Getting Your Board on Board with AI | [Sidecar Sync Episode 82]

Summary:

In this episode of the Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias take on one of the most pivotal—and often overlooked—challenges in association innovation: getting your board on board with AI. Drawing from Amith's personal boardroom experience and Mallory’s deep dive into board psychology, they break down how to navigate internal politics, craft compelling AI use cases, and turn skeptical board members into innovation allies. From emotional storytelling to small pilot wins, this episode is your roadmap to aligning AI ambition with boardroom approval.

Timestamps:

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Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress 🔗 https://BlueCypress.io, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.

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Mallory Mejias is passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space.

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Read the Transcript

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[00:00:00] Amith: Maybe it's not so grandiose. Maybe it's just a couple of projects you'd like to kick off and you want the board's approval. But if you start with these little bits, I think you can go a long ways and that that's one of the coolest things. Like, to your point, Mallory AI is so vividly understandable when you demonstrate it.

[00:00:17] Welcome to Sidecar Sync, your weekly dose of innovation. If you're looking for the latest news, insights, and developments in the association world, especially those driven by artificial intelligence, you're in the right place. We cut through the noise to bring you the most relevant updates with a keen focus on how AI and other emerging technologies are shaping the future.

[00:00:38] No fluff, just facts and informed discussions. I'm Amith Nagarajan, chairman of Blue Cypress. And I'm your host. Greetings everybody and welcome to the Sidecar Sink, your home for content at the intersection of all things artificial intelligence and the world of associations. My name is Amith Nagarajan,

[00:00:58] Mallory: and my name is Mallory Mejias.

[00:01:00] Amith: And we're your hosts, and today we have an exciting episode for you that I think will be really compelling for leaders within associations, all about how to get your board. Onboard with ai.

[00:01:13] Mallory: Amith, I feel like we've been talking about this, get your board on board with AI episode for a while now. What, what inspired you to, uh, to bring it to the Sidecar Sync docket?

[00:01:24] Amith: You know, it's, it's so critical in nonprofit organizations and associations especially to have alignment. Uh, and that's true of course for all organizations, but with nonprofits and associations, having your volunteer leadership and especially your board of directors fully bought into what you want to go do is, is critical In fact.

[00:01:45] The board largely sets the high level priorities for most organizations. So if the board isn't bought into AI and doesn't understand the, uh, importance of AI and kind of the significance of it in the world, um, the board is not gonna be able to do its job effectively. I. In governing the association and certainly in being involved in setting strategy.

[00:02:06] So to me it's a really critical part because there they're key stakeholders. The board is there to represent the membership at large and in all boards of directors, whether it's a board of an association or a board of a corporation, uh, they have a duty, uh, to the organization in terms of its, uh, long-term health and they're there for a very clear purpose.

[00:02:26] So. Having the board on board with AI is critical because, you know, many people in the world still don't really understand the magnitude of what artificial intelligence really means for the world at large and certainly for their industry or for their organization. So I think that's why it's such a key topic to, uh, for leaders in associations, whether you're earlier in your career or if you're leading an entire association and you're potentially working with a board that isn't.

[00:02:54] Yet onboard with ai. Or maybe they're, they get it, it's there, but they're not really sensing the urgency or they don't believe it's necessarily the top priority. Um, I thought it might be helpful for us to talk about it essentially for a while and talk about different, uh, components of what might help motivate the board.

[00:03:13] Mallory: Yep. It's a great idea and I'm excited to discuss it because as I've told you, Amme, I don't have a ton of direct experience working with boards in general, so I think this will be a great learning experience for me too. To unpack. Amit, in your experience working with association boards and directly with association leaders, do you get the sense that boards right now are pretty open to the idea of ai?

[00:03:34] Are they putting up a fight against it? What's that dynamic?

[00:03:37] Amith: I think that putting up a fight against AI is no longer the case. I think that probably was true a year ago. Mm-hmm. Um, it's much less the case now. I think there's a realization I. In the broader world that AI is here and that AI is a real thing.

[00:03:52] It's not hype. Maybe over-hyped in some ways, maybe under hyped in others, but it's, it's a real thing. It's ha has real utility and it's changing the face of pretty much everything in our world. So I don't see boards fighting against it. What I see is that boards often still don't give it the degree of prioritization that it.

[00:04:09] It that it should have. Obviously in our opinions as people talking about the intersection of AI and associations all the time, we believe strongly that associations need to prioritize ai. Uh, so some of the things boards are not doing consistently or doing, I would say somewhat rarely still is allocating additional funds, uh, pulling from reserves and saying, listen, this is a moment in time.

[00:04:31] That reserves are there for the whole point of reserves is to protect the organization, surely from potential issues like economic problems and, and you know, things like that. But it's also to make investments in the future of the profession or the industry and when there's times of radical change.

[00:04:47] Going on the board should take action to say, listen, we want to release some portion of reserves to make investments in experiments and in in infrastructure to go build the future. Um, and there's a lot of associations out there who struggle mightily because they have very restrictive operating budgets and boards have the power to, uh, potentially unlock some of their, uh, existing financial resources to make experimentation and to make deployment of AI possible.

[00:05:13] That's, that's one example. Another one is just actually being supportive of. Of the executive leadership having a little bit more discretion day to day. Um, some boards are wonderful with that, where they really are much more of a governing body. Uh, but others actually quite frequently are quite involved in, I wouldn't say daily operations of the association, but the degree of approval required, uh, from the board for let's say purchasing decisions is quite granular.

[00:05:41] And so, uh, that really slows things down. You know, when you talk to association leaders and they say, Hey, I have to go get this approved by the board, and it's a 10,000 or $20,000 purchasing decision. It's non-trivial certainly, but it's, I think, well within the discretion of what certainly the CEO should have and possibly even a, a divisional director or VP within an organization like that.

[00:06:01] So, um, sometimes the structures are overly cumbersome, overly restrictive, uh, and don't really provide an opportunity for the culture to thrive in a. A little bit more nimble and experimental way. So these are some things I think boards could definitely be looking at. There's plenty more as well, but I would say, to answer your question more succinctly, boards are probably somewhere in the middle right now, but they need a strong nudge to the side of, Hey, let's go.

