Getting Your Board on Board with AI | 82 - Sidecar Sync

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Maybe it's not so grandiose, maybe it's just a
couple of projects you'd like tokick off and you want the
board's approval.
But if you start with theselittle bits, I think you can go
a long ways, and that's one ofthe coolest things.
Like to your point, mallory.
Ai is so vividly understandablewhen you demonstrate it.
Welcome to Sidecar Sync, yourweekly dose of innovation.

(00:20):
If you're looking for thelatest news, insights and
developments in the associationworld, especially those driven
by artificial intelligence,you're in the right place.
We cut through the noise tobring you the most relevant
updates, with a keen focus onhow AI and other emerging
technologies are shaping thefuture.
No fluff, just facts andinformed discussions.

(00:40):
I'm Amit Nagarajan, chairman ofBlue Cypress, and I'm your host
.
Greetings everybody and welcometo the Sidecar Sync, your home
for content at the intersectionof all things artificial
intelligence and the world ofassociations.
My name is Amit Nagarajan.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
And my name is Mallory Mejiaz.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
And we're your hosts, and today we have an exciting
episode for you that I thinkwill be really compelling for
leaders within associations allabout how to get your board on
board with AI.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Amit, I feel like we've been talking about this
get your board on board with AIepisode for a while now.
What inspired you to bring itto the Sidecar Sync docket?

Speaker 1 (01:24):
You know it's so critical in nonprofit
organizations and associationsespecially, to have alignment
and that's true, of course, forall organizations.
But with nonprofits andassociations, having your
volunteer leadership andespecially your board of
directors, fully bought intowhat you want to go do is

(01:44):
critical.
In fact, the board largely setsthe high-level priorities for
most organizations.
So if the board isn't boughtinto AI and doesn't understand
the importance of AI and kind ofthe significance of it in the
world, the board is not going tobe able to do its job
effectively in governing theassociation and certainly in

(02:04):
being involved in settingstrategies.
So to me it's a really criticalpart because they're key
stakeholders.
The board is there to representthe membership at large and in
all boards of directors, whetherit's a board of an association
or a board of a corporation,they have a duty to the
organization in terms of itslong-term health and they're

(02:25):
there for a very clear purpose.
So having the board on boardwith AI is critical because you
know, many people in the worldstill don't really understand
the magnitude of what artificialintelligence really means for
the world at large and certainlyfor their industry or for their
organization or for theirorganization.

(02:46):
So I think that's why it's sucha key topic for leaders in
associations, whether you'reearlier in your career, or if
you're leading an entireassociation and you're
potentially working with a boardthat isn't yet on board with AI
or maybe they get it, it'sthere but they're not really
sensing the urgency or theydon't believe it's necessarily
the top priority.
I thought it might be helpfulfor us to talk about it

(03:06):
essentially for a while and talkabout different components of
what might help motivate theboard.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yep, it's a great idea and I'm excited to discuss
it because, as I've told you,amit, I don't have a ton of
direct experience working withboards in general, so I think
this will be a great learningexperience for me, too.
To unpack, amit, in yourexperience working with
association boards and directlywith association leaders.
Do you get the sense thatboards right now are pretty open
to the idea of AI?

(03:33):
Are they putting up a fightagainst it?
What's that dynamic?

Speaker 1 (03:37):
I think that putting up a fight against AI is no
longer the case.
I think that probably was truea year ago.
It's much less the case now.
I think there's a realizationin the broader world that AI is
here and that AI is a real thing.
It's not hype, maybe overhypedin some ways, maybe underhyped
in others, but it's a real thing, it has real utility and it's

(03:58):
changing the face of pretty mucheverything in our world.
So I don't see boards fightingagainst it.
What I see is that boards oftenstill don't give it the face of
pretty much everything in ourworld.
So I don't see boards fightingagainst it.
What I see is that boards oftenstill don't give it the degree
of prioritization that it shouldhave.
Obviously, in our opinions, aspeople talking about the
intersection of AI andassociations all the time, we
believe strongly thatassociations need to prioritize

(04:18):
AI.
So some of the things boardsare not doing consistently or
doing, I would say, somewhatrarely still is allocating
additional funds, pulling fromreserves and saying, listen,
this is a moment in time thatreserves are there for.
The whole point of reserves isto protect the organization,
surely, from potential issueslike economic problems and

(04:40):
things like that, but it's alsoto make investments in the
future of the profession or theindustry.
And when there's times ofradical change going on, the
board should take action to saylisten, we want to release some
portion of reserves to makeinvestments in experiments and
in infrastructure to go buildthe future.
And there's a lot ofassociations out there who
struggle mightily because theyhave very restrictive operating

(05:03):
budgets.
And boards have the power topotentially unlock some of their
existing financial resources tomake experimentation and to
make deployment of AI possible.
That's one example.
Another one is just actuallybeing supportive of the
executive leadership having alittle bit more discretion day
to day.
Some boards are wonderful withthat, where they really are much

(05:25):
more of a governing body, butothers actually quite frequently
are quite involved in, Iwouldn't say, daily operations
of the association.
But the degree of approvalrequired from the board for,
let's say, purchasing decisionsis quite granular and so that
really slows things down.
You know, when you talk toassociation leaders and they say

(05:46):
, hey, I have to go get thisapproved by the board and it's a
$10,000 or $20,000 purchasingdecision.
It's non-trivial, certainly,but it's, I think, well within
the discretion of what certainlythe CEO should have, and
possibly even a divisionaldirector or VP within an
organization like that.
So sometimes the structures areoverly cumbersome, overly
restrictive and don't reallyprovide an opportunity for the

(06:09):
culture to thrive in a littlebit more nimble and experimental
way.
So these are some things Ithink boards could definitely be
looking at.
There's plenty more as well,but I would say, to answer your
question more succinctly, boardsare probably somewhere in the
middle right now, but they needa strong nudge to the side of
hey, let's go hard at this.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah well, I'm excited to dive into this
episode's topic.
We're going to break this downinto three conversations, more
or less.
First, I want to get into thenitty gritty of what motivates
board decisions in generalacross associations and see if
we can help listeners figure outwhat motivates their board
specifically.
Then we'll talk about the ideaof building an irresistible AI

