You know, find ways to keep it going.
Keep the reasons why the, the elders are the elders, uh, but the elders shouldn't be the only people who benefit from any organization.
Yeah, no.
association.
Absolutely not. And, by the way, Elders, if you're listening or whatever, like any association leaders that giving back, we think a lot of times about the giving back of, of people who get to that level as giving back to the foundation, they give back financially, they, they attend all of the big meetings and they spend a lot of money with the organization, but Hey, Tap on their shoulders.
The giving back should be spending time, , building up those relationships with the younger members who are coming in and feel, you know, figuring out how you can sort of match, make and connect people like that. It's like bringing them together in that networking opportunity to provide the value, to bring people up and to provide that value for why new people in the industry and in the association can then get a leg up and see why they belong.
And I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm dying to say this because all of these things we've talked about, all of these issues. These challenges, these, um, uh, uh, weak spots that we've just been talking about and the good spots, you know, all of them can be solved by understanding what people value and values are the answer to every situation because every situation somehow is about people. Uh, and people are only driven by their values.
So if you know the values of the people who are association members and the folks who should be association members, and maybe like that other group I was talking about, the folks who left, you can sit back and go, well, gee, let's be a values driven association and figure out how to deliver, uh, what people care about the most deep inside their hearts and be a place for them.
Where they can come together on common ground, uh, and feel like this is home, not to be too, you know, motherhood and apple pie about it, but feel like this is a home away from home in a, in a, of course, in a professional way. I don't want this to sound all warm and fuzzy and poetic, but cause it's not, I
was digging this moment. You're taking me out of my moment of sound. I was, I was just like, Oh, listen to him land the plane. I love it,
you know, consider the plane landed, but you know, I, I just, I, I sometimes I think. One of the problems I have with the work that we do is that it does have a lot of those motherhood and apple pie kinds of things. It's about our values, about what's important inside our hearts. And I got to keep reminding people and myself that, yeah, but it's data.
Yeah.
It is motherhood and apple pie based on data. Uh, and that's what makes it true, uh, and that's what makes it work. And that's why they're called power values. And that's why this stuff is so, so valuable. And I want to end with one quick story. You know what it's going to be? Cause I always end everything with this story. Okay. Uh, there's a really big reason. Why we have to start thinking this way. And it's really effective to think this way.
It's a 89 percent effective instead of 10 percent effective. I mean, there's all kinds of good business reasons why we should start changing the way we look at each other and understanding people. Uh, but this one is bigger than all of that. And that's because. The longer we keep using outdated demographic stereotypes to think about people, the longer we keep looking at groups of people and say, what are their demographics?
The longer that forces us to use stereotypes, because if you, as ridiculous as this sounds, if you find out that your association members are 73 percent female, you're going to start using, stereotypes about women to figure out what you should do. And of course, women, we all know how much they like pink. So everything has to be pink now, right? Because what else, because that's, what else are you going to do? Well, if all you know is that they're women, you have to.
It forces us to think, and if you don't think it's happening, go into the toy stores and look at the pink toys and the blue toys. It's happening in every boardroom around the world. We look at demographics and it leads us to stereotypes about women, about men, about black people, about gay people, about rich people, about poor people, about everybody. We stare at it.
Stereotype and then make massive, massive strategic decisions based on those stereotypes, which just reinforce those stereotypes and the stereotypes are inaccurate. We now know that we have the data from around the world, a million surveys to prove this, but the stereotypes are not good, but they're not the worst of it. The stereotypes are just the beginning of it because the stereotypes fuel.
Things like sexism and ageism and racism and homophobia and ableism and classism and dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, the rest of that terrifically horrible list of conditions that we All can agree need to go away. And yet we innocently are perpetuating those by continuing to rely on stereotypes that come from demographics. So the good news, the big, happy plane landing, second plane landing of the day, uh, is that it's really easy to fix this. It's super, super simple.
We don't need to build factories. We don't need to buy a bunch of software. We don't need, all we got to do is change the way we look at each other. That's it. We just start with changing the way you look at yourself and realize that you're a bundle of values running around chasing values alignment all day. And if you do that, it'll force you to look at everyone else and say, well, so are they.