[00:06:24] Let's go hard at this.

[00:06:25] Mallory: Mm-hmm. Well, I'm excited to dive into this episode's topic. We're gonna break this down into three conversations more or less. First, I wanna get into the nitty gritty of what motivates board decisions in general across associations, and see if we can help listeners figure out what motivates their board specifically.

[00:06:44] Then we'll talk about the idea of building an irresistible AI use case that your board can't refuse, and then we'll kind of talk about the pathway to getting that AI use case. Approved by the board in the end. So first and foremost, I will say I had a little bit of fun with this first conversation, Amme, because my background, uh, in undergrad is in psychology.

[00:07:03] And typically on the podcast I am, you know, trying out new tools. I'm demoing things, I'm making new accounts with new AI companies. This one I was kind of getting a little bit psychological. I was working with, uh, Claude and Chat, GBT to say, if you were a board member, what would motivate you to serve on a board?

[00:07:19] Like, what do you really care about? So I wanted to, before we dive into. To the whole getting your board on board with AI thing, I, I wanted to figure out what drives board decisions in association. So unlike corporate boards focus primarily on shareholder value, association boards have a dual focus advancing the organization's mission and responsible stewardship of resources.

[00:07:42] Board members, as a said, are typically volunteers who deeply care about the industry or profession, bringing their own expertise and perspectives to the table. Frankly, this might be hard for you to hear ame, but I would say your board may not care that AI is perhaps the big biggest technological advancement we'll see in our lifetimes.

[00:08:00] They probably don't care about Moore's Law or AI capabilities doubling every six months like we do. They care about member impact. Strategic alignment, resource implications, and potential risks. Now, of course, each board has its own unique dynamics, but they all share common concerns when it comes to significant technology investments.

[00:08:20] Will this truly benefit our members? Is this the best use of limited resources? Do we have the capacity to implement this successfully and can we me measure whether it's working? I think understanding these motivations is the first step in crafting a compelling use case for AI implementation. The most successful proposals address these core concerns directly framing AI not as tech for tech's sake, but as a strategic solution to member needs and your organization to challenges.

[00:08:50] So ame, I know you have served on several boards or currently still do. I am curious what motivated you to take on those roles.

[00:08:59] Amith: The boards that I've served on in the nonprofit sector are primarily focused on either some cause that I was focused on personally, or something community related where I was trying to give back to my local community.

[00:09:10] And my motivation has been to just, you know, help out in some way. So, and, and I think a lot of volunteer leaders in various different types of roles, including board roles specifically, have that same motivation. So people tend to care deeply about the profession or the sector or the industry that they're in.

[00:09:26] And that's extremely important. And um, and that is the key, uh, commonality that I tend to see across different organizations is that, you know, people are volunteering their time. They're typically busy people. Um, so that's one piece. Um, another motivation that I think is quite common is career advancement.

[00:09:45] So. If you are in a particular industry and you are a volunteer leader, especially if you're on a board, um, and you know, that means what are you doing well, you're spending your time, uh, collaborating, connecting with other people who are probably pretty far along in their career in that particular profession.

[00:10:04] So it can be quite good in terms of increasing your visibility. In the sector, it can be quite good in terms of creating potential direct opportunities. And so there's definitely, um, an opportunity there. And I, I say that not because I think it's a bad thing at all. I think that's just a natural part of, you know, the duality of some of these, these motivations that exist.

[00:10:24] Uh, but I think in some cases actually that particular motivation may be stronger than anything else. I've definitely seen that myself with people where there's a lot of ego and there's a lot of interest in kind of advancing. Their own, I wouldn't even say agenda, but it's more of their own kind of fingerprint on things.

[00:10:42] So this is particularly true sometimes when you get a new board chair or a board president comes in and oftentimes these terms, which is, that's an important concept to talk about for just a second, is that different boards have different, um, rules around how long the board serves. So something along the lines of like a term in Congress, but there's a term of the board, uh, sometimes boards.

[00:11:03] Uh, you know, kind of have rotating terms where different roles have, you know, two years or three years or sometimes longer. Typically, it's a couple years as a typical term. Um, and some boards have like a, an automatic escalation where you have like a president elect or a chair elect, and then that becomes the chair, and then that person becomes like, you know, the immediate past chair and there's this whole kind of ascension and dissension kind of thing built into the governance structure.

[00:11:28] Um, and so some of those roles are actually even more important than the board overall because they tend to have. Have, uh, the political clout amongst the whole group to move the needle on, on decision making. Uh, and so the question is, is like when you look at the overall board's motivation, then you look at those specific roles and their motivation.

[00:11:45] A lot of times when a new board chair comes in, they're thinking, Hey, how am I going to put my mark on this organization for the two year term that I have? Um. Some are much more of, Hey, what do I need to do that will really serve the industry? Some are much more of, I'm a visionary. I think the industry needs to go in this direction and others might have some kind of pet project or something.

[00:12:05] So it really totally depends. Just like as varied as our personalities are, are the the motivations behind why people would do such things as to volunteer their time on a board. But I think those are some of the common ones.

[00:12:18] Mallory: And I think that's really important because in my research I definitely hear what you're saying about the deep care of the industry, but also that professional advancement piece.

[00:12:27] And I think when presenting a use case for AI implementation to your board, you can kind of tap into both things. So kind of how it will impact your industry, but then also if you do have someone leading your board that's trying to leave a footprint, as you said, or a legacy, tapping into that and saying how this could kind of change the future of the association.

[00:12:45] I don't know. That might be important on the motivation side.

[00:12:48] Amith: Yeah, totally. And you know, the thing I would say too is boards tend to be primarily external facing. I think some of the boards, uh, do look. To the operations of the association as part of what they need to keep an eye on or what they need to at least have some familiarity with.

[00:13:01] But typically the board, they're there to represent the membership. They're there there to represent the sector, and so they're focused on what's going on in the world of the members, what's going on in the world of that industry, and that's. That's good. That's, that's part of the value of a board is that there are representatives, uh, who work in the, in the field.

