[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to grow the reach, revenue, and impact of your learning business, you're in the right place. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Celisa Steele. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Jeff Cobb, and this is the leading learning podcast. [SPEAKER_02]: Many organizations say they want to be learning centric, but making that real requires structural change, cultural change, and a willingness to experiment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our guest in this episode, number 463 is Mike Moss, president of the Society for College and University Planning. [SPEAKER_00]: Under Mike's leadership, Skup has intentionally restructured itself to operate as a learning, centric organization. [SPEAKER_02]: In our conversation, Mike shares the journey Skup has taken, from revising bylaws and governance to committing to staff professional development and giving permission to play.
[SPEAKER_02]: He talks about how the association is experimenting with curriculum, membership models, and [SPEAKER_00]: You might also get into revenue and risk and how scum is balancing financial sustainability with its commitment to experimentation. [SPEAKER_02]: That's right. [SPEAKER_02]: And Mike offers practical advice for leaders who want to start down the path toward becoming more learning centric.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want inspiration for how to reimagine structure, culture, and revenue around learning, then you'll want to listen with care and curiosity to this conversation with Mike Moss. [SPEAKER_02]: can you briefly describe, scop, and the focus of its work, and then maybe also how you came to lead it. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, certainly. [SPEAKER_01]: So Scott is a professional association. [SPEAKER_01]: So we're 501c3.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we are a community of practice focused on the integrated planning approach for higher education. [SPEAKER_01]: And the key components of that are this is a new mission statement. [SPEAKER_01]: Being a community of practice is an intentional design statement in our mission. [SPEAKER_01]: And being learning centric and led through learning is an intentional outcome of that mission.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is all put in the play with our strategic [SPEAKER_01]: So we are 4,000 strong as individuals about 650 campuses with representation. [SPEAKER_01]: And about half of our members are actually corporate or other non-campus entities who support both the built environment of learning as well as learning outcomes of students and student success.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have a nice blended community of both for-profit, nonprofit, practitioner, and those of us that kind of work on the adjacent side of higher ed. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, you and I've had a chance to talk it at length before and you'd made the point that scooped it and just adopt that sort of philosophy of being learning centric. [SPEAKER_02]: You really reshape the structure, the systems, the talent to make that real and I know listeners here would probably love to know.
[SPEAKER_02]: What that transformation looked like and what were the tough choices you had to make along the way? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thanks Jeff, and I think what I would offer to start is that it is you outlined in your question. [SPEAKER_01]: It was a very intentional journey with structure, then systems, then talent. [SPEAKER_01]: and in doing that to jump to the non-dramatic ending, which is that did not mean we had to completely replace and replenish talent.
[SPEAKER_01]: The talent was on the journey of creating a learning-centric structure with systems that support it. [SPEAKER_01]: So by the time we got to talent, it was more about our own professional development as an organization to continue the journey not to reset the journey. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think what we really wanted to do was in this community of practice commitment.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all about the standard practice of learning, the learning-centric approach was just do reflect do differently, the very base level, is that we wanted to lead with curiosity and experimentation with the community-led learning initiatives. [SPEAKER_01]: So we do not have a credential, so I think that's an important piece to offer. [SPEAKER_01]: We are a peer-based learning environment and always have been, but we were structured in a more traditional committee.
[SPEAKER_01]: Does this committee does that? [SPEAKER_01]: These volunteers are set for this. [SPEAKER_01]: It was a very hierarchical, if not silo-driven operation. [SPEAKER_01]: And it worked great. [SPEAKER_01]: There was nothing dysfunctional about that environment other than. [SPEAKER_01]: We felt that the best way to really move the association into the 2030s would be to start now, especially post-pandemic, with a peer-driven learning social.
