Nick’s Book Blog

I got a flyer in the mail for an upcoming seminar given by WhitefordTaylorPreston and the Reznick Group with the title "How to use your 990 as a marketing tool." Topics include: "Do you know who is looking at your 990 and why?" "How would your 990 look to a first-time reader?" "Who prepares or reviews your 990?" Day two focuses more intensely on issues of executive compensation, compensation of board members, payment to independent contractors, program expenses, lobying activity reporting, relationships with other organizations, and unrelated business income activity. While I these issues generally apply more to charity-ish types of organizations than to professional or trade associations, it does bear thinking about. Your 990s are available to anyone who wants to look at them. What story do they tell?

I got a catalog from Board Source. Their cover book is called "Taming the Troublesome Board Member." Looks worth a looksee. Also in the mail is Cal Clemon's The Perfect Board , which he was nice enough to send me a few weeks ago. A quick skim through shows it to be a worthwhile read, and definitely a good training piece for incoming board members. I'll give it a fuller review later.

This book, by Edward De Bono, is a really good framework for attacking issues. Of course, every one who writes a book wants it to be revolutionary, and to "change the way the world's most successful business leaders think." But today, I'm feeling cynical, and I think that changing the way people think doesn't happen very often. However, this book is useful, and it could be easily tailored to the point of even becoming (wait for it) AN ASSOCIATION HACK. Basically, the point is that you engage different kinds of thinking when you're deliberating. You can be interested in numbers, in feelings, in growth, in creativity, etc. So De Bono lists these attributes and gives them a hat of that color. The hat is symbolic (altho it could be concrete, I suppose), and basically, it allows you to communicate what's going in to the thought processes. It helps the user of the framework to be more explicit, and therefore there's less playing of "guess what I'm t

So while all my association peeps were in Boston, we worked all weekend on our weekend project, RecipeThing.com , which is in beta (I think!). Lemme know what you think!

I saw this book on Oprah's reading list and thought it would be worth a looksee. It's pretty fluffy, but underneath that fluff are some good principles. Though really, it's enough to just read the actual four agreements: 1. Be Impeccable with Your Word Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. User the power of your word in the direction of truth and love. 2. Don't Take Anything Personally Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection or their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering. 3. Don't Make Assumptions Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life. 4. Always do Your Best

Here's a good article on the whole unconference thing. HT: Chris Brogan

Here's what I've been reading and working on these past days. First, Break all the Rules , by Buckingham and Coffman The book is written by these folks from Gallup who worked with a HUGE cohort of managers to find out what makes the best ones tick. It's interesting methodology and the conclusions are good. There is a list of things that they say every manager should be able to communicate to his/her employees and if their employees can be assured in those areas, everything will turn out fine and the employees will be happy--and turnover will be low. Here's where you can find that list. A lot of the discussion centers around what a manager should do with an employee's talent (or lack thereof). The manager should be engaged in using what the employee has to offer and not trying to "put in what was left out." Sounds a lot like volunteer management! Anyhoo, very much worth while. Again, here is a more in-depth review of the book that gives a detailed summary

I've been a bad blogger lately. Sorry, I've been quite busy with projects that I shall unveil in due time. However, I wanted to say that ASAE should whitelabel something like this to sell to associations. Members could come back from their conferences with really comprehensive reports which they then could turn around and use to justify their memberships. I think it's a good idea.