[00:13:18] Um, and so t typically, I think the motivation tends to be like, how do we, as you said earlier, how do we better serve our members, but what are the issues our members are facing in their lives and in their professional roles day-to-day, week to week, month to month, that we as the association. Could or should be potentially helping with or doing a better job with.

[00:13:39] Uh, sometimes it's pain points we're saying, Hey, the association hasn't done a good job in areas A, B, or C. Or maybe it's more opportunistic where, yeah, we're doing a pretty good job in all of our classical areas of service, but we could be doing these other things. And so it just depends in a number of areas like that.

[00:13:54] The reason I bring up the kind of the external, internal, uh, piece is that. A lot of association folks, the staff tend to be focused on the internal issues, not, not exclusively of course, but think about where you spend your time and the people you talk to, you tend to kind of reinforce the patterns that drive where your energy goes.

[00:14:11] And so if my job every day is to work within an association, running membership or running events, I spend a lot of time thinking about that naturally. So. I think that's actually one of the sources of friction is that boards often want to spend more time thinking about the external world, and a lot of times staff is coming to the board with much more of the internal mindset.

[00:14:32] Even when the head like staff leader, uh, CEO or EVP or whoever it is, or executive director, even when that person came from the industry, once they're working in the role of the, uh, staff, CEO or leader, a lot of times they're, they. Focus on whatever the biggest fire is internally, which may have really, from the minds of the board, like no value or no importance, even though it's obviously critical to the operations of the association.

[00:14:58] So that's one thing to keep in mind coming into this is that what's the perspective of each person around that table. And you pointed this out earlier too, Mallory, that um, the board is a bunch of people. Just like when you're, if you're selling something to an organization, there is no such thing as the organization.

[00:15:14] An organization is, is a made up fiction. There is no such thing as an organization. Um, there is no such thing as a, a company or an association in biology or in physics. It's just something we made up. Um, so we gotta remember that like the actual creatures that are there thinking and listening and talk, interacting with you are a bunch of individuals that happen to be organized at that point in time as the board, but they all have other things going on too.

[00:15:39] Mallory: Oh man, that's such an interesting point that you make, and I'm sympathizing with all of our association CEOs listening and executive directors because you are the ones straddling the internal of your staff versus the external with your board. And I cannot imagine how complicated that must be when you wanna move things forward.

[00:15:57] Amith: Yeah, it's tough. It's a really tough job.

[00:15:59] Mallory: In your experience serving on boards, have you ever had to be part of a discussion around like a really big technology investment or something kind of that would really alter the organization that you were serving on the board? For

[00:16:12] Amith: sure. I mean, that's a big part of what the board should be doing, the board's there for governance and that that is essentially kinda like a safety check, you know, to make sure the organization's run correct.

[00:16:21] In accordance with both the law land, but also, you know, the, the bylaws and kind of the structure the organization has there. And that the board has a duty to ensure that that is the case. That's the one of the fundamental elements of good governance. Um, but that shouldn't take the majority of the board's time.

[00:16:36] The board is a composition of, uh, you know. Smart people who have a lot of experience, and so they should be bringing ideas to the table, which isn't to say that they should be setting the agenda or the vision. That's ultimately the CEO's job, in my mind, in both, not-for-profits and for-profits. A lot of times though, the board does set the direction in the vision, um, but I do think that the board, even when you have a strong CEO who wants to and is capable of leading the vision and the charge ahead towards that vision.

[00:17:04] I believe the board should contribute ideas and say, Hey, this is what I see in the world and, and here's some ideas. And so therefore the board should be having discussions about big strategic topics. Um, so in nonprofits I've been involved with, we've talked about things like the fundamental economic engine of the nonprofit.

[00:17:20] What is the business model, right? Um, and so what I always bring to these conversations is like, that's kind of a foreign concept. What's the business model of the nonprofit? Does that seem like an oxymoron? And in fact, it's not because all organizations, whether they're for profit or. Not-for-profit in terms of their style of tax return.

[00:17:37] Have to have a business model if they wanna be sustainable. And far too many not-for-profits. Uh, particularly like community organizations tend to be, you know, basically hand to mouth kind of thing where they, they're basically out there asking for donations to fund. Way too much of their ongoing operations.

[00:17:54] And so the question is, is is what kind of maybe recurring revenue model can we come up with? Is there a way to create some kind of differentiated value or some kind of product or a for-profit subsidiary that can generate consistent returns to fund the operations so that we're less dependent, maybe not exclusively independent, but.

[00:18:12] Less dependent upon things that we have less control over. So there's those kinds of conversations, those are big discussions. Um, AI tends to be something that I think could influence those discussions deeply. Um, but yeah, I mean the, the board in my experience is involved in that. I've also been involved in boards that I tend to very quickly resign from when they don't talk about this stuff and they're just talking about kind of the minutia, because I feel boards like that really aren't adding value.

[00:18:37] So when in, in cases where I've been recruited to join boards like that. After a fairly short period of time, if I realized that's really what's the discussion, I'm like, look, I'm not adding any value. I'm outta here.

[00:18:46] Mallory: Mm-hmm. Yep. You said something interesting that boards should be able to bring in ideas to the association.

[00:18:53] They are experts in their respective professions and industries. If that is the case, what role do you think the association leadership team plays in helping to educate their board on new technologies, emerging technologies? I know with our sidecar AI learning hub, we do have many associations that have chosen to provide that education to their board.

[00:19:13] Do you see that as a responsibility of association leadership?

[00:19:17] Amith: A hundred percent. I think the association leadership has to be the business experts. You're in the business of running an association. You are the professional that knows how to run the association. And obvious, obviously, you're always improving that knowledge, but that's what you do.

[00:19:32] Um, so your board is the expert in the field and the profession or in the sector. You're the expert in how to run the operation of the association. And so part of that is, um, you know, and the board might be, you know, they might be bringing AI to you. They might be saying, Hey, there's this amazing stuff going on.