(06:47):
use case that your board can'trefuse and then we'll kind of
talk about the pathway togetting that AI use case
approved by the board in the end.
So, first and foremost, I willsay I had a little bit of fun
with this first conversation,amit, because my background in
undergrad is in psychology andtypically on the podcast I am,
you know, trying out new tools,I'm demoing things, I'm making

(07:09):
new accounts with new AIcompanies.
This one, I was kind of gettinga little bit psychological.
I was working with Claude inchat UBT to say if you were a
board member, what wouldmotivate you to serve on a board
?
Like, what do you really careabout?
So I wanted to, before we diveinto the whole getting your
board on board with AI thing, Iwanted to figure out what drives
board decisions andassociations.

(07:30):
So, unlike corporate boardsfocused primarily on shareholder
value.
Association boards have a dualfocus advancing the
organization's mission andresponsible stewardship of
resources.
Board members, as Amit said,are typically volunteers who
deeply care about the industryor profession, bringing their
own expertise and perspectivesto the table.
Frankly, this might be hard foryou to hear, amit, but I would

(07:54):
say your board may not care thatAI is perhaps the biggest
technological advancement we'llsee in our lifetimes.
They probably don't care aboutMoore's law or AI capabilities
doubling every six months likewe do.
They care about member impact,strategic alignment, resource
implications and potential risks.
Now, of course, each board hasits own unique dynamics, but

(08:15):
they all share common concernswhen it comes to significant
technology investments.
Will this truly benefit ourmembers?
Is this the best use of limitedresources?
Do we have the capacity toimplement this successfully and
can we measure whether it'sworking?
Successful proposals addressthese core concerns directly

(08:51):
framing AI not as tech fortech's sake, but as a strategic
solution to member needs andyour organization's challenges.
So, amit, I know you haveserved on several boards or
currently still do.
I am curious what motivated youto take on those roles.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
Boards that I've served on in the nonprofit
sector are primarily focused oneither some cause that I was
focused on personally, orsomething community related,
where I was trying to give backto my local community and my
motivation has been to just, youknow, help out in some way.
And I think a lot of volunteerleaders in various different
types of roles, including boardroles, specifically have that

(09:20):
same motivation.
So people tend to care deeplyabout the profession or the
sector or the industry thatthey're in, and that's extremely
important.
And that is the key commonalitythat I tend to see across
different organizations is thatpeople are volunteering their
time.
They're typically busy people,so that's one piece.

(09:41):
Another motivation that I thinkis quite common is career
advancement.
So if you are in a particularindustry and you are a volunteer
leader, especially if you're ona board, and you know that
means what are you doing?
Well, you're spending your timecollaborating, connecting with
other people who are probablypretty far along in their career

(10:02):
in that particular profession.
So it can be quite good interms of increasing your that
particular profession.
So it can be quite good interms of increasing your
visibility in the sector.
It can be quite good in termsof creating potential direct
opportunities, and so there'sdefinitely an opportunity there.
And I say that not because Ithink it's a bad thing at all.
I think that's just a naturalpart of the duality of some of

(10:22):
these motivations that exist.
But I think in some casesactually that particular
motivation may be stronger thananything else.
I've definitely seen thatmyself with people where there's
a lot of ego and there's a lotof interest in kind of advancing
their own I wouldn't even sayagenda, but it's more of their
own kind of fingerprint onthings.
So this is particularly truesometimes when you get a new

(10:45):
board chair or board presidentcomes in, and oftentimes these
terms which is that's animportant concept to talk about
for just a second is thatdifferent boards have different
rules around how long the boardserves, so something along the
lines of like a term in Congress, but there's a term of the
board.
Sometimes boards you know kindof have rotating terms where

(11:05):
different roles have, you know,two years or three years or
sometimes longer.
Typically it's a couple yearsas a typical term, and some
boards have like an automaticescalation where you have like a
president-elect or achair-elect and then that
becomes the chair and then thatperson becomes, like you know
the immediate past chair, andthere's this whole kind of
ascension and dissension kind ofthing built into the governance

(11:27):
structure.
And so some of those roles areactually even more important
than the board overall, becausethey tend to have the political
clout amongst the whole group tomove the needle on decision
making.
And so the question is is likewhen you look at the overall
board's motivation, then youlook at those specific roles and
their motivation.
A lot of times when a new boardchair comes in, they're thinking

(11:48):
, hey, how am I going to put mymark on this organization for
the two-year term that I have?
Some are much more of hey, whatdo I need to do that will
really serve the industry?
Some are much more of I'm avisionary, I think the industry
needs to go in this direction,and others might have some kind
of pet project or something.
So it really totally depends.
Just like, as varied as ourpersonalities are, are the

(12:10):
motivations behind why peoplewould do such things as to
volunteer their time on a board.
But I think those are some ofthe common ones.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
In my research.
I definitely hear what you'resaying about the deep care of
the industry, but also thatprofessional advancement piece,
and I think when presenting ause case for AI implementation
to your board, you can kind oftap into both things so kind of
how it will impact your industry.
But then also, if you do havesomeone leading your board
that's trying to leave afootprint, as you said, or a

(12:40):
legacy, tapping into that andsaying how this could kind of
change the future of theassociation, I don't know, that
might be important on themotivation side.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah, totally, and you know, the thing I would say
too is boards tend to beprimarily external facing.
I think some of the boards dolook to the operations of the
association as part of what theyneed to keep an eye on or what
they need to at least have somefamiliarity with.
But typically the board they'rethere to represent the