[SPEAKER_01]: And social comes from all the different modalities, take the mildalities out, and it's just about people doing reflecting and doing differently with both comparable and aspirant peers and institutions. [SPEAKER_01]: So in order to structure that we had to go back and change our bylaws, we had to give some agility and be really agile and our governance to allow the peers in the community to define. [SPEAKER_01]: how they wanted the modalities of learning, what those topics were.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we got really good at correlation and we get the members to work really hard on causation. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that balance is how we've become really learning centric in operation. [SPEAKER_01]: So that was that's an actually stated goal of this plan, is that we will operate as a learning centric organization that is a strategic goal. [SPEAKER_01]: So, we really didn't have a vote on it, Jeff, the organization decided this was where we were going.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that community of practice actually became the driver as much as any of the specific learning modalities that we put into place over the last year and a half. [SPEAKER_02]: And so, what was it about the old structure that was holding you back from where you saw you needed to go as an organization? [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it was just a matter of sort of giving more power to the people in a way or what happened there. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, a great quick question.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I do think it was as simple as, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So in the old government structure, it said, you know, the name of committee, these types of roles, this charge. [SPEAKER_01]: And but it was codified. [SPEAKER_01]: So in the governance, it was codified as to how we structured ourselves for a set of outcomes that were driven from that structure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what we wanted to do was not determine the structure, let the peer community determine the structure, based on, obviously, the board has voice. [SPEAKER_01]: We have a scum council, which is a group of volunteers
[SPEAKER_01]: But the fluidity of what's needed, particularly in a high volatile environment that we're serving in higher education, things shift very quickly, and we didn't want to end up having to sunset a committee to create a committee, go through a governance process to be, you know, compliant with what we're supposed to do to run, when what we just needed to do was allow the peer community to rise and fall with what they needed when they needed it in the modality that served them best.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's not unique, right? [SPEAKER_01]: This isn't an innovative practice, but for us it was innovative because before we were pretty scripted, we had a scripted set of outcomes that meant you did integrated planning. [SPEAKER_01]: And what we've really decided to do with the approach is it is an approach, it is not a script. [SPEAKER_01]: And so for that approach defined its inculturation on campuses where you can put in your own culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you want to be siloed and that works best for you, then go for it. [SPEAKER_01]: But in the old scripted, it would say, no, that is a failure to the discipline. [SPEAKER_01]: the approach works for what the culture of the campus requires and that is going to be peer-driven on their campuses so it should be peer-driven and the learning environment of the association that holds the approach.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think we flipped the script a little bit and just said let's be really agile with this and see where the community wants to take it. [SPEAKER_02]: I want to come back to that culture question here in a minute, but you mentioned earlier that part of this journey, part of the transformation, that there was a professional development component to it for the talent, for the staff, and I assume the volunteer is probably as well. [SPEAKER_02]: What did that look like?
[SPEAKER_02]: What sort of professional development had to happen to support this kind of change? [SPEAKER_01]: I think the first thing had to do with truth and facts and the fact is we stated truthfully that the professional development budget for staff is not going to be cut regardless of what the world throws at us. [SPEAKER_01]: that we are committed to a dollar per person per year for three years and it will not be touched.
[SPEAKER_01]: And after the first year when we had some financial directs in state firm on that commitment, I think it helped reinforce that cultural value now of due reflective differently in that and requires professional development. [SPEAKER_01]: So we are committed to that budget component.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what I would offer is that the only thing we did different than most associations maybe that I've worked with in the past is we made the upfront commitment that no matter what happens you have professional development dollars for this year. [SPEAKER_01]: Everything else we will figure out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we just kind of flipped that script where we were still service minds that obviously we weren't going to cut things at her the services of the membership, but we were really committed to that talent training. [SPEAKER_01]: So what it looked like was a non-negotiable commitment which it was.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when the board and the management team committed to that and the staff then saw what we were allowing, which was there going to tell us what they need training on, not us telling them that you know, Mike wants to run this sort of committee structure. [SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, go to learn this committee structure. [SPEAKER_01]: It was more like the organization and its peers require this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's figure out how we want to run that through experimentation, curiosity, let the curiosity drive your professional development, not some predetermined outcome, because we really don't know what the outcome is going [SPEAKER_01]: So we were managing a set of inputs for people's training, the outputs being that they have ideation and that ideation could drive the outcomes for the service requirements we have for members as opposed to having that predetermined destination.
