Available May 14, 2026

Episode 023: The Pattern Spotter: What You See When You Are Inside Thirty Organizations at Once

DURATION: 59 minutes
HOST: Kevin Novak | GUEST: Erin Fuller

SHOW: The Human Factor Podcast

COLD OPEN

Kevin Novak (00:05)

Here’s a question I would want you to sit with for a moment. What would you see if you could be inside 30 organizations at the same time? Not reading about them in a case study. Not consulting from the outside looking in, but actually embedded in the daily operations, the governance conversations, the strategic planning sessions, the staff meetings, the board dynamics, the membership crises of 30 different organizations simultaneously. Because that’s the vantage point that would show you something that no single organization leader can see from where they sit. It would show you the patterns.

The recurring human dynamics that repeat across organizations of different sizes, different industries, and different missions. It would show you the same resistance behaviors, the same governance traps, the same identity crises, the same structural silences, and it would force you to confront a deeply uncomfortable possibility that the transformation challenges you believe are unique to your organization aren’t unique at all. They are systemic, they’re predictable, and they’re being misdiagnosed in the same ways by well-intentioned leaders in organization after organization after organization.

I’m Kevin Novak, CEO of 2040 Digital, professor at the University of Maryland, and author of the book, The Truth About Transformation Leading in the Age of AI, Uncertainty, and Human Complexity, along with the Ideas and Innovations weekly newsletter.

Welcome to the human factor podcast the show that explores the intersection of humanity technology and transformation along with the psychology behind transformation success This is season 2 episode 10. And today’s guest occupies a position that almost no one in organizational leadership occupies. Most leaders experience transformation from inside a single organization. They draw conclusions from that experience. And those conclusions feel authoritative because they were earned through years of effort. But those conclusions are also drawn from a sample size of one.

Erin Fuller is the global head of Association Solutions and Chief Strategy Officer at MCI, where she and her team work across more than 30 associations simultaneously, different industries, different sizes, different missions, and different stages of transformation.

She has spent more than 20 years inside the association and nonprofit world. She holds both the FASAE and CAE credential, which represents the highest levels of professional recognition in association management. What makes Erin’s perspective uniquely valuable for this conversation is not just the breadth of her experience. It is the pattern recognition that that breadth enables.

When you are inside one organization going through transformation, you see the specifics. When you are inside 30, you start to see the structures. You start to notice that the same governance dynamics that block change in a medical society also block change in a technology trade association. You start to see that the same psychological contract between an organization and its members creates the same resistance patterns, whether the organization has 5,000 members or 500,000 members. You start to see what the research predicts, but what most leaders never get the vantage point to confirm. The transformation failure is not an organizational problem. It’s a human system problem that happens to play out in an organizational setting. Erin welcome to the show.

 

Erin Fuller (04:18)

Thanks so much, Kevin. I’m so happy to be here.

 

Kevin Novak (04:22)

I want to start with what you see that most people do not get to see.

 

Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell published a landmark paper in 1983 called The Iron Cage Revisited. It was where they introduced the concept of institutional isomorphism. The research demonstrated that organizations within the same field tend to develop strikingly similar structures, behaviors, and blind spots over time through three different mechanisms. Coercive pressures from regulation and compliance, mimetic pressures, where organizations imitate what appears to work elsewhere and normative pressures from professionalization and shared training. The research predicted that organizations in the same field would converge on similar practices even when those practices weren’t optimal, simply because the institutional pressures pushed towards conformity rather than effectiveness.

You are in a position to test that prediction empirically every day. You’re inside more than 30 associations across different industries with different missions. When you look across all of them, what patterns do you see in how these organizations respond to the need for transformation? Are there recurring human behaviors, resistance patterns, or cultural dynamics that repeat regardless of the specific organization?

Erin Fuller (05:48)

Got it. All right, Kevin, that was a, that’s quite a setup. feel, I feel I’m like getting flashbacks to defending my capstone project in grad school or something like that. And it’s been a minute, but I think, you know, I’m lucky enough within MCI, we actually work with more than 100 associations in the U S and then globally a lot more than that. So I’m able to kind of really be at that really delicious kind of 35,000 foot view of a lot of what they do. And I think to me, the simplest headline from working across all of those organizations is that transformation fails or succeeds not based on the plan, because every business and every organization has a business plan, a strategic plan, a growth plan, et cetera. It doesn’t fail because of the plan. It fails or succeeds based on identity and decision making. So the thing that always jumps out to me is it’s not a strategy pattern as much as an identity pattern.

And so most organizations say they want transformation, but what they’re actually protecting is a story about who they are and what they stand for and who gets to define that story. And I think once you see that, a lot of the resistance that you were just talking about too, either the push towards conformity or the resistance to change, all of that stops feeling irrational because it’s not people being difficult, it’s people trying to protect meaning.

And then the other pattern I see is that I think that governance often behaves like an immune system. And whether it’s in nonprofit organizations in terms of boards of directors or it’s companies with advisory boards, investor boards, et cetera, but the moment that any change feels like a threat to precedent or status or decision rights, all of the antibodies show up, right? So like, need more data, we need a committee, we’ve done it this way, or we tried that, didn’t work, you all of that stuff. And I think that honestly, these moves make sense inside the system because they’re all protective. And a lot of times my job is to come in and name that overall dynamic without shaming it, and then help the leaders redesign the conditions so that the organization can better tolerate change.

So one of the most freeing reframes is realizing that most human resistance is rational once you look at the incentives they all have, which I think also plays into what you were saying. So volunteers protect legacy programs because they built them, or they were honored by them, or they got status as a result of leading them. Staff protects bandwidth because they’re already at capacity. Like show me an organization where the staff’s like,

Kevin Novak (08:16)

Yes.