(13:10):
membership, they're there torepresent the sector, and so
they're focused on what's goingon in the world of the members,
what's going on in the world ofthat industry.
And that's good.
That's part of the value of aboard is that there are
representatives who work in thefield.
And so typically I think themotivation tends to be like how
do we, as you said earlier, howdo we better serve our members?
But what are the issues ourmembers are facing in their
lives and in their professionalroles day to day, week to week,

(13:32):
month to month, that we as theassociation could or should be
potentially helping with ordoing a better job, with points
where saying, hey, theassociation hasn't done a good
job in areas A, b or C.
Or maybe it's moreopportunistic where, yeah, we're
doing a pretty good job in allof our classical areas of
service, but we could be doingthese other things, and so it

(13:52):
just depends in a number ofareas like that.
The reason I bring up the kindof the external and internal
piece is that a lot ofassociation folks, the staff,
tend to be focused on theinternal issues, not exclusively
, of course, but think aboutwhere you spend your time, and
the people you talk to you tendto kind of reinforce the
patterns that drive where yourenergy goes.
And so if my job every day isto work within an association,

(14:15):
running membership or runningevents, I spend a lot of time
thinking about that naturally.
So I think that's actually oneof the sources of friction is
that boards often want to spendmore time thinking about the
external world, and a lot oftimes staff is coming to the
board with much more of theinternal mindset from the

(14:47):
industry.
Once they're working in therole of the staff CEO or leader,
a lot of times they focus onwhatever the biggest fire is
internally, which may havereally, from the minds of the
board, like no value or noimportance, even though it's
obviously critical to theoperations of the association.
So that's one thing to keep inmind.
Coming into this is that what'sthe perspective of each person
around that table and youpointed this out earlier to
Mallory that the board is abunch of people, just like when

(15:09):
you're, if you're sellingsomething to an organization.
There is no such thing as theorganization.
An organization is a made upfiction.
There is no such thing as anorganization.
There is no such thing as acompany or an association.
In biology or in physics, it'sjust something we made up.
So we got to remember that,like the actual creatures that
are there, thinking andlistening and interacting with

(15:31):
you, are a bunch of individualsthat happen to be organized at
that point in time as the board,but they all have other things
going on too.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Oh man, that's such an interesting point that you
make and I'm sympathizing withall of our association CEOs,
listening and executivedirectors, because you are the
one straddling the internal ofyour staff versus the external
with your board, and I cannotimagine how complicated that
must be when you want to movethings forward.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, it's tough.
It's a really tough job.
In your experience serving onboards, have you ever had to be

(16:19):
part of a discussion around likea really big technology
investment or something kind ofthat land, but also the bylaws
and kind of the structure theorganization has there, and the
board has a duty to ensure thatthat is the case.
That's one of the fundamentalelements of good governance, but
that shouldn't take themajority of the board's time.
The board is a composition ofsmart people who have a lot of

(16:42):
experience, and so they shouldbe bringing ideas to the table,
which isn't to say that theyshould be setting the agenda or
the vision.
That's ultimately the CEO's job, in my mind, and both
not-for-profits and for-profits.
A lot of times, though, theboard does set the direction and
the vision, but I do think thatthe board even when you have a
strong CEO who wants to and iscapable of leading the vision
and the charge ahead towardsthat vision I believe the board

(17:09):
should contribute ideas and say,hey, this is what I see in the
world and here's some ideas, andso, therefore, the board should
be having discussions about bigstrategic topics.
So, in nonprofits I've beeninvolved with, we've talked
about things like thefundamental economic engine of
the nonprofit.
What is the business modelright?
And so what I always bring tothese conversations is like
that's kind of a foreign concept.
What's the business model ofthe nonprofit?
Does that seem like an oxymoron?

(17:30):
And in fact it's not, becauseall organizations, whether
they're for profit or not forprofit in terms of their style
of tax return, have to have abusiness model if they want to
be sustainable.
And far too many not-for-profits, particularly like community
organizations, tend to bebasically hand-to-mouth kind of

(17:51):
thing, where they are basicallyout there asking for donations
to fund way too much of theirongoing operations.
And so the question is whatkind of maybe recurring revenue
model can we come up with?
Is there a way to create somekind of differentiated value or
some kind of product or afor-profit subsidiary that can
generate consistent returns tofund the operations, so that
we're less dependent maybe notexclusively independent, but

(18:12):
less dependent upon things thatwe have less control over?
So there's those kinds ofconversations.
Those are big discussions.
Ai tends to be something that Ithink could influence those
discussions deeply.
But yeah, I mean, the board inmy experience is involved in
that.
I've also been involved inboards that I tend to very
quickly resign from when theydon't talk about this stuff and

(18:32):
they're just talking about kindof the minutiae, because I feel
boards like that really aren'tadding value.
So in cases where I've beenrecruited to join boards like
that after a fairly short periodof time, I've realized that's
really what's the discussion.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
I'm like look, I'm not adding any value, I'm out of
here.
Yep, you said somethinginteresting that boards should
be able to bring in ideas to theassociation.
They are experts in theirrespective professions and
industries.
If that is the case, what roledo you think the association
leadership team plays in helpingto educate their board on new
technologies, emergingtechnologies?
I know with our Sidecar AILearning Hub we do have many
associations that have chosen toprovide that education to their

(19:13):
board.
Do you see're in the businessof running an association?