[SPEAKER_01]: We wanted it to really truly in an agile, water flow away, just let it flow. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's where some things and we'll talk about it. [SPEAKER_01]: Some of the experiments have been amazing. [SPEAKER_01]: And some of them probably, let's let that one go and not talk about it again, but we did it. [SPEAKER_02]: what you were just talking about, you've described this kind of permission to play and scoop.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so encouraging the staff and volunteers to do those sorts of experiments. [SPEAKER_02]: So as you just kind of reference to mean, are there some examples of where that just did not work, where it failed and are there other places where you were surprised by how successful it was?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I mentioned we don't have a we didn't have credentials we still don't have credentials, but we have curriculum right so it's not like the approach is completely is loosely goosey as I may be implying we have a curriculum by which we've done some really great training for decades around the integrated planning approach.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what what's what's going on in higher ed the speed of decision making required to know the talent investment we all have to make so quickly we we've deconstructed that so we took the curriculum as many of the student we deconstructed it. [SPEAKER_01]: and we just decided to let kind of through member voice decide which components come up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in a four day course, maybe you only truly need an hour of it because you've been tasked with you know, Jeff, go write a contingency plan for this scenario. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's all the training you need. [SPEAKER_01]: You're not going to go pay for four day course. [SPEAKER_01]: But as we deconstructed it and then had the peers running the courses, [SPEAKER_01]: that they would share experiences on how they deconstructed their own immediate decision-making to that moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, let them go talk that out. [SPEAKER_01]: So we formed working groups. [SPEAKER_01]: And some of those working groups on paper, I'm like, oh my god, this is going to be, this is everything for Scup and no one signed up. [SPEAKER_01]: And then other ones that were like, man, that feels routine, that feels kind of like, I don't know, that feels kind of like we didn't try, signed up with a waiting list.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we really learned quickly that our assumptions based on past learning performance at the organization did not apply to current situations for our members needs. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think the what fail was that the investment cost was low. [SPEAKER_01]: It was, you know, it's not zero. [SPEAKER_01]: There's time that staff put into it, that volunteers put into it. [SPEAKER_01]: But it's a quick rise in a quick fall.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that one working group that we spun up and no one signed up for, we could spend it down quickly. [SPEAKER_01]: And it was a time lost on the calendar, but not months. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's a matter of maybe weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're trying to get into that cadence of rice quick, you know, fail quick, all those normal things that we do in project management, but doing it at scale and being driven by the members' voice, not our metrics of how we use to measure learning success. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, at least one person's already shook their head and go, but Mike, you have to make revenue. [SPEAKER_01]: And yes, we have to make revenue, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's also part of our operational equation that doesn't necessarily mean that's the driver for all things that we're testing. [SPEAKER_01]: Some things that we're testing really truly go to that whole mysterious box of the undefined member value that they know about that they haven't told you about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we are thinking that the successful ones, even if it's not a financial success, the learning that we get out of that has driven communities of practice that have been formed naturally by the members that we never would have imagined would have been on our radar. [SPEAKER_01]: The staff data and the staff experiences would not have said that was going to happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that less than I've learned the most, which is probably something I should have learned decades ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: get out of the way and I think a lot of our curriculum-based education in the past was well well done, very well done, but in the current higher education needs, we needed to get out of the learner's way and let them deconstruct it, reconstruct it so that they could solve the problems that were on their campus that we didn't have exposure to, but yet our discipline can help them with.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I want to make sure we come back in a minute to the question you raised around revenue and a pricing can be tied to that as well. [SPEAKER_02]: But before we get there, I mean, you obviously internally as an organization have to change a lot and rethink things and change the way that you were doing work. [SPEAKER_02]: What's your sense of [SPEAKER_02]: how your members then experienced that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, how did they, was it a change in culture for them? [SPEAKER_01]: Do they, do they perceive more value from the organization and, and, and, and how do you know frankly I think we're still learning that honestly the experimentations that we've done at conferences would be the most obvious because they have the largest single moment impact.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so reprogramming how we structure the flow of the conference, introducing active learning versus just the more traditional sessions, session, lunch, session, session, dinner formats and trying to experiment a little bit more with active learning that bring in in the social aspect. [SPEAKER_01]: Those things we've had immediate reaction to because it's a large event, at a point in time, easily measured.