[00:19:46] Are you guys using it enough? Internally, the association, that certainly is happening too. Um, but oftentimes that's not the direction of the flows. So I think the, the best executive directors and CEOs. Are bringing to the table with their boards. Hey, look, these are some emerging trends, either macro level trends or industry specific things that we've gotta pay attention to, and.

[00:20:08] Sometimes the board has awareness 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, um, I've, I've personally done this a number of times for friends of ours where they've said, Hey, Amit, can you come talk to our board? And I've, I've spent a lot of time doing that where I've said, look, I'll give you board and executive overview of what AI is doing to the broader world and how it might impact your, your sector, that type of exercise.

[00:20:33] Um, when you. Do that yourself, or you have someone who's very deep in AI to come help you is I think a good thing to do for boards. Um, where I think that, uh, association leaders get a little bit nervous about that is if their board is somewhat technical. Technical of any flavor. So like doctors or, uh, engineers that have nothing to do with ai, but they're, let's say mechanical engineers and or actually if they're in a field that's actually quite close to ai, um, the board tends to be, I.

[00:21:03] Kind of imposing and the staff tend to be pretty afraid of like talking to the board about this stuff. Mm-hmm. What I find really funny is this, is that so many people who are deepest to like the research center of a given field actually have the least practical know-how of how to use the technology.

[00:21:19] Um, so for example, when I talk to leading AI research. Companies and individuals, they're craving input on how to actually use the tools they've built. Like people who build foundation models oftentimes don't know the use cases. Um, people who are doing research on like the next generation of neural network architectures often don't know what Cloud 3.7 can do the way you do, Mallory, it's, it's.

[00:21:40] Kind of crazy actually, but it's, you know, none of us can be experts in everything. Right? So that's the whole thing is we gotta look at it as, again, this collection of people. Um, so I think, going back to your question, I think the real key point is I believe it's the responsibility of the association, staff leadership to educate the board on contemporary topics that the board must understand to govern the association.

[00:22:02] And AI is clearly one of them.

[00:22:04] Mallory: The last question here I wanna touch on with motivation, and I imagine this is an issue across many associations, but let's say your board is really motivated by tradition. They wanna do what's worked, they wanna keep things flowing, they wanna keep the association going as it has in the past.

[00:22:20] What would you Amit do with that? Like if you're, so, if your board is really stuck in tradition, but obviously AI is not traditional, how would you approach that?

[00:22:31] Amith: I mean, I, I think that in, in some cases, it's appropriate to put a little bit of fear in them in terms of the tradition being upended, whether it's the association helping with it or not.

[00:22:42] Um, so let's say you're in the legal profession somewhere and your board is not interested in AI for whatever reason, and they have that kind of mindset you just described. Well, if you go and show them the kind of disruption that's happening right now in legal services, in in-house law, all this stuff.

[00:23:00] Due to ai, it's, it's something that can't be ignored. I think that's a field that probably, I would doubt there's a board of directors of any bar association or other legal association out there that isn't thinking about this stuff. 'cause it's such a, a dramatic impact in that particular field. But you can find certain fields that are, haven't been as impacted.

[00:23:17] Certain branches of medicine maybe that haven't been as affected operationally by ai. So, um, I think you have to kind of go. Meet them where they're at, but then try to compel them with like, look, this isn't a generalized idea. This is how it's affecting us. You may not see it, but this is, this is what it's going to do and make the case.

[00:23:37] Mm-hmm. And the other thing to remember is that as a leader, um, I. Your title actually is Chief Repetition Officer. So, and that's for all jobs at all levels. If you want to get something done, you're going to find yourself saying the same thing over and over and over again. So do not think that going and, you know, really advocating for AI with your board is a one and done thing.

[00:24:01] Maybe it's unlikely. Um, it's probably a journey You have to take them on the journey, starting with something that isn't even like a, an ask where you're starting off with like an education session and you just start with any assumptions you bring in someone from the outside who knows this stuff and says, Hey, I really, I.

[00:24:16] Want to introduce this person to you to like give you an hour of, of this topic. That can be a great way to kind of make it a little bit softer. And then maybe the next board meeting you talk about, Hey, what did you guys think of that? Let's have a conversation about it. What do you think the impact of some of these technologies will be?

[00:24:31] Right. So I. There's a number of different techniques I think you could use for that, but don't think of it as a one and done. It's gonna be a, uh, a continual process. In some cases, you just have to be really persistent. So after a while, if the executive director keeps asking for something, um, maybe the board gives in, maybe the executive director isn't looked upon as favorably.

[00:24:50] That's always a risk. And I, I realize that's a real practical consideration for a lot of, a lot of staff execs, but it's just a factor I think you have to consider is, that's a, it's likely a many, many step process.

[00:25:01] Mallory: Mm-hmm. Chief Repetition Officer. I love that. It makes me think, uh, of an acting example in my own life where there's, you know, a couple acting books that I'll keep going back to over and over again.

[00:25:11] And even though I've read them multiple times, rereading it for the sixth or the seventh time, I'll get one more thing out of it. Oh, okay. I get this now, now that I've had these life experiences, that makes a lot more sense. So I, I love the idea of repeating over and over.

[00:25:25] Amith: Totally. And that is why Mallory and I both wholeheartedly recommend that you listen to Sidecar Sync episodes more than once,

[00:25:33] Mallory: over and over all 70 something, 80 episodes that we have.

[00:25:37] Okay. So hopefully at this point in the episode, you're feeling like you have reflected on your board's motivations. Maybe you're understanding where they're coming from in a little bit of a deeper way. So I wanna talk about the next step, which is building that AI business use case. When it comes to securing board approval for your AI initiatives, the quality of the business use case can make or break a proposal.

[00:25:59] The key is to build a case around organizational priorities and member needs, rather than the AI itself. A compelling AI business case connects the dots between your association, strategic goals, current challenges, and how AI can bridge that gap. So start by identifying some specific pain points that AI could address.

[00:26:17] Is your member engagement declining or your staff overwhelmed? Is your content not reaching the right members at the right time? These concrete problems provide the foundation for a proposal and then quantify the potential impact whenever possible, not just in cost savings, but in member value, improved service, delivery, and or competitive advantage.