Speaker 1 (19:16):
You are the professional that knows how to
run the association, andobviously you're always
improving that knowledge, butthat's what you do.
So your board is the expert inthe field and the profession or
in the sector.
You're the expert on how to runthe operation of the

(19:38):
association.
And so part of that is you know, and the board might be you
know, they might be bringing AIto you.
They might be saying hey,there's this amazing stuff going
on.
Are you guys using it enoughinternally the association?
That certainly is happening too, but oftentimes that's not the
direction of the flows.
So I think the best executivedirectors and CEOs are bringing

(19:58):
to the table with their boardshey, look, these are some
emerging trends, either macrolevel trends or industry
specific things that we've gotto pay attention to.
And sometimes the board hasawareness of these things and a
lot of times they're like oh,that's interesting, I really
didn't know too much about that.
In the case of AI, I'vepersonally done this a number of
times for friends of ours wherethey've said hey, Amit, can you

(20:20):
come talk to our board?
And I've spent a lot of timedoing that where I've said look,
I'll give your board anexecutive overview of what AI is
doing to the broader world andhow it might impact your sector.
That type of exercise, when youdo that yourself or you have
someone who's very deep in AI tocome help you, is, I think, a
good thing to do for boards.
Where I think that associationleaders get a little bit nervous

(20:45):
about that is if their board issomewhat technical and
technical of any flavor, so likedoctors or engineers that have
nothing to do with AI butthey're, let's say, mechanical
engineers, and or actually ifthey're in a field that's
actually quite close to AI, theboard tends to be kind of
imposing and the staff tend tobe pretty afraid of, like,

(21:07):
talking to the board about thisstuff.
What I find really funny is thisis that some of the people who
are deepest to, like theresearch center of a given field
actually have the leastpractical know-how of how to use
the technology.
So, for example, when I talk toleading AI research companies
and individuals, they're cravinginput on how to actually use
the tools they've built.

(21:27):
Like, people who buildfoundation models oftentimes
don't know the use cases.
People who are doing researchon like the next generation of
neural network architecturesoften don't know what CLOD 3.7
can do, the way you do, Mallory.
It's kind of crazy actually,but it's.
You know, none of us can beexperts in everything, right?
So that's the whole thing.
Is we got to look at it asagain, this collection of people
?
So I think, going back to yourquestion, I think the real key

(21:50):
point is, I believe it's theresponsibility of the
association staff leadership toeducate the board on
contemporary topics that theboard must understand to govern
the association, and AI isclearly one of them understand
to govern the association and AIis clearly one of them.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
The last question here I want to touch on with
motivation, and I imagine thisis an issue across many
associations.
But let's say your board isreally motivated by tradition.
They want to do what's worked,they want to keep things flowing
, they want to keep theassociation going as it has in
the past.
What would you and me do with,like, if your board is really
stuck in tradition but obviouslyAI is not traditional, how
would you approach that?

Speaker 1 (22:31):
I mean, I think that in some cases it's appropriate
to put a little bit of fear inthem in terms of the tradition
being upended, whether it's theassociation helping with it or
not.
So let's say you're in thelegal profession somewhere and
your board is not interested inAI for whatever reason and they
have that kind of mindset youjust described.

(22:52):
Well, if you go and show themthe kind of disruption that's
happening right now in legalservices, in in-house law, all
this stuff due to AI, it'ssomething that can't be ignored.
I think that's a field thatprobably I would doubt there's a
board of directors of any barassociation or other legal
association out there that isn'tthinking about this stuff
because it's such a dramaticimpact in that particular field.

(23:13):
But you can find certain fieldsthat haven't been as impacted,
certain branches of medicinemaybe that haven't been as
affected operationally by AI.
So I think you have to kind ofgo and meet them where they're
at but then try to compel themwith like, look, this isn't a
generalized idea, this is howit's affecting us.
You may not see it, but this iswhat it's going to do and make

(23:35):
the case.
And the other thing to rememberis that, as a leader, your
title actually is chiefrepetition officer.
So, and that's for all jobs, atall levels.
If you want to get somethingdone, you're going to find
yourself saying the same thingover and over and over again.
So do not think that going andyou know, really advocating for

(23:58):
AI with your board is a one anddone thing.
Maybe it's unlikely.
It's probably a journey.
You have to take them on thejourney, starting with something
that isn't even like an ask,where you're starting off with
like an education session andyou don't start with any
assumptions.
You bring in someone from theoutside who knows this stuff and
says, hey, I really want tointroduce this person to you, to
like give you an hour of thistopic.

(24:20):
That can be a great way to kindof make it a little bit softer.
And then maybe the next boardmeeting you talk about hey, what
did you guys think of that?
Let's have a conversation aboutit.
What do you think the impact ofsome of these technologies will
be right?
So there's a number ofdifferent techniques I think you
could use for that, but don'tthink of it as a one and done.
It's going to be a continualprocess In some cases.
You just have to be reallypersistent.

(24:41):
So in some cases you just haveto be really persistent.
So after a while, if theexecutive director keeps asking
for something, maybe the boardgives in, maybe the executive
director isn't looked upon asfavorably.
That's always a risk and Irealize that's a real practical
consideration for a lot of staffexecs.
But it's just a factor I thinkyou have to consider is it's
likely a many, many step process?

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Chief repetition officer.
I love that.
It makes me think of an actingexample in my own life where
there's, you know, a coupleacting books that I'll keep
going back to over and overagain and, even though I've read
them multiple times, rereadingit for the sixth or the seventh
time I'll get one more thing outof it.
Oh OK, I get this now.
Now that I've had these lifeexperiences, that makes a lot
more sense.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
So I love the idea of repeating over and over Totally
, and that is why Mallory and Iboth wholeheartedly recommend
that you listen to.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Sidecar Sync episodes more than once.
Over and over all, 70 something80 episodes that we have.
Okay.
So hopefully at this point inthe episode you're feeling like
you have reflected on yourboard's motivations.
Maybe you're understandingwhere they're coming from in a
little bit of a deeper way.
So I want to talk about thenext step, which is building
that AI business use case.
When it comes to securing boardapproval for your AI initiatives

(25:55):
, the quality of the businessuse case can make or break a
proposal.
The key is to build a casearound organizational priorities
and member needs rather thanthe AI itself.
A compelling AI business caseconnects the dots between your
association's strategic goals,current challenges and how AI
can bridge that gap.
Are your staff overwhelmed?
Is your content not reachingthe right members at the right

(26:16):
time?
These concrete problems providethe foundation for a proposal
and then quantify the potentialimpact whenever possible, not
just in cost savings, but inmember value, improved service
delivery and or competitiveadvantage.

