Over the past couple of months I've written two articles for ASAE's magazine Associations Now. In both cases, once the article was publishsed, I received a couple of extra copies of the magazine and a handwritten note from Lisa Junker, the deputy editor of the magazine, thanking me for my work. Both times I was very impressed to receive the note, because in the past fifteen years that I've done volunteer work at ASAE (volunteer committee work, speaking, writing, judging), I can count on one hand the number of handwritten notes I've received. Oh sure, I get the form letter thank you, but rarely is it handwritten.

I write handwritten notes occassionally, and I'm always struck by how people react to receiving them. I almost always receive a "thank you" email in response to my notes. The simple fact is that very few of us take the time to write handwritten notes, whether to say "Thank you" or simply "Nice to meet you." That means that any handwritten note stands out.

And now that Lisa has taken the time to write me (not once, but twice) you can be sure that in the future, when she contacts me, she'll have my undivided attention.

Forrester Research is an independent technology and market research company. Forrester recently released a list of its CRM "best practices." The list includes the following:

Forrester based this information on interviews with 22 executives to determine this list. I'm pleased to say that with the exception of the "governance structure" concept, I've been promoting all of these ideas to my clients for the past eight years. I've written about most of them (the links next to the bullets).

So now you know, it's not just me saying these things. Even Forrester Research has (finally) figured it out.

Recently my wife and I went out of town and left our four kids with a babysitter for the weekend. As an incentive to good behavior, my wife developed a little game where each kid could earn one or more marbles a day for good behavior, and could lose one or more marbles per day for bad behavior. At the end of the weekend, if they had 10 marbles (they started with five) they would get a prize.

Wwhen we returned on Monday from the long weekend, everyone had earned eight marbles, but not the ten that was the goal. No one had lost any marbles for bad behavior, but there hadn't been enough time to earn 10 marbles. My kids, of course, thought they were going to miss out on their prize. But my wife explained to them that the point was to have good behavior, not earn 10 marbles. Since they achieved what we sought, they got the prize they were promised.

Too often associations focus on metrics that aren't really meaningful. A great example of "counting the marbles" is page views on the web site. So many associations talk about how many times their website is viewed. But the real question is, what kind of change in behavior is occurring as result of those views? Are web visitors buying from you? Are they taking action with their congressman? Are they joining in the conversation in your association's discussion groups? Counting the marbles doesn't help us achieve our objective.

So ask yourself: Are you measuring the number of marbles, or are you measuring the behavior change?

Why aren't more of your staff comfortable with working in your association's database? One reason may be micro-management.

I've been working with a client and recently realized that a huge hurdle they face is that their executive director micro-manages everything they do. As a result, staff is fairly paralyzed and unable to make any decisions on their own. None of the staff takes any intiative to do anything, because they know the executive director will second-guess their decisions. Better to just wait to let him decide than make a decision and then be "slapped" for it.

This type of behavior can have a hugely negative impact on AMS usage. If staff perceives that everything they do within the database will be checked, double-checked, and second-guessed, they will quickly learn to not bother.

Yes, it's important to make sure staff knows what they are doing in the database. But micro-managing their use is not the answer. As a colleague of mine once said, "Tool 'em, train 'em, and trust 'em." This means you have to provide them with the tools to succeed, you have to train them how to use the tools, and then you have to trust them to do it right. Micro-managing kills that trust.

So…are you micro-managing your database users? Or are you training them and trusting them?