[00:26:39] Effective business use cases also address implementation realities, including resource requirements, timeline considerations, and potential risks. Boards appreciate honesty about challenges alongside enthusiasm about opportunities. I would say the short and sweet takeaway here is that there's no one size fits all use case to get your board on board with ai.

[00:27:00] This is gonna be highly dependent on what motivates your board and what challenges and opportunities your association is faced with, but hopefully we can help you narrow down some options. So, ame, I wanna hear your kind of thought process or framework for helping an association identify kind of the best pilot project AI use case to get the board on board.

[00:27:21] Amith: Well, forgetting about boards and forgetting about titles and all that other stuff, just thinking about the individuals. So I would take some time to study who these people are. So of course if you have a board of like, you know, 700 people or something, that's harder and, and actually that sounds like a joke, but there are some associations that

[00:27:36] Mallory: you're kidding, literally

[00:27:36] Amith: have boards more than a hundred people.

[00:27:39] Uh, I've seen that. Fairly often, and it's, it's quite common to have boards in the many dozens, like 30, 40, 50 people. Wow. That's a whole other conversation because fundamentally, boards that large are definitionally ineffective, uh, at making any kind of decision. So that, that's a different problem, one that we won't tackle on the sidecar sink.

[00:27:57] Today, maybe at some point, but probably that's not really in our wheelhouse. It's more of like governance experts can talk about how do you potentially get to a more streamlined board. There has been border form and a lot of associations to get to seven person, nine person, 11 person boards that are still representative of a diverse array of opinions and backgrounds, but also small enough to actually be manageable.

[00:28:17] But. Starting with the people. If you take the time to understand, particularly the people that are in positions of influence, obviously the board chair, people like that, but also other people who tend to be vocal at past board meetings. Even if you have 50 people, think about the four or five people who tend to talk the most and study their backgrounds.

[00:28:34] Think about what the roles are, how long they've been practicing in that profession or that industry, um, and try to think about the types of problems that they encounter in their job. So. I think that's a really key thing to do in any type of of interaction you have with someone is you wanna relate to them.

[00:28:51] You want to do the translation. You don't go to them and say, Hey, AI can translate video from English to Spanish. That's cool. But what we wanna do is take it all the way to them and make it bite sized and super attractive to eat, which is to say that you make the content something that they understand.

[00:29:07] You don't say, Hey, we have this generic translation capability, but rather, Hey, you know how you have patients who don't speak English? That, well, they can kind of speak English, but they really would understand Spanish or French or something else better. Well now AI can actually help with that because this is incredibly great tool.

[00:29:24] And let me give you an example and then use a consumer grade tool. You don't necessarily try to do this at enterprise scale first, but you use a hey gen or you use one of these other tools and you create a version. You take maybe even a video of that person. 'cause a lot of times board members have YouTube clips and other things about them and maybe get their permission for this.

[00:29:42] 'cause this might freak 'em out. But like put their video through, Hey, gen, at the beginning of a board meeting at the, by the end of the board meeting or even in the middle of the board meeting, you'll have a translation. And that hits home. 'cause it's actually them speaking with their permission right at the beginning of the board meeting to do this.

[00:29:56] Um, so there's some things you can do like that to make it a little more personal, to make it actually matter. And so, if I'm a doctor and I deal with a lot of patients who don't speak English, and I have content that I, I can't really communicate as effectively and I don't speak Spanish. That'd be amazing.

[00:30:10] Right? And so maybe that's not association business, right? But it's, it's really relevant to the person and they go, oh my God, I had no idea that AI could do this and do it this well. So you have to make people remember through the way they feel. Mm-hmm. People don't remember what you said. People don't remember what they read.

[00:30:28] They remember how you made them feel. I think that's a Maya angel quote from, uh, yeah, something is. Unbelievable thing. And I, that's been stuck in my head for, for years and it's really powerful because that is true. Like we're information overload all the time. But we do remember our feelings, particularly strong ones, um, preferably, you know, we can help them get excited, but also it's appropriate at this time for them to have some degree of fear over what happens if you don't do anything.

[00:30:53] Mallory: Yeah, and there's this concept, I think I talked about it on a previous pod, I don't know if it's out yet, uh, in psychology called a light bulb memory where emotions are so strong that you kind of can remember, uh, an event with a lot of specificity. And I kind of have my own light bulb memory around generative ai, which was at Digital now 2022, when Thomas showed us, um, the GPT playground and Dolly too at that time.

[00:31:15] And I'll never forget it for my whole life, that because it was in a strong emotional feeling. So thinking that you as an association leader. Could help your board have that light bulb moment with ai. That's really powerful.

[00:31:27] Amith: I think it could be and and I think that part of it is you don't have to go all the way to the finish line of like, how would you solve the problem at scale for your association across all of the different things you might wanna do.

[00:31:37] And maybe you have like a grandiose vision for AI and you want to get the board sold on it. And maybe it's not so grandiose. Maybe it's just a couple of projects you'd like to kick off and you want the board's approval. But if you start with these little bits. I think you can go a long ways and that that's one of the coolest things.

[00:31:50] Like, to your point, Mallory AI is so, uh, so vividly understandable when you demonstrate it. And a lot of times people don't do that. And this again goes to assumptions we all make about other humans, is that, especially with highly, highly educated people, doctors, lawyers, engineers, um, you know, we tend to feel like, oh, we don't wanna tell all these really smart like PhDs or doctors.

[00:32:16] About how to do video translation or whatever the use case is, right? Something, something you think is cool, like show them notebook lm. Well, of course they're gonna know about that. They're PhDs. Of course they're gonna know about this. They're doctors. Well, probably not actually, right? There's a very good chance they don't know about I.

[00:32:31] What it is that you've discovered that you're excited about. So some little demo can be very helpful, and I wouldn't make assumptions about their level of knowledge just because of their overall intellect or education or how prestigious, you know, they are in terms of their, their, their roles and titles and all that stuff.

[00:32:46] So those are some things that I think can help break down, uh, a room like that. And, and again, you don't need the whole room, you just need the handful of influencers that really, uh, can drive the direction of the conversation.