(26:38):
Effective business use casesalso address implementation
realities, including resourcerequirements, timeline
considerations and potentialrisks.
Boards, we can help you narrowdown some options.
So, amit, I want to hear yourkind of thought process or

(27:13):
framework for helping anassociation identify kind of the
best pilot project.
Ai use case to get the board onboard.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
Well, forgetting about boards and forgetting
about titles and all that otherstuff, just thinking about the
individual.
So I would take some time tostudy who these people are.
So, of course, if you have aboard of, like you know, 700
people or something, that'sharder and actually that sounds
like a joke.
But there are some associationsthat literally have boards more
than 100 people.
I've seen that fairly often andit's quite common to have

(27:42):
boards in the many dozens, like30, 40, 50 people.
That's a whole otherconversation because
fundamentally, boards that largeare definitionally ineffective
at making any kind of decisions.
So that's a different problem,one that we won't tackle in the
sidecar sink today.
Maybe some point, but probablythat's not really in our
wheelhouse.
It's more of like governanceexperts can talk about.

(28:02):
How do you potentially get to amore streamlined board.
There has been board reform anda lot of associations to get to
seven person, nine person, 11person boards that are still
representative of a.
Obviously the board chairpeople like that, but also other
people who tend to be vocal atpast board meetings.

(28:28):
Even if you have 50 people,think about the four or five
people who tend to talk the mostand study their backgrounds.
Think about what the roles arehow long they've been practicing
in that profession or thatindustry, and try to think about
the types of problems that theyencounter in their job.
So you know, I think that's areally key thing to do in any
type of interaction you havewith someone is you want to

(28:50):
relate to them, you want to dothe translation.
You don't go to them and say,hey, ai can translate video from
English to Spanish.
That's cool, but what we wantto do is take it all the way to
them and make it bite sized andsuper attractive to eat, which
is to say that you make thecontent something that they
understand.
You don't say, hey, we havethis generic translation
capability, but rather, hey, youknow how you have patients who

(29:12):
don't speak English that well.
They can kind of speak English,but they really would
understand Spanish or French orsomething else better.
Well, now AI can actually helpwith that, because this is
incredibly great tool, and letme give you an example.
And then use a consumer gradetool.
You don't necessarily try to dothis at enterprise scale first,
but you use a HeyGen or you useone of these other tools and

(29:34):
you create a version.
You take maybe even a video ofthat person, because a lot of
times, board members haveYouTube clips and other things
about them and maybe get theirpermission for this because this
might freak them out.
But, like, put their videothrough hey Jen, at the
beginning of a board meeting.
At that, by the end of theboard meeting or even in the
middle of the board meeting,you'll have a translation and
that hits home because it'sactually them speaking with
their permission, right at thebeginning of the board meeting

(29:56):
to do this.
So there's some things you cando like that to make it a little
more personal, to make itactually matter.
And so if I'm a doctor and Ideal with a lot of patients who
don't speak English and I havecontent that I can't really
communicate as effectively and Idon't speak Spanish, that'd be
amazing, right, and so maybethat's not association business,
right, but it's really relevantto the person.

(30:16):
And they go oh, my God, I hadno idea that AI could do this
and do it this well.
So you have to make peopleremember through the way they
feel.
People don't remember what yousaid, people don't remember what
they read.
They remember how you made themfeel.
I think that's a Maya Angelouquote from something, this
unbelievable thing and that'sbeen stuck in my head for years,
and it's really powerfulbecause, that is true, like

(30:37):
we're information overload allthe time, but we do remember our
feelings, particularly strongones.
Preferably, you know, we canhelp them get excited, but also
it's appropriate at this timefor them to have some degree of
fear over what happens if youdon't do anything.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, and there's this concept I think I talked
about it on a previous pod, Idon't know if it's out yet in
psychology called a light bulbmemory, where emotions are so
strong that you kind of canremember an event with a lot of
specificity.
And I kind of have my own lightbulb memory around generative
AI, which was at Digital Now2022 when Thomas showed us the

(31:13):
GPT Playground and Dolly 2 atthat time and I'll never forget
it for my whole life because itwas a strong emotional feeling.
So thinking that you as anassociation leader could help
your board have that light bulbmoment with AI, that's really
powerful.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
I think it could be, and I think that part of it is
you don't have to go all the wayto the finish line of like, how
would you solve the problem atscale, for your association
across all of the differentthings you might want to do.
And maybe you have like agrandiose vision for AI and you
want to get the board sold on itand maybe it's not so grandiose
, maybe it's just a couple ofprojects you'd like to kick off
and you want the board'sapproval.
But if you start with theselittle bits, I think you can go

(31:49):
a long ways.
And that's one of the coolestthings.
Like to your point, mallory.
Ai is so vividly understandablewhen you demonstrate it and a
lot of times people don't dothat.
And this again goes toassumptions we all make about
other humans.
Is that, especially with highlyhighly educated people doctors,
lawyers, engineers you know wetend to feel like, oh, we don't

(32:12):
want to tell all these reallysmart like PhDs or doctors about
how to do video translation orwhatever.
The use case is Right,something, something you think
is cool, like, show themnotebook LM?
Well, of course they're goingto know about that.
There are PhDs.
Of course they're going to knowabout that.
They're PhDs.
Of course they're going to knowabout this.
They're doctors Well, probablynot.

(32:32):
Actually right.
There's a very good chance theydon't know about what it is
that you've discovered thatyou're excited about.
So some little demo can be veryhelpful, and I wouldn't make
assumptions about their level ofknowledge just because of their
overall intellect or educationor how prestigious they are in
terms of their roles and titlesand all that stuff.
So those are some things that Ithink can help break down a
room like that.
And again, you don't need thewhole room, you just need the

(32:53):
handful of influencers thatreally can drive the direction
of the conversation.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
So let's say you do your example, amit, where you do
a video translation.
The board is really impressed,and then their follow-up
questions are so what are youproposing, right?
What are you going to do withthis?
That's really neat.
How does this apply to ourorganization?
Do you think it's best to startwith a smaller project, a quick
win that may have less impacton the organization as a whole?