Erin Fuller (08:34)

I’d love somewhere to do, right? That piece is there. And then I think members or customers protect price or value assumption because it feels personal, especially working with associations, membership organizations, which is my area of focus. It’s not just, they’re not buying a service or a product, they’re buying a part of their identity. And so we’re able to succeed with transformation when we make it executable. We’ve got to sequence the work, we’ve got to make sure people know who owns things and can make decisions and then run it at a good cadence, a disciplined cadence. And so, you know, those are kind of some of the things that I see. I’ll stop there. I’ve got like lots more to say about that. But I loved I did love what you said about kind of these the push towards conformity and then just also our own inherent biases of once we see something, whether we attribute that consciously to another organization or product, right? We still project that onto whatever we’re creating.

Kevin Novak (09:34)

Well, yeah, and interestingly, just did last week’s episode, which went out today, is looking at the different symptoms within an organization. And several episodes ago, I did an episode called the algorithmic mirror. where there’s, of course, everything these days is AI, right? Every conversation. But the challenge for organizations, particularly on the governance side,

Erin Fuller (09:52)

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Kevin Novak (10:04)

To your point when they’re asking for that data, that data, is coming easier because of AI, but that data also itself has the bias, it has the history. And so it’s not necessarily indicative of future. It really is, if there are errors in it, if there are biases in it, it’s reflecting back the organization and itself acting as a hindrance to identify the symptomology of what in transformation can work to help the organization move itself forward.

Erin Fuller (10:41)

Well, the great sage Oprah Winfrey, I’m sure she’s one of the scholars you often quote on this program. But one of my favorite Oprah is in three is we teach people how to treat us and what you just, you know, right. So if if you’ve always had someone who, registered, you know, who buys things and returns half of them, right, or get something at the last minute, but is willing to pay a premium for rush shipping or, whatever it is, right.

We then all of that data, rather than correcting that problem, how do we get information in front of someone so they can make a non-rushed informed decision? We just end up honoring kind of like the last minute nature of that person, because that’s how the data would train us. I think within organizations that I work with, there’s certainly an expectation shift that mirrors what you were just talking about, because everyone gets really smart very quickly. And so they now expect choice in how they participate. People want kind of this omni-channel experience that makes them feel connected and a pretty high level of customization. And when organizations don’t design for that, they end up overestimating how clear the value is because the value…

The value proposition is implicit. Like you should just know, right? Or there’s a lot of organizations that are like, we are the best kept secret and the people who need us find us, right? Which is awful, right? Like D minus in terms of marketing. So the organizations that are really thriving, they make the value tangible in the experience so that the promise and the reality match. And that’s, I think that’s really hard for organizations to do and even harder given that now we’re doing such a good job marketing to people. So I could send you like this amazing email, Kevin, right? Like I could design an organization now that would cater, it would be like, it would cater to your very Kevin-ness. And you’d be like, yeah, sign me up. Like money’s no object. This is exactly what I want. But then you’re in it and it’s kind of vanilla. And you’re wondering like, did all this magic go? I think that that’s the biggest danger we have with AI for a lot of organizations that provide services.

Kevin Novak (12:37)

Yeah. Yep.

Erin Fuller (12:49)

How do you actually deliver upon the promise that you’ve given based on all this really amazing customized marketing and communication you can do.

Kevin Novak (12:58)

Yeah, for over the years, all the organizations, all the association clients I have worked with, that has been my own frustration at times is whether it’s helping them in marketing communications, transforming that, relating that within the membership value proposition and the emulation of that.

Erin Fuller (13:04)

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Novak (13:21)

I think it’s the, to your point on the plain vanilla, there’s challenges there, right? You can, I can write the best stuff. My team can write the best stuff and really energize people. But the delivery is the critical element of that. And that has to be continuous and consistent for those people to stay engaged. So follow up to some of the patterns that you see.

Erin Fuller (13:25)

Mm-hmm.

Right, absolutely.

Kevin Novak (13:48)

When you see those patterns repeating, do the leaders, those within the governance inside the organizations recognize that their experience isn’t unique? Or is there a tendency to believe that their specific transformation challenge is somehow different from what every other similar organization is going through?

Erin Fuller (14:09)

Yeah, I definitely think that governance is where transformation goes to live or die because it determines who decides how fast that decision is and who has the accountability. Everybody wants to decide and nobody wants the accountability for the decision. So in some ways we talk about governance like it’s almost this kind of academic, you know, entity, right? But it’s actually one of the most human dynamics in any association because it’s really about power.

Which is a word nobody likes to say in an organization. Nobody wants to say that they’re in it for power or they have power. But who gets to decide the cadence, how quick things are decided and they actually happen, and then what you protect. And so when governance is well-designed, it should ideally create clarity, direction from the board, the execution responsibilities of the staff, and a shared understanding of what success looks like.

But when it’s poorly designed, it creates real drag on the association because the decision rights get fuzzy. Everything then becomes a debate. If you don’t know who owns or who gets to decide something. Then everything becomes a discussion, not just about the choice, but who gets to make the choice. And we’ve all been on boards like that. And it is so exhausting. And so then transformation turns into the never-ending listening tour. And we’ve all seen that with organizations. It’s the first thing, new board chair, new CEO comes in, I’m going on a listening tour, which is great. We want to be responsive. But a lot of times when you see that happen and there’s no action, I always wonder, what’s happening behind the scenes?

The people doing this are probably action oriented leaders, right? So what’s kind of blocking that? So I had said earlier that I think that governance is kind of the immune system. And I think it really functions like that when it’s overbuilt. So when there’s too many committees, too many representative structures, a culture where consensus kind of quietly becomes unanimity. So that’s when you have a system that protects itself instead of serving the mission.