[SPEAKER_01]: The harder things to measure have been these things where every other week there's a community of practice call, [SPEAKER_01]: There's an emergency meter program that has monthly calls, but those take a minute to really find their pulse each year each cohort. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's been harder for us to say that all of those have been great or none of them have been great, but all of them have been active.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what we're really tracking is that there's a more active voice among our members now that we can see in social media. [SPEAKER_01]: So, is that a metric success? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, but at least we're being talked about differently and talked about more collectively as a learning entity as opposed to a modality or a mode entity. [SPEAKER_01]: So, it's great that you mentioned our conference.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's better is that you mentioned all the amazing things that you met and had happened at that conference. [SPEAKER_01]: It happened to be a conference. [SPEAKER_01]: It could have been a virtual webinar. [SPEAKER_01]: It could have been a work in group. [SPEAKER_01]: It could have been a coffee shop meeting. [SPEAKER_01]: So we're having local meetings now. [SPEAKER_01]: We know for us that's new.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have chapters, but all of a sudden we got these local things spinning up by members serving members. [SPEAKER_01]: So those are the metrics we're watching. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's too soon to really answer that question definitively, but we can definitely see a new behavior and a set of our members that we were hoping for, but we aren't quite sure how to capture that for scale yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know if I'm listening to this is where your average listener here I'm probably probably thinking this sounds great this sounds very dynamic this sounds like what learning should be but it also sounds a little bit messy and when I'm thinking about you know neatly monetizing education it's nice to have courses and conferences and curriculum that you can just put a price tag on and say pay this and you get this it's a little messier to think about a community of practice how do you approach the monetization of this
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you think about factors like pricing in your world? [SPEAKER_01]: So that's the everything question. [SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome. [SPEAKER_01]: And we do have six conferences a year. [SPEAKER_01]: We believe we're already at a price threshold and had been for a while. [SPEAKER_01]: So it is the price is what it is. [SPEAKER_01]: And we all know that the operating costs for all these things are going up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we are also mindful of how we can schedule those to make sure that we can at least get close to maximum capacity for the net seat we require. [SPEAKER_01]: So we are anchored by that traditional practice of having these six conferences. [SPEAKER_01]: We also still have, as I mentioned, that curriculum with a set of courses.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are still running, but they're running at a lot less frequency because the demand has dropped for having people out of office for three and four days at a time. [SPEAKER_01]: The market has said, [SPEAKER_01]: for what they're dealing with on campuses right now. [SPEAKER_01]: That may not be the best opportunity for them to leave, and then come back. [SPEAKER_01]: So we're also then this deconstructing is allowing us to come to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think the monetization of coming to them largely is virtual. [SPEAKER_01]: And we obviously as we all learn in the pandemic, we can scale those prices accordingly, our operating cost or lower, but the frequency that we have to run those is higher. [SPEAKER_01]: So that experimentation that about do reflect who differently is not just about the curriculum, it's about the curriculum that user experience and also the revenue, what's the net.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what we've experimented with in the last six months is taking some of them and making them free to members and that's it, nobody else can participate. [SPEAKER_01]: All that normal AB testing that you do, other ones that are fee-based for everyone, some that are this, that and the other thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So having those AB testing across those, [SPEAKER_01]: has been able to help us find a price range that keeps things in a net, but we aren't quite at the frequency we want to be yet to hit the fiscal year goals. [SPEAKER_01]: So we're on a path. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to be a hockey stick moment. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think those happen very often. [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, any more in life, the huge spike in revenue, but we are consistently growing the revenue.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we're more importantly, we're consistently maintaining an audience. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's not just the same 10 people, there's a consistency of the level of service we're providing on campus, meaning, you know, that type of role on a campus is showing up more frequently.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now how we, now it's on us to figure out how we convert them from a learning moment to a participation moment, because to your point, the community of practice comes from it's not the same 10 people run in the courses all the time. [SPEAKER_01]: that's what courses are for.
[SPEAKER_01]: The community of practice that we're monetizing is that more and more peers are willing to participate, share experiences, and it scales from that growth, which is much more organic and in a much lower net than we're going to get off of a set of courses. [SPEAKER_01]: So the frequency question has to be answered still as we go into the next year.
