My Top 5 Blog Posts of 2012

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As we end another year (without the world coming to an end, fortunately), here's a look back at the five posts on this blog that received the most page views in 2012.

1. Don't Rush to Fill the Silence
A lesson I've learned about what a leader can learn from silence, and how that opportunity will be lost if one rushes to fill it. Remember, it is not the job of the leader to have all the answers, only to identify all the real problems.

2. The Mind of the Community
An exploration of how associations can develop a deeper understanding of their members, and a plea to tear down the wall that many organizations build between their staff and their membership. If you want staff to better anticipate the needs of your members, you need to make them part of your members' community.

3. Stop Calling It Strategic Planning
Inspired by the take-down of strategic planning in Humanize, I pledge to stop using that term to describe the messy, constantly evolving process my association uses to determine our direction and set our objectives. In laying out the guidelines that govern our activities, I realize that only one term makes any sense--association management.

4. The Chairman's Gift
A story about how my association ensures that our outgoing Board Chair receives a gift that recognizes not just his service to the association, but the fact that he is an individual who has made a personal sacrifice to serve in that capacity. The true value is the message it sends to others who might be considering a similar commitment in their futures.

5. Why We Don't Take Risks
A review of the need for greater risk-taking in associations, and the role such risk-taking plays in innovation. It concludes with a challenge to every association professional to step out of their comfort zones and do something different, something unpredictable, something whose value has not yet been determined.

My thanks to everyone who has been reading what I've been putting up here. I hope you plan to stay engaged in 2013.