Lowell Aplebaum With Vista Cova

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Association Leadership Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:16] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Association Leadership Radio. And this is going to be a fun one. Today on the show, we have Lowell Aplebaum with Vista Cova. Welcome.

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:00:27] Thanks so much for having me, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:28] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Vista Cordova. How are you serving folks?

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:00:35] Sure. So we are a set of facilitators that have a depth and breadth of experience in the association space. So we help organizations with strategic planning and visioning and reimagining how their governance and leadership should be. We worked with about 86 associations last year, on track for over 100 this year, and really try to help any organization that is mission focused to imagine how they could accomplish that mission even more.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:00] So what’s your back story? How did you get involved in association work?

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:01:04] Probably like most people that you speak to, I’m not sure it was by initially by intention. We I have a master’s in education and actually in a doctoral program for the same and in not wanting to be in a classroom, but with a passion for learning, found my way to association where of course, so much of what we create are environments where we want members to learn about one another, for them to increase their own learning on their professional growth journey. And started inside. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers worked inside about five different organizations and finally just missed working with boards and strategy, leadership, and so became a certified professional facilitator, which is in part what I had been doing inside associations and five and a half years later, here we are.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:48] Now, why did you choose, though, the path of associations rather than since you’re serving businesses and industry? Why didn’t you just work for a, you know, a company within, you know, maybe was a member of the association rather than the association itself? Like, how did you see kind of that path or that the value there rather than, you know, being in the company that’s a member?

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:02:12] I think at the heart of the answer to that question is really a service mindset, although of course my company is a for profit company, it’s really dedicated towards mission based organizations. There’s a really heartfelt belief that the work that nonprofits and specifically associations do in trying to create these communities and places of connection to better represent a collective voice for industry, for professionals, can have impact on community society can make a better world. I have I have three little ones that I want to build a better world for. And I just have a strong belief that associations are a real key way to do that. And so if we can continue to build up their strength and continue to build up their profile, then I think that we’ll see a better world because of it.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:58] Now are you seeing associations kind of lean into that, trying to be the true north for their their members and their industries that they represent, that they are trying to role model these behaviors that folks say are important but maybe don’t execute at the level that people would like them to.

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:03:17] I think the past few years in particular, as we’ve experienced ever successive more rapid societal shifts that associations in general have been able have been forced to actually embrace that more. I mean, they’ve had to be representatives of industry when that industry has been disrupted. And so there’s been a great opportunity for those organizations that can recognize that their mission is not just to throw a great meeting, right? That their mission is not just to make a pretty journal, but their mission is to create the right value and resources to amplify and to embody the voice and potential of their membership or the industry they represent. Yeah, those, those organizations are taking mission to heart and are really it’s impressive how they are innovating to try to go beyond what have been traditional models to think about if we can do anything but not everything, what are the most important places we could invest to advance that mission? And so I do I do think that there’s been a double down. I do think there’s been a serious focus on that. I think many organizations are still learning how to do it.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:23] Now, you mentioned that the the chaos and the disruptions that have been happening lately have been maybe unprecedented in our time at least. But how have these associations done when it comes to pivoting and adjusting and, you know, kind of maybe getting outside of their comfort zone when it comes to the status quo, that they’ve had to make changes, they’ve had to, you know, no longer rely on things that historically maybe have served them, but they’ve had to make adjustments, just even like you said, like coming out of the. Pandemic going. Serving members always in-person or with live events in real life shifting to some more virtual or remote or, you know, not in-person events. You know, that was a big shift in providing value to members. How have you seen them, you know, handling that disruption?

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:05:21] You know, I think that you would hear from many CEOs that many of the changes that have come have been places that there was an initial intention for the idea of being able to serve a broader audience, to be more inclusive by geography, by having virtual programing isn’t novel. It’s just not anything that, for many organizations was a short term priority. It was more of a slow roll of how do we get there? Welcome, pandemic and forced innovation. All of a sudden you see how quickly can we adapt? And so I think organizations have taken the two ish years of pandemic as a time of forced innovation, and that’s opened up a lot of experimentation and innovation in ways that many organizations probably needed. I think the the real tipping point we’re at now is that as we go from pandemic to endemic, right. And there’s still, of course, societal shift and change that’s happening nearly every week. We do see that there are some organizations that take a traditional mindset of where can we somehow go back, even though they don’t have any sort of time travel machine? Rather than taking a mindset of What did we learn over the past two years? What are the new strengths we discovered we had? And rather than try to recreate the past, what is the future we want to design where we leverage those strengths so that we both acknowledge what we had beforehand, but then include what we’ve been able to learn and create.