(33:20):
Or would you say, kind of,shoot for the stars a bit,
transform your association withAI so you can see bigger impact,
or somewhere in between?

Speaker 1 (33:29):
I think it's advisable to start small in
almost every case, even if youhave complete board buy-in.
Let's say they have thiscollective light bulb moment and
they're like we're all in, youcan have all the reserves, just
take them, just do whatever youwant.
And the board says just dowhatever you want, mal, are you
the executive director?
We're handing over 100% of thereserves.
Go spend them all in the nextyear.
Right, that's not going tohappen, but let's just say

(33:50):
hypothetically that were tooccur.
If I were you, and as theexecutive director of this
association, I would stillrecommend you start off really
small, assuming you haven't donemuch yet.
Start off with learning, whichwe always say over and over
again ad nauseum, but it'sreally true, as the foundation
is that if you're not educatedeven at a fundamental level, you
shouldn't try to do like anytype of experiments really,

(34:11):
because you don't have enough ofa basis to understand what to
go experiment with.
So start with some learning.
The big thing there is getbuy-in to train everyone.
This is something we talk abouta lot at Sidecar, that we
believe it is this leadershipimperative, perhaps even a moral
one, that you really need tolook at how to bring everyone
along on this journey.
And you know people say, oh,I'm just going to train the

(34:33):
handful of people on my staffwho are interested in AI.
I don't want to mandate it.
Or they'll say, oh, I have atechnology team that are, you
know, more forward thinking interms of tech.
Let's have them do the AItraining, and perhaps the people
who need it least.
But also, I would suggest toyou that you have no idea where
the best ideas are going to comefrom.
They might come from people youwould never think to be
included in that group, andthere's ways of doing AI

(34:54):
training across your whole staff.
So, but I would.
I would always start with that.
Let's assume you've alreadydone that or you're doing that.
Then, yes, certainly a smallexperiment followed by a little
bit bigger experiment.
So it's, you know, crawl, walk,run, that kind of thing.
I think that's important to see.
You get some organizational,you know, stimuli that builds
reps, that builds learning andall that stuff.

(35:15):
So and we spent a lot of timein this pod talking about those
types of topics I won't go intomuch more detail, but I think,
even if you have total buy-infrom the board, you want to have
something lined up.
That's pretty bite-sized thatyou can come back to the board
with right away and say, hey,we're going to report back to
you guys in the next 30 days onthe success of this project.
And, by the way, that's theonly thing I'd say is set narrow

(35:35):
timelines.
Boards of directors typicallymeet quarterly, sometimes less
frequently.
That doesn't mean that thesepeople like go into hibernation
in between board meetings Ifit's an important enough topic.
What I would say to the boardis listen, I'm not requesting a
special board meeting, but I'dlike to have an asynchronous
update to the board.
We're going to send thatmidstream in the next quarter
with an update on this projectso that you guys are aware of

(35:57):
what we're doing.
Of course, if you are makingsome kind of special request,
you can ask for a specialmeeting.
If it's an important enoughthing, you can actually ask the
board to say listen, I want theboard to authorize me as the
executive director.
Or if you want to have moregovernance, you can say let's
form a special subcommittee ofthe board with three people on

(36:17):
it who will meet monthly withthe executive director to talk
through this, and that specialcommittee actually has some
capability right.
They're not just, they're likepay attention to what the ED is
saying, but they actually maybehave the ability to authorize
more reserve spending orwhatever.
So there's a lot of ways thatthe board can get creative about
this and be supportive.
But the staff has to kind ofput it out there and say this is
what you need to do Because,also remember, you're a

(36:39):
professional association leader,you know all about boards, you
know all about your governancestructure, your board of
directors.
They're typically notprofessional board members.
They're professional doctors,lawyers, engineers, bankers,
whatever.
So you kind of have to guidethem and tell them you can do
this, like, as a board, youcould do this or you could do
this.
So sometimes you have to putlike a menu in front of them.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Hmm, I like the idea of a menu.
So in the event that anassociation has kind of AI
education checked off for allstaff, maybe even their board
members as well, and they'relooking to start small, as you
said, is kind of an essentialfirst step for enterprise AI

(37:29):
across your organization.
But I don't know if I wouldcall an AI data platform
implementation like bite-size orquick.
Do you think that's a goodplace to start or do you think
even something smaller than that?

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Assuming you've done some basic learning.
I think an AI data platform isa good thing.
To at least think about theconcept of bringing all of your
data from all of your differentbusiness applications, as well
as your unstructured data, intoa unified platform that you own
and control is a strategicallyimportant concept in AI.
Whether it's your first or 20thstep in your roadmap really

(38:02):
depends on a lot of factors likewhat else you have going on,
how much technical skill do youhave?
What's your budget?
So I don't generally refer toit as like the first step.
In some cases it totally makessense to make it like the first
significant step, but it'sdefinitely not like a little
bitty project.
It's an involved thing.
It's not a year, but it'sprobably a couple months to get
it set up, so it's a non-trivialeffort.

(38:24):
And the other thing is is it'skind of like doing plumbing.
It's not going to like have alot of sizzle initially, because
you're putting this effort intobuilding something that will
then later be things.
You build other stuff on top ofwhich will then have the sizzle
.
So I think that's something toconsider.
You want to go you rememberyou're always selling right, so
you want to go back to the boardof wins quickly.