[SPEAKER_02]: is the community of practice approach is that is that separate from membership or is any of this impacted your sort of membership structure and fees at all or is it separate from from that? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, never, never want to not be curious, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So I love my staff because they're just as curious as I am as we also are experimenting with a new membership model.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we are working on lowering the cost of entry so that we can improve the ability for access to the learning. [SPEAKER_01]: Because the whole point of the community of practice is not to have a membership community. [SPEAKER_01]: It's to have a learning community of practice. [SPEAKER_01]: And so last year we built community by putting programming in place at help people find their comparables and aspirants in the comfortable environment where they could share.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that this year is 25 into 26, we're building the learning around that group of peers. [SPEAKER_01]: Because that's the goal. [SPEAKER_01]: The goal is for peer-based learning.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what we're doing on the membership side is that in order to allow that to happen It can't you can't spend 50% of your PD budget just to get in You need to be able to have that money available for the experiences of the learning not just the access to learning So we're lowering the paywall [SPEAKER_01]: And it's an experiment. [SPEAKER_01]: So on our website, it's still very much the same model you've seen for decades it's got.
[SPEAKER_01]: But on phone call recruitment and pilot, we have others joining in this new model, which is a much lower cost with much higher access. [SPEAKER_01]: So we're running an AB test on the membership model. [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of our members prefer the traditional model and others are experimenting with this new approach where it's really a learning community of practice that they're investing in. [SPEAKER_01]: Not. [SPEAKER_01]: and membership in an association.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it may sound like some antics, but it's two completely different programs and we want to see over the next couple of years we're going to keep running this experiment and see which of those levers gets pulled the best by the industry and we're hoping it moves towards the community of practice more so than to just traditional enrollment model that we've had, you know, for 60 years it's got.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it occurs to me, I mean, thinking behind all of this, you must have a pretty forward-looking board that you're working with. [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of boards would resist this kind of thing happening in an organization. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, how has this been in conversations with your board? [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, we're not doing, I wouldn't be talking openly on a podcast if this wasn't supported, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, this was a part of the strategic journey that the board put together when they assembled the strategic plan that launched in 2024. [SPEAKER_01]: And it was mostly born from the experiences that we had as an organization during, you know, pandemic in the few years leading to pandemic. [SPEAKER_01]: We made a commitment in 2018 to become learning centric.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at that point because of how we learned about how our community responded to, you know, volatile times, we needed to just codify it so that it is in writing. [SPEAKER_01]: This is the direction we're going. [SPEAKER_01]: So the board has been super supportive through several election iterations, and that's the other piece that I'm [SPEAKER_01]: I'm never going to undersell how lucky and supported I am by an election process.
[SPEAKER_01]: It continues to bring in board members who support and modify. [SPEAKER_01]: We always are adjusting, but modifying a strategic direction and not taking away 80 on it because it's hard or because it's, you know, a bad numbers here. [SPEAKER_01]: The board has been very supportive of to support higher education. [SPEAKER_01]: We also have to be learning centric. [SPEAKER_01]: That is what we ask of them to serve our students.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that mindset that the board has, they've maintained that themselves, obviously they run the governance and they run the, uh, we're, we're a slate process. [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a governance selection committee that does the slate for election every year for board members, it's attribute driven. [SPEAKER_01]: Those attributes keep getting reinforced and adjusted as the strategic direction moves forward by the board.
[SPEAKER_01]: So to your point, the process by which the board was assembled and the process that they're maintaining to stay strategic and their goals to stay three years out on their work has reinforced the opportunity for us operationally to do this this experimentation.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the points you mentioned in our, in an earlier conversation, I had with you is moving scum towards what you characterizes a relational matrix and kind of how it operates, which I think some of that's embedded in what you've talked about already, but can you talk a little bit more about what you mean by that and how that plays out for first cup? [SPEAKER_01]: I think the more appropriate way to describe it probably than I did in the past is that we're a branded house, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're scum. [SPEAKER_01]: This is what we do. [SPEAKER_01]: He was here we serve. [SPEAKER_01]: And it doesn't mean that we're all under a brand like a holding company. [SPEAKER_01]: There's a million ways to do this. [SPEAKER_01]: There's a bunch of examples out there in the market. [SPEAKER_01]: This is not innovative. [SPEAKER_01]: It'll just be different for scots.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what we had imagined in this house of brands is that we all have our independent brand, we have our reasons for being, we have our missions, but we are absolutely interconnected on how we deliver to the campus for student success. [SPEAKER_01]: And in order to do that, it's obviously not just a random selection of X number of brands to do this, the relational matrix, it's driven by all of our missions that have that interconnectedness and serve each other's mission.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if for simplicity, say, if each association is a Lego, they all fit, they fit the right way at the right time to come to a campus because the other part of what we want to do in this house of brands is that it's not meant to compete with our consultant members. [SPEAKER_01]: We can't do our work without our consultant members. [SPEAKER_01]: This isn't an either or it's an end.