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:06:54] And so perhaps it’s not a full shift back in person. Perhaps it’s not a full shift back to virtual. Is there a blend there? Right. Is there a balance there? And I think that that goes across the gamut. Another one of, of course, for national organizations, at least here in the United States, was the Black Lives Matter movement and the raise profile of the importance of DNA. And so I see many organizations we’re working with rethinking about their governance structures, right? How are we choosing a board of directors? Not by nepotism, but by strategic competencies and diverse representation? Now, I think that many leaders would tell you that their hope is that isn’t something that goes back. Right. But that that is something that continues to have a place of progress and innovation and growth. And so there’s there’s a lot of opportunity, especially at this moment, to learn the lessons from the past few years, to not lose those, but to take what’s been a place of forced innovation and to put in place practices of innovation that become part of the routine. So it doesn’t take a pandemic or some other societal crisis to shift into a mode where we have to think about something new.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:02] Now, can you share maybe some of the symptoms that an association is having where maybe they need to kind of inject some of the leadership that you were talking about? Like what are some signs that maybe things aren’t going as well as youth that they have been going?

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:08:18] So I think if we’re talking specifically around leadership here, for many organizations, one of the wake up calls is the generational shift. It’s always interesting when you’re talking to a board of directors or leaders of an organization. You talk about concerns about the next generation not becoming involved around the next generation’s voice, not being joining the organization. And yet the entire board of directors is the senior experience generation, right? Where is their efforts and inclusion if they want to see that just as one one example. So that’s that’s one place that often if they can actually articulate a need for a greater inclusive nature by a differentiated population that isn’t present, that doesn’t happen by accident. Being welcoming and creating a sense of belonging doesn’t happen by accident, but by intention. So that’s certainly what I would say is one indicator. A second indicator, I would say is if you look at the systems of leadership within an organization, what you want to try to measure to ask about is not how well they’re able to say yes to things, but how strong is their capacity to say no? Right. Is there an inherent system, a belief in the culture that if they say no, if they’re willing to cut back or to cease doing some programs because those programs are live the time, then that’s not a place of failure, but that’s a place of capacity building.

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:09:36] So they can be in the space of design and creation about what’s needed next. And so organizations that have a culture where saying no, right? We’re being able and willing to sunset, to pause things, to create capacity for new and innovation. Those are the ones that are going to thrive and that takes culture right. And so I think the third piece of that would just be that there is an intentional culture in the membership and in the leadership. Of not just what is the value they’re going to produce, but if who they are of what you’re going to experience about what we’ve agreed to and how we function in today’s day and age. You can buy great products anywhere, but if you’re going to actually try to belong somewhere, it’s going to be because your beliefs align with the beliefs of the organization or the community that you’re joining. And so in articulation and then a fulfillment of what you’re going to experience is essential if we actually want to see people not just buy products but want to belong.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:30] Now, are you seeing as we come out of the pandemic, a hunger for belonging to associations, getting re involved and re-energized by what’s happening in the associations like the. Our members are growing at this stage or are they kind of still hesitant to invest back into association where they might have dropped the membership during the pandemic because they weren’t doing some of the activities that they had used that association for?

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:10:59] Yeah, I think that there’s a real hunger for connection and belonging and community. I think there’s a real hunger for a recognition of rapidly changing disruptors. And then how do we adapt to those disruptors? And who has the right resources and insights that can help prepare us to help prepare our workforce, can help ensure we succeed? Right. There’s a real hunger for in this time of great resignation in ever shifting job places, titles and personnel. If how do we get some stability and workforce, whether that’s on the company end and being a great place to connect to potential future employees or on the individual end? If I want to take the next step, my my employer is not providing the kind of work environment that I think that I need. Where can I go to find the right opportunity? And I think in both of those cases, in all of those cases that absolutely are places that an association can thrive, and if they do right, if they do thrive there, then they see growing membership. But for organizations that don’t try to right set what they are offering, what they’re creating with those really immediate needs of the moment that are going to be here for a bit and we’ll continue to evolve, then, yeah, I think you’re going to see declining affiliation, declining membership and declining engagement. It’s not enough to have rigorous and good set value of products to buy by transactions, right? You have to be really fluent in the needs of your high priority audiences, be able to talk their language so you can cut through this ever loud world and then hopefully create an experience around using those those pieces of value, those experiences that’s going to make them both want to come back, but also share the experience they’ve had with others. And they do that. Then those organizations are the ones where we’ve actually seen membership growth at this time.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:52] Are you seeing young people embrace membership in these associations, especially in their industry, at the level that maybe, you know, their parents did?

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:13:05] I don’t think I’m seeing young people embrace it at the level their parents did in the same means by which their parents did. Meaning that there was some when you got to your job that you would stay at for decades, your supervisor said you have to join this organization. And by the way, we’ll often pay for you to join this organization and therefore you got your membership. I think that that that model exists in some places still, but not everywhere. And so where I see young people wanting and those coming in, wanting to affiliate is for those organizations that recognize that the path to involvement has changed, the path to seeing the value has change. And so how are they building functional places of leadership development, right, where those that are coming into an industry and have greater career success because of their affiliation. Right. Not that they come in and there’s some other newer you have to put in your time before you get any value, but rather that organizations are dedicated to being inclusive to all voices and to the needs of differentiated populations from the very first time you come.