I wish I had super sexy fixes to that. I don’t have a lot of glamorous ideas, but they work. You’ve got to simplify the structures. You have to clarify what is an advisory role versus decision-making. We think about the committee structure, et cetera, within a lot of organizations. Tighten the cadence. It takes too damn long for these groups to make a decision about something. We’ve seen this. AI is such a great example just because it’s happening now and we all are familiar with the speed at which AI has evolved and learned and become better. But you still have organizations that two years ago, like we should really have an AI policy in place, then they still don’t have one, right? And, you know, or I work with groups that will, have an agreement, you can’t use any AI. I’m like, so like Google’s powered by AI, like, know, like, does anybody, know, right?

So there’s, that piece. And so really taking a board and driving them towards outcomes while the staff executes. We say that all the time with governance, but we keep on revisiting it. And we just did a webinar because I oversee our global work in the association space. We did this panel on how you design governance for global organizations, which is really interesting. It’s interesting for Americans not to project our pseudo-democratic like systems and processes, right? Like the House of Delegates that a lot of medical societies have, right? Which is like a little mini Congress. You know, all of those things that we’ve tried to do, you know, size doesn’t fit all. But the through line was decision rights, making sure that you have regional voices that are meaningful and not symbolic, and really being explicit about what a group can decide versus what it can only advise.

If there’s one thing to get clarity on with the governance piece for groups, it’s Advice, decide. Like those are two different things and they’re valuable, right? Like they’re totally valuable. I often, you know, I’m a consultant all the time and I go in and obviously I can’t make them do a single thing, right? So you want to have compelling data. You want to have, you know, kind of a thoughtful approach to that. And then you assume that the people who really can make those decisions will incorporate that into their process.

But I do think that, I mean, gosh, it’s just conversations you have over and over again. And after 30 plus years in this space, certainly those governance conversations, we just can’t quite solve it because we solve it for a group. But then the beauty of governance is that it all turns over every one, two, three, five years, and you have new folks in and with different experiences and different points of reference.

Kevin Novak (18:59)

And Erin Here is a funny example to that. So there’s one client that we did three different transformation plans for over a six-year period.

Erin Fuller (19:09)

Sure. Yep. And did any of them, how much of what you recommended?

Kevin Novak (19:14)

The last one stuck. But the interesting thing with that is the governance changed. And some things got forgotten from the initial efforts and the middle effort. And so there was the, like you, going into an organization and saying, you got to do this. There’s not a lot of time.

Erin Fuller (19:26)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Novak (19:40)

Right?

The dynamics out there are changing very quickly. The professions are changing very quickly. The industry itself is changing very quickly. And then you introduce AI into this and that is only progressing that even faster. And so there was finally the recognition to say, okay, we’ve made a lot of small iterative kind of things, but we do need to address this now finally more holistically.

Erin Fuller (19:54)

Mm-hmm.

And I think the other piece of that that we see is like there’s the, I would say, cyclical battle over a small, tight, quick advisory board, executive committee, whatever you want to call it within a company or an association, and then the larger group. And so you have really tight, great decision-making, but then people perceive there’s a lack of transparency or they have FOMO or whatever’s happening.

Kevin Novak (20:32)

Yeah.

Erin Fuller (20:34)

So then you go back to the full board. So then someone comes in, it’s like, oh, this has been operated in too closed a nature. We’re going to open it up, right? I work with some groups where they open up every board meeting and hundreds of members attend the board meetings, which I salute all of those members for doing it. But what ends up happening is that what I saw with this group is that you have the public meeting highly scripted, very much reporting out.

Kevin Novak (21:03)

Yeah.

Erin Fuller (21:03)

And then you’d have like the real board meeting, right, which would end up being executive session. And so I don’t know that we can get away from that, but that dynamic also, like what you’re describing of having three or one stack, some of it can be that piece too, right? Who hired you, who listened to it, who felt included in the plan, right? All of those things are important.

Kevin Novak (21:23)

The other two months ago, I wrote this piece on the after the meeting. And that was all about that kind of situations where all the decisions actually don’t happen in the meeting. happen.

Erin Fuller (21:28)

Mm-hmm. I read that. It’s good. It’s good.

Right.

Or they happened before. They happened before, right? And then you walk in and like nobody’s, there’s no dissent. And you’re thinking, especially as somebody who’s an outsider in the room, is, like is no, like this seems pretty complicated. Like, what do you mean? There’s, you know, so, and sometimes that can be really positive. You present a very complex budget, but you have a series of budget presentation calls where people can ask questions and really get into the weeds so that you don’t clutter up your board meeting with that.

Kevin Novak (21:37)

Right. Right.

Erin Fuller (22:01)

Kind of nonsense, right? That piece I think is great. But sometimes I’m always kind of, wow, that seems like a pretty complex policy that might merit discussion. So I think that’s the other piece. I like things to move quickly. And I serve on four boards, all very different organizations, for-profit, nonprofit, et cetera. And sometimes I have to check myself to make sure that my need for speed isn’t kind of overriding the importance of debate and having people ask their questions and be able to kind of extrovert their way through that.

Kevin Novak (22:32)

That connects to something Carl Wieck identified in his research on organizational sense making. Wieck demonstrated that leaders do not perceive reality and then respond to it. They construct a version of reality through retrospective interpretation and then respond to the version that they constructed. Which means a leader inside a single organization is making sense of their transformation challenge using only the data that organizations provide.

And well, they have no way to know what they’re not seeing. You have the corrective lens because you see the same dynamics playing out across multiple organizations. simultaneously. When you bring that pattern recognition to a leadership team, how do they typically respond?

Is it a relief to hear that their challenge is structural rather than unique? Or does it threaten their sense that they understand their own organization?