(38:45):
You want to establish morecredibility, grow that
credibility.
So I would start with thingsthat are almost like consumer
grade style AI use cases.
So let's just say you don'teven have right now everyone
using Clod or ChatGPT.
Well, get that done right, geteveryone trained on it, do some
real basic things, get somepolicies in place, get everyone
trained and then go back andshow the board the efficacy of

(39:08):
that basic, low-level investmentwith just a consumer-grade tool
.
And then maybe the next step isoh, there's some application If
we put in place, let's say, somekind of AI around abstract
submission.
Let's say that's a pain point.
Now, perhaps your board this isoften the case are active
content contributors becausethey're some of the deepest
experts in the field right,they're at the pinnacle of your

(39:29):
profession.
So probably they're peoplewho've contributed to your
journal or they've spoken atyour events and therefore they
probably have had the personalpain of having dealt with both
sides of that process where theyhave submitted a paper or
submitted something for aconference and they've had to
wait and wait and wait.
And perhaps they've been on theapproval committee side of it
where they've had to reviewcountless submissions, most of

(39:52):
which are totally not on trackfor what your rubric suggests
you're looking for.
So what if we can solve thatpain point on both sides?
What if AI can help us makethat process much, much smoother
?
That's actually a fairly easyuse case for AI.
If you have an AI data platformor other tools where you can
kind of take this unstructureddata, put it through a process
and do even like an initialranking, that can help.

(40:14):
So I think there are ways oftaking smaller and then bigger
steps for sure.
But again, you know you startedthis part conversation by
saying think about the painpoints people have, and I would
suggest that that's exactly whatpeople need to be thinking
about with their board, but atthe individual level, think
about what their personal painpoints have been with your
organization, because that'swhat they're going to remember.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
So hopefully now you've got maybe a couple use
cases in mind, maybe smallerpilot projects, as Amit
mentioned, or maybe something alittle bit bigger like an AI
data platform, depending onwhere your association is.
I want to wrap up this episodetalking about that pathway to
approval with the board.
So you've got to look at yourassociation's unique approval
process.

(40:55):
As Amit said, some boards meetquarterly, others monthly, some
rely heavily on committeerecommendations, while others
handle most discussions as afull board.
As a side note, amit, I did notknow there were boards with
like hundreds of people, sothat's shocking to me, but I'm
sure all of our listeners we'vegot a wide, diverse array of
boards.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
They're nodding their heads right now because it's a
thing.
It's a thing that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
Understanding the structure helps you plan your
approach, so the key is to workbackwards from decision points,
identifying when your proposalsneed to be submitted, which
committees need to review themfirst and how much lead time is
typically required.
When preparing your case,gather practical info that
addresses the board's priorities.
So, as we said, clear budgetrequirements, both initial and

(41:40):
ongoing implementation timelines, necessary resources, security
considerations and expectedoutcomes.
Focus on translating technicalcapabilities into concrete
benefits and, whenever possible,include examples from similar
organizations, if you can.
Your presentation approach alsomatters significantly.
Balance visionary possibilitieswith practical implementation

(42:01):
details.
Be prepared to discuss bothopportunities and challenges
honestly.
Building support throughtargeted conversations before
formal meetings can make acritical difference.
Identify potential championsand skeptics and engage them
individually to understand theirperspectives.
These conversations help yourefine your proposal while
creating advocates who can speakto its merits during board

(42:22):
discussions.
Amit, I want to zone in on onepiece here where ideally you
could, if you're presenting toyour board, reference another
association who's done somethingsimilar and what that impact
has been.
But, as we both know, while alot of associations are moving
on this, we don't have a ton ofuse cases or studies to look at
right now.

(42:42):
So how do you recommendapproaching maybe ROI from that
angle if we've just never seenthis done before or even just
kind of a more like qualitativeimpact.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
So if it's a truly novel use case that doesn't have
any kind of peer examples inthe association market and to
your point, by the way, I thinkwe are starting to see more and
more and more success storieswith AI in the association
community, which is incrediblyexciting.
But if let's just say you'repursuing some path that doesn't
have a comp right where you cansay, hey, this association did

(43:13):
this or this similarorganization did this and this
is the result they got, youmight want to think about it.
Let's say it's aspirational.
So if you rewind time, say fiveyears, even fewer years,
personalization technology waslargely out of reach for most
associations.
So personalization AI wasextremely complex, it was

(43:34):
difficult to implement, it wasvery narrow in its applicability
.
So an AI recommendation orpersonalization tech was very
specific to a given type ofthing.
Personalization tech was veryspecific to a given type of
thing.
And so back then, if you wantedto try to do these things, you

(43:55):
would have to really point tohey, look at what Amazon does,
look how effective they are atrecommending products and how
much cross-selling they're ableto do, which is a significant
portion of their revenue and aneven bigger portion of their
margin.
And look at how great Netflixis at engaging audience by
showing you shows that you mightbe interested in.
Those are examples of AI-drivenpersonalization, but up until
fairly recently, those exampleswere largely like, out of reach

(44:16):
for most associations.
There wouldn't have been likeassociation examples.
I guess the point I would makeis now personalization, of
course, is a lot more capableand a lot more available, so
it's possible to personalizeanything all the time, which is
super exciting.
I love that.
My point, though and there'stons of associations doing it,
which is also cool but let'sjust say, you're doing something
different.

(44:36):
Like this.
Abstract submission stuff is alittle bit more on the frontier.
It's more about unstructureddata and, let's say, there
aren't a lot of associations, orany associations you can find,
that are doing that.
We'll find a comparable usecase in a different industry.
That's not about abstractsubmission, but maybe it's about
some other unstructured dataprocess where they are able to
take a process from months orweeks down to days or hours,

(44:58):
right, and then show like kindof the value creation there.
A lot of times, automationactually favors only one side of
the table, meaning, think aboutclassical customer service
technology.
We've talked about this on thepod before Mallory, where, like
you know, customer service techup until now has been all about
saving money.
It hasn't been about making thecustomer's experience better,

(45:20):
but now something like what Idescribed with abstract
submission can actually serve toboth make the association more
efficient, but also dramaticallyimprove the quality of the
experience for the customeressentially the person who's
submitting.
So I think that's a reallyimportant thing to be thinking
about.
My bottom line on it, though, isthat I think you're going to
have to get creative.
I think you have to reallythoughtful about this.

