Transformation in the Time of COVID

Lowell Aplebaum, FASAE, CAE, CPF & Cynthia Mills, FASAE, CAE, CMC

Over the past two months, we have wandered together through a trough that has left even the most accomplished and seasoned leaders stunned, worn out, and shaken. Yet through this unexpected breach of COVID 19 into this year’s aspirational strategies, we are witnessing the Power of Associations and watching new models and understandings being birthed moment by moment. This moment is shattering the most calcified of ‘we’ve always done it that way’ practices, finding leaders that are saying, “Yes” to operating in ways that only moments ago were anathema to tightly held beliefs about the speed with which new approaches can be implemented.  As relevance, need, community, connection, and value are being redefined, the capacity and tolerance for organizational experimentation has become the new pathway to meaning and impact.

The experience has had a rhythm to it. Weeks one and two were shock, adrenalin, reactive and chilling. Weeks three and four were bold, hard, gut-wrenching choices about major events, informational floods, and long, long hours. With weeks five and six came the realization that this isn’t just going away, and with it, exhaustion, hitting the wall, and Zoom fatigue. In weeks seven and eight organizations stare into the realities of reduced budgets, staff, and salaries and cash flow projection concerns. Before us is a mix of starting to get a sense of new stability, while pressing forward with figuring out what to expect, believe, and how to build the muscle around integrated short and long-term scenario planning.

Through voluminous numbers of conversations, we are seeing patterns. Denial, skepticism, and disbelief have yielded to initial understandings about a new reality that is a marathon not a sprint. These circumstances are unveiling compelling opportunities. Former methodologies, ones employed for years if not decades, are rapidly being discarded in favor of the deployment of choices that were not on the radar eight weeks ago. Tone deaf is today’s version of what Mom taught us about having 10 seconds to make a first impression – it’s hard to recover from now if it’s not authentic and caring at its core. There is a vast difference between the leader speaking from their voice, perspective, and heart with relevant information and reading a pre-vetted and canned speech to the membership. 

Opportunistic is a gross attitude to be avoided, while identifying the gaps and pivoting quickly to fill them is the new expectation; which redefines value propositions in a moment and wipes out lengthy researching, posturing, pontificating, or politicking in favor of action. Crisis response has not only become the mother of invention – it has forced the hand of leadership to shift from endless deliberation to rapid decision making, assessment of choice, and moderation of direction and next steps.  Boards and staffs that were high performing prior to the introduction of COVID 19 are still high performing and are reforming for the times at a break-neck pace; unlocking potential and mastering new ways of operating like a symphony’s ending crescendo. Where dysfunction was present before this discombobulating factor appeared, it still reigns. Wasted energy in struggles unrelated to fulfilling mission is adding an unnecessary risk management layer to the puzzle of what organizational survival will look like for those associations mired in these old stories.

Going into the third month of this experience, some organizations are thriving, because their members are thriving, and they are well-capitalized. Other associations have only a few months of cash flow remaining, do not see other revenue opportunities on the horizon nor do they have the resources to develop them and are aware of when they may cease to function. Some are already looking at whether merging within their sector will be a necessity, and others are looking at moving to AMC models as staff reductions hit and core functions could be preserved if managed differently. Others have made the bold decision not only to tap reserves for the necessary pivots but also to maintain a level of staffing for at least a period of time. 

And through it all, we are also people. There is the exhaustion of trying to figure out how to be safe personally, keep our families safe, juggle work environments that were never intended to house everyone, all day, with varied needs, every day. And we care – we see professionals and executives who daily turn their concern to keeping their teams safe, deciding which are the essential services, streamlining, responding, pivoting to all virtual, and doing this through what appears like a struggle to survive.

Inside of all of these patterns, there is the grief we are experiencing of our personal lives changing, our professional lives being altered, the unknown of whether this is for a while or permanent, the question of whether we go back to offices, and if so when, and the weight of whether that puts our teams at risk. There is the burden of future meetings – knowing when it’s right to encourage members to return to gatherings, when it will be allowed, how to handle existing contracts fairly between all parties, whether to initiate a future larger meeting contract, and what to do if the organization moves forward but team members choose not to or are afraid to attend.  Will we “force them?” Will we tell them they have to, and it’s a requirement to keep their job? What are the legal ramifications and what does our heart tell us about how to lead through all of this?

The heart of our organizations, of our associations, is the community we each create. Can our community be no less vibrant – can it be stronger and more resilient – when we must connect from a distance?

As we are living these moments, we are authoring new stories – stories of the traumas we are living through personally and professionally, stories of the traumas our members are living through, stories of lessons learned on where we held ourselves back in our aspirations or our operations because of fear, limiting beliefs, or old ways of thinking that we have been forced to let go of, stories of our new desires and opportunities we had no idea we would jump to so quickly, and stories of those who have surprised us by stepping up whom we never would have called upon to do so and others who are paralyzed by fear and overwhelm.  Through this we grieve, we move to acceptance, we let go of what was comfortable, we find what is new and compelling, and we move forward….because we have chosen to lead, and we must.

The experience we have all been in is a journey from a place of comfort through denial to new reality, grief for what is lost and may never be regained, recognition of the COVID 19 reality, followed by a determination to foster hope, design anew, deploy resilience and stand together to demonstrate the viability and vibrancy possible in a new experience.

Though we should not ignore the struggle we face today, and the symptoms of grief that our decisions and circumstances trigger – our balance must be a focus on hope and resilience. We must pursue those paths that can lead to strength – of our organization, of our memberships, of our staff, and of ourselves.

The decisions leaders are making today are not getting easier. How to balance staffing with a shifted financial landscape? When and how (or if) to reopen an office, and what is the greater success achieved by doing so? How to design new approaches and messaging around organizational value in a different landscape? Yet, with a focus on what is possible and on a hopeful tomorrow, rather than what we have left behind, there are paths ahead of mission impact, member success, and organizational rise.