[00:32:58] Mallory: Mm-hmm. So let's say you do your example, a myth where you do a video translation.

[00:33:02] The board is really impressed, and then their follow up questions are, so what are you proposing? Right? What, what are you gonna do with this? That's really neat. Um, how does this apply to our organization? Do you think it's best to start with a smaller project, a quick win that may have less impact on the organization as a whole?

[00:33:21] Or would you say kind of shoot for the stars a bit? Transform your association with ai. Uh, so you can see bigger impact or somewhere in between.

[00:33:29] Amith: I think it's advisable to start small in almost every case, even if you have complete board buy-in, let's say they have this, this collective light bulb moment.

[00:33:37] Mm-hmm. And they're like, we're all in. You can have all the reserves. Just take 'em. Just do whatever you want. And the board says, just do whatever you want, mal, are you the executive director? We're handing over a hundred percent of the reserves, go spend 'em all in the next year. Right. That's not gonna happen.

[00:33:49] Right. But let's just say, hypothetically, that would occur if I were you and as the executive director of this association, I would still recommend you start off really small if you have, assuming you haven't done much yet. Start off with learning, which we always say over and over again ad nauseum, but it's, it's really true as the foundation is that if you're not educated, even at a fundamental level, you shouldn't try to do like.

[00:34:10] Any type of experiments really because you don't have enough of a basis to understand what to go experiment with. So start with some learning. Um, the big thing there is get buy-in to train everyone. This is something we talk about a lot at Sidecar, that um, we believe it is this leadership imperative, perhaps even a moral one that you really need to look at how to bring.

[00:34:29] Everyone along on this journey and you know, people say, oh, I'm just gonna train the handful of people on my staff who are interested in ai. I don't wanna mandate it. Or they'll say, oh, I have a technology team that are, you know, more forward thinking in terms of tech. Let's have them do the AI training and perhaps the people who need at least.

[00:34:45] But also I would suggest to you that you have no idea where the best ideas are gonna come from. They might come from people you would never think to be included in that group. Um, and there's ways of doing AI training across your whole staff. So, but I would, I would always start with that. Let's assume you've already.

[00:34:59] Done that or you're doing that. Um, then yeah, certainly a small experiment followed by a little bit bigger experiments. So it's, it's, you know, crawl, walk, run, that kind of thing. I think that's important. So you get some organizational, um, you know, stimuli that builds reps, that builds learning and all that stuff.

[00:35:15] So, and we spend a lot of time in this pod talking about those types of topics. I won't go into much more detail, but I think even if you have total buy-in from the board, you want to have something lined up. That's, that's pretty bite-sized that you can come back to the board with right away and say, Hey, we're gonna report back to you guys in the next 30 days on the success of this project.

[00:35:33] And by the way, that's the only thing I'd say is set narrow timelines. Um, boards of directors typically meet quarterly, sometimes less frequently. Um, that doesn't mean that these people like. Go into hibernation in between board meetings if it's an important enough topic. What I would say to the board is, listen, I'm not requesting a special board meeting, but I'd like to have an asynchronous update to the board.

[00:35:52] We're gonna send that midstream in the next quarter with an update on this project so that you guys are aware of what we're doing. Of course, if you are making some kind of special request, um, you can ask for a special meeting. If it's an important enough thing, you can actually ask the board to say, listen, uh, I want the board to authorize.

[00:36:09] Me as the executive director, or if you want to have more governance, you can say, let's form a special subcommittee of the board with three people on it who will meet monthly with the executive director to talk through this. And that special committee actually has some capability, right? They're not just, they're like pay attention to what the ED is saying, but they actually maybe have the ability to authorize more reserve spending or whatever.

[00:36:31] So there's a lot of ways that the board can get creative about this and be supportive, but the staff has to kind of put it out there and say, this is what you need to do. Because also remember. You're a professional association leader. You know all about boards, you know all about your governance structure.

[00:36:44] Your board of directors isn't a profe, they're typically not professional board members. They're professional doctors, lawyers, engineers, bankers, whatever. So, um, you kind of have to guide them and tell 'em you can do this, like as a board, you could do this or you could do this. Um, so sometimes you have to put like a menu in front of them.

[00:37:02] Mallory: Hmm. I like the idea of a menu. So in the event that an association has kind of AI education checked off for all staff, maybe even their board members as well, and they're looking to start small, as you said, with kind of a bite-sized project. I am. I'm hoping people can walk away from this episode with maybe a few ideas.

[00:37:19] It seems like in a lot of our conversations in myth on this podcast, we discuss that an AI data platform is kind of an essential first step for enterprise. AI across your organization, but I don't know if I would call an AI data platform implementation like bite-size or quick. Do you think that's a good place to start, or do you think even something smaller than that?

[00:37:40] Amith: Assuming you've done some basic learning, I think an AI data platform is a good thing to at least think about. Okay. Um, the concept of bringing all of your data from all of your different business applications as well as your unstructured data into a unified platform that you own and control, um, is a strategically important concept in ai, whether it's your first or 20th step in your roadmap.

[00:38:01] Really depends on a lot of factors, like what else you have going on, how much technical skill do you have, what's your budget? Um, so I don't generally refer to it as like the first step. Um, in some cases it totally makes sense to make it like the first significant step, but it's definitely not like a little bitty project.

[00:38:17] It's, it's an involved thing. It's. It's not a year, but it's probably a couple months to get it set up. So it's, it's a non-trivial effort. Um, and the other thing is, is it's kinda like doing plumbing. It's not gonna like, have a lot of sizzle, um, initially because you're putting this effort into building something that will then later be things you build other stuff on top of, which will then have the sizzle.

[00:38:37] Um, so I think that's something to consider. You want to go, you remember you're always selling, right? So, um. You wanna go back to the board of wins quickly, you wanna establish more credibility, um, grow that credibility. So I would start with things that are almost like, uh, consumer grade style AI use cases.

[00:38:54] So let's just say you don't even have right now everyone using CLO or chat GPT. Well get that done, right? Get everyone trained on it, do some real basic things, get some policies in place, get everyone trained, uh, and then go back and show the board the efficacy of that. Basic low level investment with just a consumer grade tool.