Erin Fuller (23:28)

So I think that one of the biggest risks in associations or organizations, companies would have you, leaders can be operating with a polite version of reality without realizing it. And that in part is like the self-talk that you just described in that research study. So one of the most consistent things I see is structural silence, not because people are dishonest, but because they’re managing risk. So staff learn super quickly what is safe to say upward especially in cultures where disagreement is labeled as negativity or being difficult. So internal leaders often get a filtered reality and the organization loses its ability to self-correct because that cycle that you just described becomes even more so. If we pull in external benchmarks, it’s going to showcase where we’re falling short. We know that leadership doesn’t want to hear that, so we’re only going to show our own increases. We’ve increased sales of a product 10%, like hooray for us, the industry benchmark may be 35, right? But we don’t, right? So I think as an outside advisor, I think I’ve become a pressure valve and maybe you’ve seen this as well, right? So people will tell me operational truths. I was raised Catholic, right? So it’s like a little bit like, We’re in the booth together. So they’ll tell me these truths that they might not say to a CEO or a board chair.

Not because they’re particularly dramatic. It’s not like the confessional booth in reality TV, I wish, but more because they want the organization to succeed and they don’t know how to say it safely. And so I think part of my role is to translate that without betraying anybody. don’t want to carry gossip. I carry the patterns that you mentioned. So I bring the themes back as system issues, not individual complaints. And you really have to create conversations that focus on decisions, which I’m competing.

Kevin Novak (25:19)

Yeah.

Erin Fuller (25:21)

What we can change or what we will change rather than kind of blame. And a lot of times when people bring in someone external to an organization, sometimes it is like finding a scapegoat, right? Or finding something sacrificial, right? To kind of offer up, it’s like, look, we brought somebody in and we did this and that’s our change, right? And so that hopefully people aren’t going to see things like, you invested in a Cadillac technology system, all of the people who made that decision don’t work there anymore. Everybody else has come in, doesn’t fully understand how to use it. So instead of figuring that out, we’re going to layer in a million different marketing sidecar options, right, into the tech stack. And then all of our data, there’s not one single source of truth for our data, right? It’s all living in MailChimp over here and Cvent here.

Right. so, and so that’s a great example on the technology side that I see all the time of, no wonder you guys can’t get good data or good reporting because you, you, you have, invest seasonally in what data is updated where, right. During big marketing pushes, the MailChimp, I’m just picking on MailChimp, you know, MailChimp, right. But, you know, I think that that, that piece is just like a very, a very good example to not get into the political side of things. Right.

Kevin Novak (26:34)

Yeah

Erin Fuller (26:45)

But this is where organizations, so instead of fixing the inherent problem, it’s like, what else can we kind of add into the mix here to help us like, and be another bandaid on these systems? I think we do that all the time with governance, with committees, with leadership opportunities, et cetera.

Kevin Novak (27:03)

We, and I just, and you hit on something that, so I did this whole episode about the symptomology and I equated, what I hope was a good example where you go to a doctor and you have a symptom or you have four symptoms and he’s going to treat each symptom opposed to identifying what the disease actually is. Exactly. Right. So there’s always, and we,

Erin Fuller (27:11)

Mm-hmm.

Right, holistic medicine, right, yeah.

Kevin Novak (27:33)

We tend as humans to be very short-term in our thinking. And we like to put the nail on the head and think that we have identified the problem. So to your example, another MailChimp, another HubSpot, whatever the system may be, that helps us then collect all of our data or a new association management system, a new CRM is just going to solve all the world’s problems. And that’s a tool. but that doesn’t address the human element of that, organizational element of that, and actually looking at the symptomology to understand how that actually feeds into a system.

Erin Fuller (28:14)

Yeah. I think organizations, associations, organizations, they’re all corporations, right? And all they’re really professional services firms. Right. And so I think in general, if you ask me kind of what the impact that AI will have on professional services, there’s going to be a shift in expected deliverables. Right. So perhaps as a consultant, your key deliverable, like the capstone thing you delivered was like the 60 page term paper at the end.

Kevin Novak (28:42)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Erin Fuller (28:43)

right, that you were sure no one was going to look at. So then you had to make like kind of a summary slide deck with lots of pictures, right. Like kind of get that through. But that was kind of what you’re driving towards. But now I can write all of that in like five minutes. Right. So the value of that has gone down. a lot of professional services firms and you’re seeing this at McKinsey and others, you know, as well as far smaller firms like mine. But you’re starting to really build in these really human elements, right. Facilitation, coaching, training.

Kevin Novak (28:48)

Yes, yes, always.

Erin Fuller (29:12)

Creating cadres of people that are at similar industry, career stage, what have you that can learn from. I’m the member of a business organization called YPO. the reason, it’s a significant investment of time and treasure to be in that organization. There’s really high expectations for participation and engagement. It’s a very serious commitment. But what keeps me there is they’re just genius at this.

Forum model where you spend a half day every month talking to other leaders and keeping each other accountable. And there’s no tech solution for that. And that is their killer app. I don’t know that every association has that kind of approach. And that’s why I’m interested in some of the technology that’s emerging too, that’s going to try to do a better job of doing this kind of cohort-based learning pieces.

There’s Rallyboard and a few others that I’ve seen out there, but I think it’s really, really interesting of how are we going to leverage AI to increase the humanity, the opportunities for humanity versus strip it all out, right? Which is what everybody thinks of AI, right? Like it’s a very different, like there’s two different kinds of ways to look

Kevin Novak (30:20)

Well, yeah. And you know, the interesting thing to that, and you hit on this earlier. So in people want to be heard. And, you know, that’s the beauty of the consultant sometimes is being able to create that safe space. And one of the minor to me mechanisms that we use is ensuring that we first say everything you share is confidential. We will anonymize it.