[SPEAKER_01]: And with the good work that they do, we can start coming to campuses in this house of brands to really go deep into the [SPEAKER_01]: for hopefully getting out of new president, new plan, out of personality-based driven outcomes, and really helping to what we all pledge to do, which is create sustainable systems for student success on campus.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think in order to do that, we're imagining a different time here soon where if you're not coming to the campus in this consortium mindset to solve the problems, they're not going to be able to come to seven different conferences to get that same information. [SPEAKER_01]: But what we hope for as a planning entity obviously is that we're horizontal to all these vertical disciplines that really are important.
[SPEAKER_01]: How can we help connect that into this relational matrix that comes to campuses and really helps in bed practices for student success?
[SPEAKER_02]: You've made the point before the dissociations need resilience right now there are a lot of stresses on the system and even things like mergers and closures should be on the table there's sectors where there are just too many associations serving that sector so for you what does association resilience look like and practice and what to boards and leaders need to be thinking about now and dealing with now about what you know maybe the 2030s are going to look like.
[SPEAKER_01]: we're constantly contingency in scenario planning. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think what we have to be honest about is as much as we feel like we're on solid footing now and as much as our reserves and all the key metrics that we have as associations would say we're going to be fine for a minute. [SPEAKER_01]: Is that don't count on that? [SPEAKER_01]: The external factors that are facing us now are materially different than they were five years ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: If not five months ago, all these things depend on what industry are in, there's a lot going on. [SPEAKER_01]: So we are constantly really looking at that, we're planning what happens if we're approached. [SPEAKER_01]: We shouldn't be surprised if we're approached. [SPEAKER_01]: We also shouldn't be surprising people if we approach disciplines that make the integrated planning approach stronger.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a, you know, a data's a huge part of what we do, but we rely on others for that now, maybe we should bring that inside. [SPEAKER_01]: So we're constantly having those planning exercises we're like, what would it look like for X, Y and Z to approach us? [SPEAKER_01]: What would it look, and what would be the causation for us to say, yeah, let's have that conversation. [SPEAKER_01]: So, being prepared for the conversations and planning, but not as a plan.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, right now, you know, transparently, Scott does not have a merger plan or an acquisition plan. [SPEAKER_01]: But we have scenarios by which we would entertain having those conversations. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's something that we keep in the forward part of our internal and board-level conversations is, you know, that proverbial, what if, what if we do need to consolidate?
[SPEAKER_01]: What if the three conferences that really feed us best go away because of external factors we can't control? [SPEAKER_01]: All right, so I don't know if that's a very good answer to your question because the answer was plenty plenty planned plan, but I do think there's an exercise in there for every association to be prepared.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know anybody who's in this Nick that what I'm about to say, I don't know anybody who is in such a place of comfort that they shouldn't be having some version of those conversations. [SPEAKER_01]: But I would hope that anybody at any level of the association. [SPEAKER_01]: So even on a team-based conversation, if I'm running a team, I used to be a product manager. [SPEAKER_01]: I would be having conversations with my team like, what if they decide not to run a product?
[SPEAKER_01]: What can we still offer the association? [SPEAKER_01]: What skill sets do we need to go get training on so that we still provide value to what's still here? [SPEAKER_01]: Like, really making it org down conversations, like, what if? [SPEAKER_02]: You're obviously very much walking the walk as a learning centric organization. [SPEAKER_02]: It's what you represent.