[00:39:12] And then maybe the next step is, oh, there's some application if we put in place, um, let's say some kind of AI around abstract submission, let's say that's a pain point and perhaps you're bored with, this is often the case are active content contributors because there's some of the deepest experts in the field, right?

[00:39:28] They're at the pinnacle of your profession. So probably they're people who've contributed to your journal or they've spoken at your events, and therefore they probably have had the personal pain of having dealt with both sides of that process where they have submitted a paper or submitted something for a conference and they've had to wait and wait and wait.

[00:39:45] And perhaps they've been on the approval committee side of it where they've had to review countless submissions, most of which are totally. Not on track for what your rubric suggests you're looking for. So what if we can solve that pain point on both sides? What if AI can help us make that process much, much smoother?

[00:40:03] That's actually a fairly easy use case for ai. If you have an AI data platform or other tools where you can kind of take this unstructured data, put it through a process, and do even like an initial ranking, that can help. So. I think there are ways of taking smaller and then bigger steps for sure. Mm-hmm.

[00:40:19] But again, you know, you started this part conversation by saying think about the pain points people have. And I would suggest that that's exactly what people need to be thinking about with their board. But at the individual level, think about what their personal pain points have been with your organization.

[00:40:32] 'cause that's what they're gonna remember.

[00:40:34] Mallory: So hopefully now you've got maybe a couple use cases in mind, maybe smaller pilot projects as Amme mentioned, or maybe something a little bit bigger like an AI data platform, depending on where your association is. I wanna wrap up this episode talking about that pathway to approval with the board.

[00:40:51] So. You've gotta look at your association's unique approval process. As Amit said, some boards meet quarterly, others monthly. Some rely heavily on committee recommendations while others handle most discussions as a full board. As a side note, Amit, I did not know there were boards with like hundreds of people, so that's, that's shocking to me.

[00:41:09] But I'm sure all of our listeners, we've got a wide diverse array of boards representing,

[00:41:13] Amith: they're nodding their heads right now. 'cause yeah, there's, it's, it's a thing. It's a thing that's

[00:41:16] Mallory: crazy. Um, understanding the structure helps you plan your approach. So the key is to work backwards from decision points, identifying when your proposals need to be submitted, which committees need to review them first, and how much lead time is typically required.

[00:41:31] When preparing your case, gather practical info that addresses the board's priorities. So as we said, clear budget requirements, both initial and ongoing implementation timelines, necessary resources, security considerations and expected outcomes. Focus on translating technical capabilities into concrete benefits, and whenever possible include examples from similar organizations.

[00:41:53] If you can. Your presentation approach also matters significantly. Balance visionary possibilities with practical implementation details. Be prepared to discuss both opportunities and challenges honestly. Building support through targeted conversations before formal meetings can make a critical difference.

[00:42:10] Identify potential champions and skeptics and engage them individually to understand their perspectives. These conversations help you refine your proposal while creating advocates who can speak to its merits during board discussions. Amitha, I wanna zone in on one piece here. Where ideally you could, if you're presenting to your board, reference another association who's done something, uh, similar and what that impact has been.

[00:42:35] But as we both know, while a lot of associations are moving on this, we don't have a ton of use cases or studies to look at right now. So how do you recommend approaching maybe ROI from that angle if we've just never seen this done before? Or even just kind of a more like qualitative impact.

[00:42:53] Amith: So if it's a truly novel use case that doesn't have any kind of peer examples in the association market.

[00:42:58] And, and to your point by the way, I think, I think we are starting to see more and more and more, uh, success stories with AI in the association community, which is incredibly exciting. Uh, but if, let's just say you're pursuing some path that doesn't have a comp, right? Where you can say, Hey, this association did this, or this similar organization did this, and this is the result they got.

[00:43:17] Um. You might want to think about it. Let's say it's aspirational. So, uh, if you rewind time, say five years, even, even fewer years, um, personalization technology was largely out of reach for most associations. So, uh, personalization AI was extremely complex. It was difficult to implement. Uh, it was very narrow and it's.

[00:43:38] Applicability. So an AI recommendation or personalization tech was very specific to a given type of thing. Um, and so back then, if you wanted to try to do these things, you would have to really point to, Hey, look at what Amazon does. Look how effective they are at recommending products and how much cross-selling they're able to do, uh, which is a significant portion of their revenue and an even bigger portion of their margin.

[00:44:02] Um, and look at how great Netflix is at engaging. Audience by showing you shows that you might be interested in. Those are examples of AI driven personalization. But up until fairly recently, um, those examples were largely like out of reach for most associations. There wouldn't have been like association examples.

[00:44:19] So I guess the point I would make is now personalization of course is a lot more capable and a lot more available. Uh, so it's possible to personalize anything all the time, which is super exciting. I love that. My point though, and there's tons of associations doing it, which is also cool, but let's just say you're doing something different like this abstract submission stuff is a little bit more on the frontier.

[00:44:39] It's more about unstructured data, and let's say there aren't a lot of associations or any associations you can find that are doing that, we'll find a comparable use case in a different industry that's not about abstract submission, but maybe it's about some other unstructured data. Process where they're able to take a process from months or weeks down to days or hours.

[00:44:58] Right. And then show like kind of the value creation there. Um, a lot of times automation actually favors only one side of the table, meaning think about classical customer service, technology. Um, and we've talked about this on the pod before Mallory like. Customer service tech up until now has been all about saving money.

[00:45:16] Mm-hmm. It hasn't been about making the customer's experience better. Um, but now something like what I described with abstract submission can actually serve to both make the association more efficient, but also dramatically improve the quality of the experience for the, the customer, essentially the person who's submitting.

[00:45:32] So I think that's a really important thing to be thinking about. Um. My bottom line on it though is that I think you're gonna have to get creative. Um, I think you have to really thoughtful about this. Um, there's still not tons and tons of this. If we were at the point where, you know, every other association had great use cases, then you know, you'd be kind of in the mainstream of adoption and then people would perhaps even start ending up in the laggard category if they weren't doing this.