Erin Fuller (30:29)

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Novak (30:48)

And if something can be attributed to you directly because it’s a small organization, we’ll come back and seek your permission. You don’t give us your permission. We don’t share that.

And we will, to your earlier point, try to couch that in some systematic or process way to make sure those people are heard because they’re grasping with frustration. They’re trying to re-identify themselves in whatever this is going to be. So whether it’s a new system or it’s a whole completely new operational process or a strategic initiative for that matter.

And AI is not going to be able to do that as well. Or who knows, my guest last week on the Generation episode said that 75 % of Gen Z is using AI as a counselor and as a friend. So maybe it will get that good to be us going into an organization, but I don’t think so. Humans better understand humans. And I think that to your point continue to be a strong value brought to the table.

Erin Fuller (31:57)

Yeah, think a lot of organizations can’t articulate a compelling value proposition. And it’s not a messaging gap, it’s an experience gap. So to say, to kind of get that lineage to what you’re saying about the humanity piece, we do this Association Engagement Index, which is this big global research project that MCI has done for a number of years. when we say personalization, we don’t mean that the email says, dear Erin.

Kevin Novak (32:04)

Yeah, that’s true, yes.

Yes.

Erin Fuller (32:26)

Like that’s just baseline. And in fact, when we get emails, which we do all the time, like, hey, friend, right? It’s kind of like when you jump into some cocktail party, you’re like, you don’t know my name, right? That’s what we’re, like, we want deeper personalization, right? So most people would say they want something that feels like it’s created for them, but very small share of associations describe their value proposition is very compelling. So then everyone’s like, it’s a marketing problem, right?

Kevin Novak (32:32)

Right. Colleague.

Erin Fuller (32:54)

In my experience, it’s usually an operating model problem. So most organizations, to your point, they have the data, they have the information to make better choices. They don’t have the right workflows or ownership or discipline to redesign somebody’s experience. And I think the other piece of that is a lot of times value propositions are written for the board, but not for the member. So they describe what the association does or what the vision is, but not what the member gets right then. And so if I’m like, and associations sometimes forget,

Some people are joining for the mission, right? A very compelling mission or a give back to an industry or profession. But most of the times people come in because they’re like, I need this class to get a better job, or I’m worried about my job so I need a better network, or my boss sees something. I mean, like there’s something very transactional about it. We don’t focus a lot on kind of that initial get, and they don’t differentiate against the hundreds of other places that somebody can learn and connect and belong, which is what everybody sells. And so, you know, we…

Kevin Novak (33:35)

Yes.

Erin Fuller (33:53)

Within MCI, we took a lot about choice because that is what I think translates into personalization when you talk about association reality or service, professional services reality. If you don’t design for a choice, omnichannel, giving people the chance to figure out where and how they want to engage and the ability for them to customize it, then the value promise really stays, I think, pretty theoretical. We just worked with the Global Medical Society and we didn’t like, I kept on telling them like, you’re not gonna message your way into higher engagement. So you have to map where your members were getting stuck. And so, and then we have kind of this engagement loop lens, right? I’m like, where are the opportunities for me to consume, right? Like just take in the info. That’s kind of that get piece I said earlier. Then ideally you bring them to like, how do you contribute? Then collaborate. And then ideally there’s like opportunities for co-creation, right? And then, you know, and then there’s kind of a loop there.

And then you really need to have micro pathways that make it easier to move people to move into higher value participation. So I signed up because I need this class. My credentials about to run out and I need this class so that I don’t lose my credential. And that’s my transaction. But then maybe they give me the opportunity, hey, do you want to join a WhatsApp group with other people who are also studying this course or?

What are five takeaways you want to make sure the person takes this class after you? Like there’s all these like little ways we can do right to elicit that. Because when you make engagement easier and more clearly tied to the outcomes they actually care about, then the value proposition starts to feel compelling because you’re experiencing it. You’re not just having it described to you. Like you’re like, yeah, no, this is it. Like this is really what I’m getting. I think that those pieces become really, really important, especially when…

It has to feel real and authentic, right? This need for authenticity. The generational piece is really interesting, Kevin. And I know because I have my own laboratory here in my house. So having an 18 and 21-year-old, right? But I don’t know if you’re a TikTok person. My joke is that my friends always laugh. I always say, when I said I read it in the New Yorker, that’s code for I totally saw this on TikTok.

Kevin Novak (35:58)

Me too, yes!

Hahaha!

Erin Fuller (36:16)

I’m fascinated with TikTok and one of the things that’s really interesting to me is how many content creators will talk to you as they’re putting on makeup, right? Or blow drying their hair or I mean, whatever, you all of these things and you’re like, that feels so chaotic. And also I spent a great part of my 1980s high school self making sure that like nobody saw me anything like, you know, less than perfection, right? But I’m realizing that part of that is like, you know, these people are probably human, right? By these very human things they’re doing as they’re talking. Because if it’s just a polished talking head, you don’t know for sure anymore, right? Is that AI, right? So I’m wondering about this whole kind of like, get ready with me behind the scenes piece, et cetera. If that’s kind of what people want is like, I want proof that this is done authentically with real people. like, I’m really like, I’m fascinated by that whole lot. It’s a whole different conversation.

Kevin Novak (37:11)

Well, to your point, again, this I had Ryan Vett on last week, and he’s a generational futurist. Really, really, really cool guy. And so we were talking about Gen Z, and I’ve done a lot of writing and so forth. And one of the episodes, the first season, is actually all about Gen Z and the 40 % of the workforce. And the biggest output of that is the authenticity that they’re seeking.

Erin Fuller (37:22)

and that’s me.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Novak (37:40)

And like you, I have my own little lab. have a millennial and a Gen Z. They’re both attached. So I have two of each that I get to watch and test things out on and see that. And that is critical because particularly with Gen Z, the question is why?