[SPEAKER_02]: My view is that associations can should play such a critical role in lifelong learning as the organizations attend to stay with people throughout their careers. [SPEAKER_02]: What's your perspective on the association role? [SPEAKER_02]: in life long learning, what role do associations need to be playing? [SPEAKER_02]: And what do they potentially risk if they're not playing that role going forward? [SPEAKER_01]: Everything you said, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I strongly support, as I think associations, we're not in our last 50 years of existence. [SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, we're probably just now figuring out what the next 50 years mean for us. [SPEAKER_01]: And I do think associations are absolutely at the center of what education and professional development and all the things that we've said for the last 100 years, it's more important now.
[SPEAKER_01]: What we didn't have when we were founded 60 years ago, for example, at Scott was this technology hockey stick. [SPEAKER_01]: And technology really is on that hockey stick evolution. [SPEAKER_01]: And what every three months, there's a year's worth of AI development or some crazy thing like that. [SPEAKER_01]: Moore's law feels slow now, right, all those things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think as we look at those moments, the association community is more powerful than ever to bring people together to have the shared experience of what it means to be a learner. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, obviously, I represent higher education. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm also fortunate enough to have a bachelor's degree. [SPEAKER_01]: Many of my colleagues have masters in beyond.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I also realized that there's a huge part of my personal life community that was best served by not going to college. [SPEAKER_01]: And I know a lot of them are getting their professional development for whatever they've chosen to do through associations. [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes they don't even know what was an association that they got it from.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there's an opportunity for us to not just be branded and remind people that, hey, that association got you that job, but that we're available at a community level, is what we can do better, I think, as associations and other constructs that exist, is we can be at the community level of service with formal education, with formal for-profit business. [SPEAKER_01]: We are that connective tissue that keeps a community viable.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that whether you call workforce development or professional development associations or in the mix of all that what we might need to do differently is maybe get a little more comfortable with being interconnected and not independent and I think that the crowded space is often are that there's 42 ways in that industry to do something so there's 42 verticals to support it. [SPEAKER_01]: in the association space is we may have to be goes back to your previous question.
[SPEAKER_01]: We may have to configure ourselves a little differently, to still support all 42 of those paths, and it may not be all 42 independent associations, but that association structure, the nonprofit service that we can bring in. [SPEAKER_01]: I think we need it more now than ever. [SPEAKER_01]: And because of the speed of change, people need a place with connected tissue and associations connect the speed of change with opportunity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's where we really can do some amazing work moving forward. [SPEAKER_02]: And what would you say to an association CEO, a peer leader who's still looking at learning as really just a product line of the association as a, [SPEAKER_02]: as one function kind of siloed there. [SPEAKER_02]: What's the danger of that at this point from their perspective? [SPEAKER_01]: As soon as the community shifts to a different loaning modality, they won't remember your name.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't mean to sound harsh on that. [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, I've experienced that in my career where another competitor came in with a better way to be up to speed and no one remembered these associations name. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's not so much that to do that is not wrong. [SPEAKER_01]: But to do that in the absence of exploring and being curious about what's next is your risk.
[SPEAKER_01]: running a credential that's run for 100 years the same way and it's still working. [SPEAKER_01]: Why would you stop? [SPEAKER_01]: But you definitely have thought about what if I had to stop? [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's the risk. [SPEAKER_01]: Is that you become too comfortable with basically taking last year's budget netting 10 percent? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think we should be doing that sort of thinking anymore. [SPEAKER_01]: It's what I would advocate.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you could give listeners just one practical step that they could make in their organization to make it more learning-centric tomorrow, next week, what would that be? [SPEAKER_02]: How do you get started with this? [SPEAKER_01]: It's permission to play, as you said earlier, Jeff. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think in that permission to play, don't count on trust. [SPEAKER_01]: Trust will be the outcome of what you've done. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not gonna be the input that makes it happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: What actually will make the permission to play happen is facts and the fact is when someone messes up. [SPEAKER_01]: What is going to be different about their quote unquote mess up than it was in the past? [SPEAKER_01]: How do you reinforce the learning moment in that versus the like corrective moment? [SPEAKER_01]: So hopefully as we do, you know, our little sprints that we do here are sometimes they lose money but they're not losing a million dollars.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's calculated risk in their scaled risk but you give the permission throughout the organization to take those scaled risk as a learning moment not as a immediate corrective action where you're going to get the money next. [SPEAKER_01]: Like so that the trust that builds up is born from those facts of, oh, I got to do this and I got to learn from it. [SPEAKER_01]: I got to do it differently.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's they have that experience with you in leadership of being allowed to be curious being then given permission to try something different and then giving the empowerment of learning from it. [SPEAKER_01]: It starts to take care of itself where then the risk is, oh my god, there's 17 experiments going on at once, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So the risk, the scaled risk of everybody being empowered is a risk that I think we should all embrace and see what the outcomes are.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't want to oversell it, scuffs on a journey to more two years into this, it's going well now. [SPEAKER_01]: but external factors can kick in tomorrow that we have to make adjustments on, but that's what we now have is the permission to make adjustments and not have to make corrections. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a huge difference that's come out of this learning centric approach. [SPEAKER_01]: Is it about making adjustments, not transformations?