[00:45:55] Um, and so, you know, we're not there yet. Like, so if your association doesn't have a website in 2025. That's kind of, you know, you don't wanna be there, right? So, um, I think that's, that's another thing to point to maybe is prior tech curves and not being behind again, if the association has been in the past.

[00:46:11] Um, I do wanna say one quick thing just to double click on a point you made earlier. Um, as we're wrapping all of this conversation about the idea of, of kind of this, this pathway to success with the board and, you know, getting people to approve. Um, you said something about like, again, targeting the.

[00:46:28] Potential champions and the skeptics. I think this is, again, critical. It's similar to what I was saying earlier about the folks in the room thinking about them as individuals. Mm-hmm. And, you know, garnering support. And if you watch like, you know, political dramas, a lot of times you see people that are on the staff of the White House trying to figure out who in Congress is gonna vote in favor of their bill.

[00:46:45] And it's kinda like that, right? In a way, not, maybe not as high stakes or as dramatic, but like, it's the kind of thing that you need to think about is like, how do we move the individual in order to move the group?

[00:46:55] Mallory: Mm-hmm. I want to talk a little bit about the actual board presentation. So I wanna share an example with all of you that an association professional told me once, so I don't forget it, and they talked about using chat UPT to practice for their board presentation.

[00:47:11] And they assigned it different personas of people on the board and maybe like provided their bio and said, this person tends to be a skeptic about X, Y, Z. And then had, uh, chat boutique critique their presentation. So I think that's an ex excellent use case that you all can try pretty much ASAP if you want to.

[00:47:27] But Amit, you mentioned this. AI executive briefing that you give, you often give this session, it's about an hour long to association, uh, staff leadership teams and to association boards. And I feel like you have really nailed down how to present this information in a way that's a little bit alarming, but also exciting, but also people can walk away from understanding, oh, okay.

[00:47:51] Yeah, we gotta start talking about this asap. So can you share some of your. Tips and tricks when you're thinking about presenting to association boards, like how do you, or any kind of new tech, that's kind of scary, how do you approach that?

[00:48:05] Amith: A lot of it is just contextualizing the moment in time we're in.

[00:48:07] So part of what I spend my time on, probably the first eight or 10 minutes of that presentation you're referring to is talking about kind of economic cycles and prior periods of transformative general purpose technologies. Like think about like the printing press, or think about when electricity was first harnessed.

[00:48:23] Think about like, you know, the overall scale of what happened in the industrial revolution. Or think about, you know, the digital revolution. Um, what about the internet? Like what happened in each period of time in history when these general purpose. Technologies, you know, kind of diffused into society at large, and how long did it take?

[00:48:39] And what you see is two things. Number one is that these technologies build on each other and as a result of that, the period of time it takes to diffuse or fully penetrate, you know, the world at large is shorter and shorter and shorter. And so that's, you know, a radical decrease in time from like mainstream adoption of, let's say the printing press to when steam engines came out.

[00:49:00] To when the telephone was adopted to, obviously when computing went mainstream. Telephones, uh, you know, is, is all this com compounds, right? Because that they, they're able to work on top of each other. And then ultimately, obviously with ai, we're seeing a faster rate of, uh, impact than anything we've ever experienced because it's the compounding of everything we've ever done.

[00:49:19] Of course, it's a different type of thing entirely too. So part of what I try to do is to frame the moment in time that we're in to say, listen, you have to recognize that this is. The beginning of another moment in time similar to what we've, in some cases, some of us have lived through the internet or you know, earlier days of digital computing revolution.

[00:49:36] Um, and we've realized how transformative it was if you take a moment to reflect on it. So we wanna take advantage of that perspective. And so if we level set that way initially, I tend to find that people from all walks of life. Take a moment, take a breath, and like, huh. Yeah, I didn't really think of AI that way.

[00:49:53] I thought of it as this next whizzbang thing, but I never really thought deeply about it. Right. So starting with something like that can be helpful, I think. Uh, and then from there, talking about like, well, exactly what is ai? Let's demystify it. Let's make it approachable. Let's like not make it this nonsensical, you know, jargon, soup.

[00:50:07] That it tends to be, but let's actually talk about what it actually does and apply it to like things we can do in our association. So the rest of it's pretty much just practical use cases of like, this is the stuff you can go do. And like a lot of times people see like video translation demo. I have one of those of me, I, I did it like a year and four months ago with Hey Jen, and the technology's gotten way better.

[00:50:27] I still use it 'cause the one I had was, was really good. And people are like, mm-hmm. Oh my God, I can't believe that you translated yourself into six different languages. And it took. No time to do so. Um, people, even if you have seen a demo over and over, it oftentimes doesn't mean anyone else has, or like, a lot of times I, I talk to audiences all the time.

[00:50:44] I'll ask for a show of hands. And a lot of people were like, oh, maybe 5%, 10%, 20% of the audience has seen some things that, like, we think you're like super obvious use cases from 12 months ago. Right? So you've gotta rethink that when you're gonna go, you know, speak with a group like this.

[00:50:59] Mallory: Mm-hmm. Maybe you should do a, like a stock recording of your executive briefing that we could share one day.

[00:51:06] Amith: You know, if our listeners would find that helpful, I'd be happy to do that and post that on, on our YouTube channel or, or somewhere else that would be easy to access. I.

[00:51:14] Mallory: Well everybody, thank you for tuning into this episode. Hopefully you figured out a few strategies, tactics to get your board on board with ai, and if you have had some success in this area, we would love to hear from you, maybe bring you on the podcast to interview you, so please let us know and we will see you all next week.

[00:51:35] Amith: Thanks for tuning into Sidecar Sync this week. Looking to dive deeper. Download your free copy of our new book, ascend Unlocking the Power of AI for associations@ascendbook.org. It's packed with insights to power your association's journey with ai. And remember, sidecar is here with more resources from webinars to bootcamps to help you stay ahead in the association world.

[00:51:57] We'll catch you in the next episode. Until then, keep learning, keep growing, and keep disrupting.