The Virtue of Doing Less

An association leader can be easily enchanted by one word: more. More products and services, more member groups to reach out to, more sponsors, more advocacy efforts, and on and on. It’s a natural instinct for a mission-driven organization: If your goal is to make sure that the International Widget Society promotes the importance of widgets to every person on the planet, then your widget-y work is never done.

But the "more" philosophy can be self-defeating. More effort means more layers of supervision and management, more stress, more expense—and, quite often, very little payoff. Writing in Fast Company, productivity expert Donna McGeorge puts a spotlight on the toll this can take on leaders. Accumulation, she writes, "gathers layers: inherited systems, obligations that no longer serve a purpose. Often, there's the comforting illusion that being across everything means being in control. But this is a fragile place to be."

If 2025 clarified anything, it's the pressure points that association members are facing—around their jobs, around travel, around funding—and put the distinctions between wants and needs in sharp relief. An organization’s instinct is often to demonstrate that it’s "doing something" by standing up a new initiative—McGeorge points to a study that demonstrates humans' impulse to equate "improvement" and "addition." But the tail end of the year is a good time to start thinking differently: What are the processes that need to be pared back or abandoned?

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.