Erin Fuller (37:47)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Novak (38:05)

Why would I need to do this? And they’re looking for that authenticity and they’re looking for in many ways, loyalty right, as well as that value. And I don’t think a lot of older organizations have been able to change their mindset to recognize that that is a significant shift. It’s not an age thing. It’s we’ve done this actually as parents and whatever we did as parents, this is the outcome as to why Gen Z is the way they are.

Erin Fuller (38:39)

Well, I think, Kevin, too, those associations, maybe more traditional models that you just referenced, They’re like, we’ll solve this with some young professionals programming. you don’t, like, what is, no, it has to start with the experience design, right? So you’ve got to remove friction to participation. You have to make the relevance clearer by career stage. And you have to.

Kevin Novak (38:48)

Yeah, exactly. Right. Always.

Erin Fuller (39:03)

Create those pathways I talked about where people can move from that passive consumption to contribution and collaboration. I think like engagement is actually the product, right? Like you have to test engagement as a separate thing versus assuming that engagement is like the byproduct of all the other stuff you’re doing because the younger members are benchmarking their experience against everything else in their lives, right? Like Spotify level personalization, right? You know, like we all look at our year, our wrap up, right? Yeah.

Kevin Novak (39:30)

Yes, yes, absolutely,

yes.

Erin Fuller (39:32)

Spotify rap, are you kidding me? mean, not shockingly, like I’m a Swifty. The LinkedIn level network utility, right? Like why would I join this when I can just, if I’m looking for someone who does this with widgets, like I can go and find that person in communities that give them agency. And I think that struggling associations misdiagnose this as a mark, again, a marketing problem. Like everything’s marketing fault. So they think they need better messaging, but they really need like better on-ramps, clearer offers.

And again, like faster decisions, right? That’s my theme that let them evolve the experience in real time. And it reminds me a little bit of, I’m sure you’ve seen this, right? OXO who does the good grips thing. And they started out as an accessibility product. And of course, I won’t buy anything from my kitchen that’s not that because they’re just better to use, right? We think of, like, I think of being a mom with a carriage and being so…grateful that my stroller, that there’s curb cuts for the ADA, right? Accessibility lifts everybody up, right? Parental leave lifts all parents up, right? Not just moms. And so I think that all the things I just referenced, those are great no matter how old you are. Those are all kind of good aspects. I think we really lost an opportunity. I think with COVID, we had this huge democratization of organizations, right? All of a sudden, it was all virtual. Everybody could attend. People who had never gone to the big event, could go to the virtual big event. So then volunteerism, all these groups. And then everyone was like so excited to kind of get back to the good old days, right? Of gathering around an actual real bar that we lost some of that. And I think that there’s, there needs to be opportunities. Like it wasn’t all bad what was created during COVID. There were some good things that happened there for organizations.

 

Kevin Novak (41:21)

Yeah. So let me, because you’ve hit on this in several different ways and you’re known for saying this and there are several other people in my universe that have been promoting this as well, including Nicky Walker. She and I have had many conversations about this, Chris McEntee. So you’ve described the shift from membership as a status to membership as a service.

So that reframe sounds simple when you say it, but I think it is actually one of the most psychologically disruptive changes an association can undergo. So Denise Rousseau’s research on psychological contracts established that every relationship between an organization and its stakeholders contains an unwritten set of mutual expectations that goes far beyond any formal agreement. Members don’t just pay dues and receive benefits. They enter into an implicit contract about what the organization represents, what belonging means, and what the relationship promises. So when an association Erin and tries to shift from membership as a status, where belonging itself is the value to membership as a service, where the value must be continuously demonstrated and earned.

So there’s in some ways on both sides a felt sense of betrayal. Right? Where does that resistance to that shift actually come from when you see it play out?

Erin Fuller (42:57)

So think when you move from membership as a badge to membership as a professional service, it’s not a benefit change, but you said it’s a belonging change. And so you’re absolutely right that the reframe does change that psychological contract because if we get our identity, our belonging, our professional legitimacy, our ribbons, gosh, we love a ribbon bar and associations, right?

That just that gives us a lot like I’m able to walk into a room you’ve never met me, but you can see how fancy and important I am right by that, you know, very militant.

Kevin Novak (43:28)

my God, I used to personally love that myself. I’d have, you know, for when I was chair of the BIA’s board, I’d have this long thing.

Erin Fuller (43:36)

My rule is two, you take your chalk too and you stick with it. But I think membership as a service, sounds more like a product and then that triggers the fear that the association’s becoming more transactional. So I think the resistance is rarely about the words, but it’s what people think the shift implies about the community and fairness and who the association’s for and who benefits from it. And so I think in practice, you see that come from three places.

Kevin Novak (43:39)

Yeah.

Erin Fuller (44:02)

Members will push back on tiering or segmentation because it feels like we’re declaring winners and losers. And so to go back to Rousseau’s research, which, by the way, I did study in school, so I was like loving this callback. Right. So then we’re stratifying the organization and you think about they’re like, well, how are we doing that? Well, trade organizations are a great example. Do I want to be the zero to a million dollar member or do I want to be the 10 to 25 million dollar member? Right. And usually there’s a dues segmentation there, too. And so you know these big dogs pay more in dues. Well, what are they getting that I’m not getting as a result of these big, do they have more say, do they have more clout? They have on their badge what kind of member they are. So everybody knows that I’m lesser than, right? That piece isn’t great. So they push back about that, any segmentation. And it’s not just about money. It can be around, you know, professional area of practice. I mean, we see it all the time within associations to sponsors versus members. We call them partners, but we don’t actually, we treat them as very poorly as partners.

Kevin Novak (44:58)

Right.

Yes.