[SPEAKER_02]: is we're kind of wrapping up here. [SPEAKER_02]: Switch gears a little bit, but I mean, it's still staying a learner and learning centric, but talking about you as a learner, because I like to take the chance when I can to ask guests about their own approaches to life-long learning. [SPEAKER_02]: So you know, your own habits and practices, maybe favorite resources that you rely on to make sure that you're learning and evolving and can continue to get what you want to out of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Probably not unironically, I listen to a ton of podcasts. [SPEAKER_01]: I do listen to a lot within our association discipline, but I also listen to a lot that have nothing to do with either my profession or those I serve. [SPEAKER_01]: So I want to learn from all the industries to find those nuggets where I can, like, I wonder if that would work with ours. [SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of podcasts, a voracious reader, all the things you would expect.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think what I've learned the most in my learning journey was I had to give myself permission. [SPEAKER_01]: to do things differently, because I didn't often come from my boss, and I do not advocate that anyone be disrespectful or any of that, right? [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not asking you to go rogue, but what I learned to do better in my career was go do all that learning, do all that stuff, and then bring in a proposal, don't bring in a question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, instead of saying, hey, boss, is it okay if I do lean? [SPEAKER_01]: Come in and go, I think we can do this. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, by the way, it's because you're going to pay for me to be lean certified. [SPEAKER_01]: And really getting it back into the application that our supervisors are always looking forward, which is how do we move our mission forward? [SPEAKER_01]: So that's been my approach now for a very long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so far, you know, it's not without mistakes, but I still think it's a thing I would advocate for my own child to do, which is learn everywhere, but then apply it for the permission to play. [SPEAKER_01]: don't just say, hey, I read all these books. [SPEAKER_01]: I deserve a raise. [SPEAKER_01]: Prove it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, and I think there's probably some tough moments for all this to learn when we do life long learning because the whole point is what I used to know no longer applies. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think accepting that has been something I've learned from colleagues like Lowlap Obama, friends like that in the business. [SPEAKER_01]: They've really helped me understand that, yeah, you used to be really good at that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the key word is used to what are you doing differently now because things have changed and having that that application of movement and learning I think is something that I've learned from my peers that's definitely helped me on my journey as well. [SPEAKER_00]: That wraps up our conversation with Mike Moss, president of the Society for College and University Planning. [SPEAKER_00]: But stay with us another minute to catch our recap.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you found this episode valuable, we'd be grateful if you'd share it. [SPEAKER_00]: That helps more people find the show and benefit from it, and it supports the work that we do. [SPEAKER_02]: In our conversation, Mike shared how Scup is working to be truly learning centric, changing its bylaws and governance, deconstructing curriculum, experimenting with membership, and supporting staff and volunteer development.
[SPEAKER_00]: He emphasized the importance of curiosity and experimentation, giving people permission to play, learn from mistakes, and adjusts. [SPEAKER_02]: He also mentioned that associations and other warning businesses have to balance revenue with risk taking and that learning should be more than a product line. [SPEAKER_02]: It needs to be part of the culture. [SPEAKER_00]: Pretty inspirational stuff if you ask me. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: See you next time on the leading