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:14:09] And it doesn’t mean that everything has to be geared to next gen, but if nothing is geared to next gen, why are they going to affiliate and come and stay, especially when fewer and fewer companies are paying for memberships? If you’re going to expect them to pay to affiliate, then just like anything else they purchased in life, if they don’t see the value of it in a consistent way, then they’re not going to. And I think the the fault line there is that organizations are all too often still relying on loyalty that’s been built over years, decades with traditional members, that they can have subpar interface platforms in the digital space. They can have subpar experiences when taking advantage of the value because there’s been a good career partnership. But for those that are coming in, that are new, that have differentiated expectations, there isn’t that base of loyalty that’s been built over years. And so you see them either joining and then leaving or not even joining because they can’t perceive what the value is to belong until they’re inside and they’re four years that’s too long of an on ramp.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:13] Now, isn’t that kind of a warning sign if you aren’t attracting younger members that, you know, troubles brewing?

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:15:23] I think that it’s a warning sign is probably a good word, but I think it’s also an opportunity because you can if it’s the priority, you can shift your system. You know, for a few years I worked for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers early in my career. And what happened during my time there, frankly, was that there was this great, robust system of local students and local young professional groups, but there needed to be a stronger connection to the national group. And so what we created over years was a parallel system of leadership, where there were regional student vice presidents, there was a national student board, and those leaders then actually had mentor opportunities with the actual national leadership, with those that were the full time, the impressive, the ones who had written their textbooks, and by establishing a parallel system, those young professionals coming in could see leaders of their own generation already within the organization. And surprise, surprise, many of those young professionals in subsequent years actually came on to the board of the organization. And so it’s it’s a challenge, but I think it’s an opportunity that if you start to design, right, if you take a design mindset of we were designing our systems today, that we were inclusive of the multiple differentiated generations and populous by differentiated diversities that we want to see. What would we actually design? Would we design conferences that cost 5000? When we think about differentiated populations, they may have different economic standing, right? Would we design the majority of our value? And once a year of meetings when we have a global population that may participate if we are virtual. And so if we could take more of a step back and do a design mindset of what would we design, we could probably come closer to rightsizing what we have to what we need. Then if we just look at what we have and do a little tweak here or there.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:18] And it gets back to what you’re saying, being clear on what your mission in True North is, as well as pushing that kind of value to your members. I mean, if you can get those two things right, you can be more inclusive. You could serve more people in the way that they want to be served in today’s world.

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:17:36] Absolutely. And I think that what’s key to that is that that’s not static. Right. The organizations like OC, we know what they need and now we’re good for the next five. Ten years are in just as much of a pickle as the as the ones that said the same thing five years ago and haven’t changed. And so what we really need are systems designed within an organization for places of continual input. Hopefully what I at least talk about often is the curiosity imperative that an organization has inherently elevates the need to be curious. We’ll see leaders that ask more questions than hear their own voice. We’ll see staff that seek to listen to members more than just quickly answer a needs related question. And we’ll seek an overall community and wants to be a learning community that can evolve together. And if that can help guide an organization, then those places have differentiated. Value won’t become static, they’ll become ever evolving.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:31] Now can you share a story? Maybe you don’t name the name, but maybe explain what the challenge the association had when you came around to help them and then how you were able to help them get to a new level.

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:18:44] Sure. And so one organization we worked with when I came in had a council of representatives from geographic regions that I believe was around 80 to 90, as well as a board of directors that had partial authority to oversee the fiscal responsibilities. But part of it was in this representative council that met once a year and no one in leadership could draw a clear map of what the leadership should look like looked like currently. And so the work we did right was to after we had done strategic planning with this group, to re-imagine the vision, the priorities and what success looks like. One of the things that emerged was like, Well, if we’re going to be able to do this, we need a leadership system that actually is inclusive, is easy to understand, and is right size at the right levels so that we have decisions being made by the right levels of governance. And so the work we did was with a task force that they assembled was to look at what are the best practices in nonprofit association governance, leadership happening in the space today to have them then discuss, decide, debate, right? What are the things that we need that will fit within our system where we want to see inclusion of voice, but we also want to see meaningful volunteer input and contribution and really help them redesign where we got still a representative council and that representing the council was just about two dozen.

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:20:09] And instead of having roles of fiscal oversight, they had advisory roles and that the main place of fiscal and legal oversight became the board itself, who could then form the right committees. We’re under the advisement, right, with the consideration of this representative council. I mean, that’s that’s a big shift in what leadership of decades looks like. But it allowed them to actually be more inclusive by including more voices and advisory capacities, while also making everyone’s volunteer experience more meaningful because no one felt like they were coming to just rubberstamp something. When they were asked to do something, it was because it was going to be tied to mission. It was going to be tied to where the organization used to go.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:48] So over what period of time did it take to make that transition?

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:20:52] So that one took just about a year. We’ve done some governance transitions in quick ones, as short as six months, some as long as two years, depending the size, scope and what that looks like. And look and that’s different. You know, the strategic planning sessions we do, that process unto itself is also something that can take anywhere as short as three or four months that in some cases has taken a year and a half. And that depends on what the architecture of the strategy outcomes they want to see will really look like.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:26] Well, if somebody wants to have a more substantial conversation with you or somebody on the team or maybe learn more about your services, what is the website?

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:21:37] The website is Vista About.com, Vista SEO VA dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:43] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Lowell Aplebaum: [00:21:48] Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to share your story.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:51] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on the Association Leadership Radio.