(45:41):
There's still not tons and tonsof this.
If we were at the point whereyou know every other association
had great use cases, then youknow you'd be kind of in the
mainstream of adoption, and thenpeople would perhaps even start
ending up in the laggardcategory if they weren't doing
this, and so you know we're notthere yet, like.
So if your association doesn'thave a website in 2025, that's

(46:01):
kind of you know you don't wantto be there, right?
So I think that's another thingto point to maybe is prior tech
curves and not being behindagain if the association has
been in the past.
I do want to say one quick thing, just to double click on a
point you made earlier.
As we're wrapping all of thisconversation about the idea of
kind of this pathway to successwith the board and getting

(46:23):
people to approve.
You said something about likeagain targeting the potential
champions and the skeptics.
I think this is again critical.
It's similar to what I wassaying earlier about the folks
in the room thinking about themas individuals and, you know,
garnering support.
If you watch, like you know,political dramas, a lot of times
you see people that are on thestaff of the White House trying
to figure out who in Congress isgoing to vote in favor of their

(46:45):
bill, and it's kind of likethat right in a way, maybe not
as high stakes or as dramatic,but it's the kind of thing that
you need to think about is howdo we move the individual in
order to move the group?

Speaker 2 (46:57):
I want to talk a little bit about the actual
board presentation.
So I want to share an examplewith all of you that an
association professional told meonce so I don't forget it and
they talked about using ChatGPTto practice for their board
presentation and they assignedit different personas of people
on the board and maybe like,provided their bio and said this
person tends to be a skepticabout X, y, z and then had

(47:21):
ChatGPT critique theirpresentation.
So I think that's an excellentuse case that you all can try
pretty much ASAP if you want to.
But, amit, you mentioned thisAI executive briefing that you
give.
You often give this sessionit's about an hour long to
association staff, leadershipteams and to association boards,
and I feel like you have reallynailed down how to present this

(47:43):
information in a way that's alittle bit alarming but also
exciting.
But also people can walk awayfrom understanding.
Okay, yeah, we got to starttalking about this ASAP.
So can you share some of yourtips and tricks when you're
thinking about presenting toassociation boards or any kind
of new tech?
That's kind of scary.

(48:03):
How do you approach that?

Speaker 1 (48:04):
I mean a lot of it is just contextualizing the moment
in time we're in.
So part of what I spend my timeon probably the first eight or
10 minutes of that presentationyou're referring to is talking
about kind of economic cyclesand prior periods of
transformative general purposetechnologies, like think about,
like the printing press, orthink about when electricity was
first harnessed.
Think about, like you know, theoverall scale of what happened

(48:26):
in the industrial revolution.
I think about, you know, thedigital revolution, what about
the internet?
Like what happened in eachperiod of time in history when
these general purposetechnologies, you know, kind of
diffused into society at large,and how long did it take?
And what you see is two thingsNumber one is that these
technologies build on each otherand, as a result of that, the
period of time it takes todiffuse or fully penetrate, you

(48:49):
know, the world at large isshorter and shorter and shorter,
and so that's, you know, aradical decrease in time from,
like, mainstream adoption of,let's say, the printing press,
to when steam engines came out,to when the telephone was
adopted, to, obviously, whencomputing, when mainstream
telephones.
You know, is all this compoundsright Because they're able to
work on top of each other, andthen ultimately, obviously, with

(49:11):
AI, we're seeing a faster rateof impact than anything we've
ever experienced, because it'sthe compounding of everything
we've ever done.
Of course, it's a different typeof thing entirely too.
So part of what I try to do isto frame the moment in time that
we're in to say listen, youhave to recognize that this is

(49:36):
the beginning of another momentin time, similar to what we've
in some cases.
Some of us have lived throughthe Internet or you know,
earlier days of digitalcomputing revolution, and we've
realized how transformative itwas if you take a moment to
reflect on it.
So we want to take advantage ofthat perspective and so, if we
level set that way initially, Itend to find that people from
all walks of life take a moment,take a breath, they're like huh
, yeah, I didn't really think ofAI that way.
I thought of it as this nextwhiz bang thing, but I never
really thought deeply about it,right?

(49:56):
So starting with something likethat can be helpful, I think.
And then, from there, talkingabout like well, exactly what is
AI?
Let's demystify it, let's makeit approachable, let's like not
make it this nonsensical youknow jargon soup that it tends
to be but let's actually talkabout what it actually does and
apply it to like things we cando in our association.
So the rest of it's pretty muchjust practical use cases of

(50:16):
like this is the stuff you cango do and, like a lot of times
people see like videotranslation demo.
I have one of those of me.
I did it like a year and fourmonths ago with HeyGen and the
technology has gotten way better.
I still use it because the oneI had was was really good and
people like, oh my God, I can'tbelieve that you translated
yourself into six differentlanguages and it took no time to
do so.
People, even if you have seen ademo over and over, it

(50:44):
oftentimes doesn't mean anyoneelse has.
Or like a lot of times I talk toaudiences all the time
no-transcript Maybe you shoulddo a like a stock recording of

(51:07):
your executive briefing that wecould share one day.
You know, if our listenerswould find that helpful, I'd be
happy to do that and post thaton our YouTube channel or
somewhere else that would beeasy to access.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Well, everybody, thank you for tuning into this
episode.
Hopefully you figured out a fewstrategies, tactics, to get
your board on board with AI, andif you have had some success in
this area, we would love tohear from you, maybe bring you
on the podcast to interview you.
So please let us know and wewill see you all next week.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
Thanks for tuning into Sidecar Sync this week.
Looking to dive deeper?
Download your free copy of ournew book Ascend Unlocking the
Power of AI for Associations atascendbookorg.
It's packed with insights topower your association's journey
with AI.
And remember, sidecar is herewith more resources, from
webinars to boot camps, to helpyou stay ahead in the

(51:56):
association world.
We'll catch you in the nextepisode.
Until then, keep learning, keepgrowing and keep disrupting.

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Getting Your Board on Board with AI | 82

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