There are also values driven human beings running around trying to find out what's important and how to get more value of what they value in their life. And if enough of us do that slowly, slowly, it'll be slow, but slowly. Slowly, but surely we can change the way we all. Look at each other and that will change the world and it really truly will and We can all be part of that. We can all make that happen by just Starting to embrace a values driven way of thinking about each other. That's it.
That's all we got to do.
That's it. That's all that's not I mean, you know, it's not asking too much isn't So so
What I get really excited about is I have favorite values because of what they're teaching me at a particular moment in time. So let me tell you a really cool story based on this theme that we've been talking about today, which is how association leaders can use this information to maneuver some of the divisiveness that's going on in the United States right now around politics.
So I remember exactly when this started, but like four years ago or something, when, when, uh, Donald, uh, decided to become a national figure, uh, And things were starting to get divisive. Um, I very selfishly thought that this would be a perfect moment for me to get some press coverage because I could go out and profile what the heck was going on. And all I wanted out of life, all I wanted was just once to hear Anderson Cooper say, according to a value graphics study, and, uh,
pretty killer. I have to say,
it would be amazing. So Anderson, if you're listening, uh, um, I, uh, So we went and I was thinking, okay, so how do I get that to happen? What is, what's going to, what are the media love to talk about most? They love to talk about the other media. So I profiled instead of Republicans and Democrats are team red and team blue. I profiled people who watch CNN and people who watch Fox.
And I said, okay, this is a great way, a great kind of, um, way for us to compare these two sides and see what's going on. And I was all excited. We were going to get these results back that showed that this team was like a bunch of crazy and this other group was a bunch of whatever. And, uh, and that there's going to be a fight and that, uh, Anderson would then have a reason to say those crazy folks who watch that other station, there's what they're all about and they're nuts.
Uh, But instead, what I found was that there was hardly any difference at all. And that for one example, the value of family is insanely important to both sides. Now, granted what both sides feel is best for their family is different and how to get there is different, but they agree that it's about family. Now, fast forward to January 6th, a few years later, uh, a date that I don't think I have to explain to anybody who's listening to this podcast. Um, and.
In the midst of that, depending who you listen to, that, um, terrible riot or that polite tour group who are going through, uh, having been invited inside, um, uh, in the midst of that, there was a police officer, a capital police officer, who thought he was, thought he was going to die. And we've all seen the footage of this. It's been all over the All over the place. He's being crushed up against a wall behind a, an iron gate and people were screaming, kill him, kill him, kill him.
And they're pushing and pushing and pushing this huge crowd of people. And he was crying and screaming and they were beating him with the ends of flagpoles. And they were, they, they, he thought he was going to die. And then he said, I have kids and they stopped. They didn't give him a kiss, uh, and send him on his way. Um, but they didn't kill him. Uh, and he credits that with having saved his life. And so there's a moment in.
Intense, intense turmoil, incredible anger where a shared value brought these two sides together for a split second long enough that a better outcome was the result. So when I see those kinds of things happening and I can say there's the value and there's what it did. That's when a value becomes my, my favorite, uh, for a moment, at least. Uh, when I see those kinds of things and they happen all the time, there's so many examples I could tell you, these things are so powerful.
Uh, and I hope the stuff that we've shared today helps, association leaders find those places, those, that, that common ground, that stuff we've shared today, the stuff that was part of this, this keynote at IMAX, uh, and I'll keep doing this. I'm going to keep trying to find these important, powerful values and sharing them with people because they can accomplish great things. They really can.
Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. What an inspiring conversation today with David Allison. From understanding the power of shared values to rethinking how associations can foster loyalty, personal responsibility, and independence, David has given us so much to think about and apply. Thank you, David, for sharing your expertise and for pushing us to look beyond the demographics to what truly matters. Drives us as people.
As always, this is Kiki Loutalien signing off and reminding you to keep asking questions because the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Have a great rest of the week everyone.