Erin Fuller (45:02)

Like, we love you in the exhibit hall, but you can’t come into this session. And I was like, what are they going to get out of this session? Boards resist because a service model, if you run the association, like the professional services firm, then that forces trade-offs. You go to invest here. So that means you’re going to to sunset or stop here. And that’s where the politics live. The politics kind of live in that piece and nobody likes that experience. And then staff resist because nobody wants to change their operating system.

Kevin Novak (45:07)

Right, right.

Erin Fuller (45:32)

So the journey design, the discipline or hygiene around data, um, any kind of new rhythm of developing things, all of those things are just stuff are resistant to it because you have to make those changes while you’re still in the current business model. So you kind of are running two business cycles at once and that’s not great. So I think one of the things that I try to focus on, you know, is we have this whole, like I’ve caught, we’ve created this whole kind of membership value rubric, right? Where I have a scoring mechanism and I go in and I try to go away from what they say they offer to what people actually experience. So you almost need a secret shopper. That’s very hard to say. You almost need a secret shopper to go in and really join and then join the chapter and then pay and then see how many screens you’re putting. I mean, all of those things are crazy. And it starts to really like, you pulled me in.

Kevin Novak (46:08)

Yes.

Erin Fuller (46:31)

With this messaging, then I had to go to 15 different transactional screens where I had to give you all this demographic data. And I’m not stupid, so I know you’re using that demographic data in some ways to monetize it. And then it takes me 30 to 60 days for the chapter to recognize me as a member because they’re waiting for their dues rebate from the national organization. And also I’m like, why did I join this again? What did I pay for? Is this monthly like Netflix? Like, can I stop this if I’m not satisfied?

Kevin Novak (46:41)

Thanks.

Erin Fuller (46:57)

All of these things become, it really clutters up that experience. And then I would say, in addition for members not liking tiering or segmentation, they’re also, I think, much better educated about the difference between expectations and reality. And they’re not shy about saying it. We leave a hotel room now and we have a message in our phones three seconds after checkout like give us, when are you going to rate us on Google? what do you like people, this feedback loop, people now expect it. Yeah. And if you don’t create it, then they’ll be suspicious of why it’s not there.

Kevin Novak (47:27)

Yes, in constant. Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah. So I, you know, it’s interesting that to your point, we had, there was a project that we did last year or so, and it was a market analysis related to a series of events and pharmaceuticals. And the goal was to identify how many people aren’t being reached, what the potential was across the different segments. And to your point about what exists, even feedback mechanisms, but also the pricing models, there was entrenched hesitation to move to more of a bundling and a different pricing structure to remove all of those roadblocks that they had put into the system, which was ultimately in feedback.

Erin Fuller (48:00)

Thanks

Kevin Novak (48:26)

Majorly, why some of those potential audiences weren’t coming in. And it was all that friction in that part of the process, opposed to what they thought they would eventually get, which probably would have been good. yeah.

Erin Fuller (48:34)

Right.

We make it super hard and buying stuff right now is so easy, right? When I can double tap my phone, And wave it towards, wave my magic wand towards whatever. We are so not caught up to that, to that model for people. And that dichotomy is hard for people to recognize. They may understand, they understand, Amazon has more resources than ABC organization. But at the same time, like, gosh, what do you, like.

What do you mean I have to do this this and this it’s too hard.

Kevin Novak (49:12)

Do you see that as?

Is it an organizational resource issue or is it truly a structural issue?

Erin Fuller (49:22)

I think sometimes with nonprofit organizations, a noble mission doesn’t protect you from the law of economics and capacity. And so the mission doesn’t exempt you from economics. And I work with board treasurers and finance committees all the time, right?

If you can’t fund the work, staff the work, or deliver consistently, the mission loses. And I think sometimes these organizations treat operational discipline like it’s optional, But because the purpose is so noble. And that piece, right? So, we know that our website is from like 1994. Somebody designed it in frames for me, somebody’s kid. we know that you have to fax in. Yeah.

Kevin Novak (50:08)

But watch, we’re gonna show our age here.

Erin Fuller (50:11)

Exactly. know you know it’s gonna go to wireframes. And you know, like all of these things, but like everyone understands it because we’re nonprofit and they know that that means we’re spending our money on the mission. And like, do they? Or are they like, uh-uh? Like I don’t have, like you’ve lost me here. Like step six, I’m done. I have a short attention span because of TikTok. And so therefore I’m not gonna be able to execute that. So.

I mean, that’s a very operational example of that, right? There’s all sorts of programmatic examples of it too. But I do think that, I think to our peril we use that as kind of a buffer. Like, people don’t have the same expectations. You’re buying something’s buying something. And so I do worry a little bit about that, right? Pricing decisions can get delayed. We don’t communicate about pricing very transparently in associations or we over communicate it.

If anyone’s complaining about a 2 % membership dues increase, mean, come on, right? Low Impact Legacy Program Stay-in-Life Support. I’m working with a group right now. They have an awards program that is so exhausting and exhaustive because it’s funded by these little requests that happened over 100 years ago, core governance models, untangling them is hard you know, so, you know, that piece, then we have a million committee structures, right? They have to multiply to service all these different product lines. and so then as a result, the core investments and like data, technology, talent, they get framed as a nice to have. When I would argue that’s the most, that’s the most important things. And then you see what programs make sense. But a lot of times we’re like program led a little bit with these organizations and that piece can be hard. so you have to have.

Again, like a disciplined operating model to me, which is, you know, we’ve talked about this, right? Governance, clear accountability for outcomes. And I think clear revenue logic is another big piece of that. Then it’s not, we’re not turning into a corporation. It’s, just being really good stewards. So think there’s some language there that’s helpful.

Kevin Novak (52:17)

Most definitely. So I want to focus in on MCI’s Association Engagement Index. So, yeah, obviously MCI publishes it. And there’s some data which illuminates the dynamic from the membership side that we touched on. So the research shows that 84 % of members say personalization experiences matter to them, which you’re well putting at the top of the list.

