Modernizing APS Governance

Executive Director Scott Steen, CAE, FASAE, discusses APS’ current initiative to modernize its governance with APS President Rick Samson, PhD, FAPS, and governance expert Mark Engle, CAE, FASAE, from the Association Management Center.

Steen: Mark, could you tell us what governance is and why it matters to APS members?

Engle: There are three primary legs to the stool. The first one is around strategy, which approaches getting to member value. The second is around structure, and that’s how we do it—how we encourage members to engage, what that looks like, some structural elements within the organization. And then the third element is really around culture. And that’s where we get the soft side of the business, about relationships. Sometimes some elements really enhance member value, and sometimes elements really inhibit driving value to the membership.

Steen: When people think about governance, they think of the board—in our case, the Council. Is it more than that, or is it really focused there?

Engle: What we see actually is a flattening of structures. It is broader than it was in yesteryear. When we created these organizations—and some of them are a hundred years old—we had weeks or months or years to make decisions. Change was slow to come. Organizations are under assault today, in governance, in competition: competition for members’ time, competition for their resources, particularly financial resources, too. We see that whole landscape directly impacting how we look at the structural elements of governance.

Steen: Rick, why is APS taking on this really big initiative now?

Samson: My answer would be “why not?” This is a very important issue. We haven’t changed our governance in over 40 years. And as Mark says, culture is a really important part of our Society, as with all societies, and culture has changed. We have a broad and diverse membership. We have a structure that some feel does not serve all corners of that membership. And we are looking at financial exigency here with the loss of revenue from open access.

So, as we consider how we’re going to deal with the loss of revenue, we have to consider at the same time, are there programs that we can no longer afford? Or are there programs that should be replaced because there are aspects of our current culture which have yet to be served? So now’s actually a very good time to do it.

Steen: Mark, I would imagine that agility is such an important part of the equation now, being able to act quickly, but also taking in a lot of information from your members.

Engle: Right. Look at the business skills on your staff today compared to where they were five or 10 or 15 years ago. The business acumen of associations has changed dramatically—and the ability that we have to process information and to say, this is where the members really want to go. How do we get tools and programs that are meaningful to them? What does that look like? Those dynamics are very different than writing a book, which we used to do 20 years ago, or creating a course where people would come together. Those dynamics are very different. The business skills are very different today than they have been in the past.

Steen: How do you balance the idea of transparency with the importance of protecting the space, so that people can make the best decisions for the greater good?

Engle: Warren Bennis and Ethan Bernstein, out of Harvard, have done some wonderful research on transparency. What they talk about is informing widely, getting that robust set of information you can ask broadly. Process all these opportunities and start prioritizing them, as Bernstein would say, in a more of a protected environment, where we have to safeguard the ability to challenge each other on decision-making and priority-setting, on a smaller limited basis. And then communicate where we are going, what we are doing and what the value is for members on a very large, robust basis.

Steen: Rick, what are your hopes for this initiative?

Samson: We have to be better at getting a broad spectrum of information from our members. I think our current structure only allows us to receive information from limited groups, and it leaves other people out. Changing the way we gather information, and appreciating the situations of all of our members, and what their needs and what their contributions are, and then having a group of competency-based leaders who can make those decisions.

The final step is we’ve got to do a better job with transparency. I think this is what’s been bleeding air out of our tires. Members constantly are coming up to me saying, “why did this decision get made? Who made this decision?” We have to be better at communicating the effort we took to make a decision, who made it, why it was made and how it’s going to affect everyone. So, my hope is we can get to that point.

Steen: When do you think members should expect to see some of these changes?

Samson: We’re having a leadership retreat this summer when the task force meets in person and will present an example of where we think we should head, so that we can get feedback from our current leaders. We certainly would like to go to the fall Council meeting with a proposal that would be edited, fine-tuned and then prepared for the members to actually vote on. It’d be nice to get this done before open access rolls down the hill and crushes us.

But more importantly, I think we need to serve the members. We’ve heard that many of the members are not happy with the way leadership is managing the Society. We have to address that or we’ll lose these people. We can’t let them split farther apart than they are already. We need to value everyone and what their contributions are. Leadership largely in APS, ever since I’ve been in, is very senior. I think we’re doing a much better job in terms of diversity, age, sex, the whole thing. But we can find a way to bring younger people with new ideas into our leadership structure, but not in the current structure. We need to change our structure so that the young vibrant people who have a career ahead of them help us make decisions.

Steen: So the idea here is: Get broad input from lots and lots of members, create a space, a competency-based space, where leaders can make the best decision for the whole. And then broadcast those decisions out, communicate much more widely on the other side. That’s kind of it.

Engle: That’s it.

This article was originally published in the July 2023 issue of The Physiologist Magazine.