Yet only in response 11 % of associations describe their own value propositions as very compelling. So it’s an extraordinary gap and it’s one I’m not surprised at. And it’s not a marketing gap. It’s not a sense making gap. The leadership of these organizations is constructing a version of their value proposition that is fundamentally disconnected from how their members experience it.

Kevin Novak (53:05)

So what do you think is driving the disconnect? Is it a data problem, a cultural problem, or something so much deeper?

Erin Fuller (53:15)

We spend a lot of time describing what we think the engagement experience is like, and we don’t spend enough time really investigating and investing in the experience itself. And so I mentioned this previously, right? But that secret shopper experience, I think, is really critical for that and making sure that we create that full cycle for engagement, right? So the opportunities to…to consume passively, but then start the contribution, the collaboration and the co-creation, right? All which kind of raise the stakes a little bit in terms of what you expect. I think that those are all pieces that align to that. That gap between expectation and what’s delivered by associations. We have a lot of data within the AEI that just kind of consistently show that gap. There’s that gap in other places too, right? People, I’m gonna mangle this a little bit, but.

I want to say something like 80 % plus of people will say they’re expecting their association experience to contribute to their career development and progression, but less than 20 % of association staff view member career progression and development as their priority area to focus on. So we see those kind of experience gaps in different studies all the time. And again, part of that is the people who govern are not our target demographic. The people who are on the board, are successful, right? They’ve got the time, the treasure, the experience to devote to volunteer leadership. They’re at a position in their organization where someone will invest in their, you know, going to the events, you know, kind of going to all these meetings, et cetera. You don’t give that to your 27-year-old early career person, right? Or maybe you have a token spot for one of those people on the board. But I think that that piece is also challenging at the committee level as well as the board level is we don’t have people who are really reflecting back those experiences in a way that makes it helpful to kind of design it for better engagement.

Kevin Novak (55:20)

You know, it’s so interesting that you you said that because I can’t tell you how many clients that we’ve walked into and we have asked the career path question and They’re unable to answer it and say we don’t have that but we really need it so the what I what I want to ask you Erin so this is one thing I try to do with the guests. given the purview that you have across organizations, you know, what is the the one thing that people might be surprised about related to change and transformation?

Erin Fuller (55:59)

Okay. I think the surprise about transformation is it’s not, it’s rarely a technical challenge. It’s a loss and trust challenge. And that can be underestimated every time. So transformation isn’t hard because people fear change. It’s because it’s hard because people fear loss, right? So change often to people means I’m gonna lose something that I have now.

So loss of status, control, competence, community, all those things. So once you name what those fears, those loss areas are gonna be, I think you can lead differently and you stop arguing with the resistance and ideally you start designing conditions where people can step into something new without feeling like they’re being erased.

And I feel like sometimes when we talk about transformation and change right now, it’s hard to not make this sound bigger in a geopolitical context. I am truly talking about associations, but there’s certainly echoes there. I think the second surprise is that the hard part is usually decision hygiene. So transformations fail because decisions are slow, reversible, or revisited constantly. And so what I often tell CEOs is you have to start with a few measurable outcomes, not a long wish list.

You have to tell everybody explicitly who gets to make decisions and you have to match your ambition to capacity. think sequencing really matters. You got to build in a couple of quick wins that prove the new model and your own aptitude and then scale from there. And you have to treat the member experience as a design system. So the segmentation, the personalization and the engagement all has to be easier than disengaging or there has to be enough of a cost to it to disengagement.

So that’s where I would wrap up.

Kevin Novak (57:46)

Thank you. Thank you, Erin, for being on the show today.

Erin Fuller (57:50)

Thanks, Kevin. I appreciate the opportunity. It’s so great to see you.

Kevin Novak (57:52)

Likewise.

Kevin Novak (57:53)

I wanna close the conversation by connecting what you have shared to the broader arc of the season. Every guest we have had has illuminated a different dimension of why transformation fails at the human level. Elizabeth Stewart showed us how anxiety spreads through organizations. James Elliott showed us how the immune system neutralizes change.

Ryan Vet showed us how generational identity shapes every response to transformation. And what you have shown us today is what becomes visible when you have the vantage point to see across organizations,

The institutional isomorphism that makes organizations converge on the same blind spots, the psychological contracts that membership creates and the transformation violates, the governance structures that become immune systems, and the structural silence that ensures leadership never hears the information it most needs to hear.

That pattern recognition, the ability to see across rather than just within, is what I think distinguishes leaders who navigate transformation successfully from those who keep solving the wrong problems with increasing sophistication.

What Erin described today is something that I think every leader needs to sit with. The patterns that repeat across organizations are not coincidences. They are structural dynamics produced by the way institutions are designed, governed, and maintained. And the human beings inside those institutions are responding rationally to the incentives, the silences, and the psychological contracts that the institution has created.

Whether it is intended to or not. If you found today’s episode valuable, subscribe to the Human Factor podcast wherever you watch or listen to podcasts. Leave a rating and a comment and share this episode with your leadership team and your board. If your organization is navigating change and transformation right now, the patterns Erin described are almost certainly active in your organization. The question is whether you can see them.

Subscribe to my ideas and innovations newsletter at 2040digital.com for weekly frameworks and research on why change succeeds or fails. And well, connect with me on LinkedIn where I post regularly about the psychology of transformation. Next episode, we continue the journey. Until then, remember change and transformation doesn’t fail because of technology, strategy or market conditions.

It fails because of people. And the more deeply you understand the human factor, the more likely your change or transformation is to succeed. I’m Kevin Novak. Thanks for watching or listening.

END OF EPISODE

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