AUTHOR’S ATTESTATION: This article was written entirely by Jeff De Cagna AIMP FRSA FASAE, a human author, without using generative AI.

As of this article’s publication date (10/17/24), there are 1901 days remaining in The Turbulent Twenties, and 76 days until this decade’s midpoint on January 1, 2025.

There are fewer than 80 days before the second half of The Turbulent Twenties begins, and I find myself acutely concerned about what will happen within and around the association community over those sixty months. More worrying is my apprehension that our community’s most senior decision-makers do not yet appreciate the full dimensions of the difficulties ahead as this decade enters its next phase.

While it is accurate to say that my work as a board advisor typically places me at a 3 on the “future number” continuum, in which 1=highly pessimistic and 6=highly optimistic, these concerns go beyond any natural lean toward pessimism. There is no way to overstate just how high the stakes of what happens next are for our world, our country, and our community’s associations, stakeholders, and successors. It is essential that we use these next 76 days to do everything we can to prepare for what we are about to confront.

My Three Biggest Concerns

In my recent Association Adviser Podcast conversation with Naylor Association Solutions CEO Christine Shaw, I previewed this article by pointing out the most significant areas of concern I have for our community over the next 60 months: systemic upheaval, systemic risks, and systemic problems. It is these concerns on which association boards and CEOs must focus their attention right away.

Systemic upheaval—Throughout the first half of the 2020s, our world has had no choice but to adapt to greatly-increased turbulence. Not only did a foreseeable yet unexpected global health emergency forcibly remove us from our previous trajectory toward the future, it exacerbated existing suffering while also unleashing additional forces of harm on humanity. We continue to struggle with the deep and disruptive impact of these social, technological, economic, environmental, and political (STEEP) factors and their ongoing consequences for our individual and collective well-being. While life in late 2024 may feel more like our pre-pandemic world, it is very different and definitely not “normal.” Everything we are experiencing today is the result of nearly sixty months of relentless systemic upheaval.

These challenging conditions, described well by futurist Jamais Cascio’s BANI framework about which I have written in previous columns, are not going away in the next 60 months. Indeed, the opposite is true. As this decade continues, association boards and CEOs must prepare themselves and their organizations for systemic upheaval to be amplified and become more intense. Among other factors, Big Tech’s exploitative competition for AI supremacy, the advent of a consistently hotter world, and the dehumanizing effects of our deeply divisive public discourse will make systemic upheaval much worse. While associations cannot prevent this outcome, they can direct their agency toward reducing the damage of upheaval by bringing conflicting voices and views together to find common ground for safeguarding our shared humanity.

Systemic risks—By definition, more systemic upheaval means more systemic risks. Arguably the most disquieting manifestation of the systemic risks we face is the polycrisis. Operating in the context of multiple complex and interconnected crises that combine to create an even greater detrimental impact on the world is an inherently risky situation. Making matters worse is the continuing shift of primary responsibility for risk away from business and societal institutions and toward individuals. For example, some insurance companies are no longer doing business in parts of the U.S. that are most adversely affected by the climate emergency, leaving residents in those regions without good options. The adoption of unregulated AI also creates an extraordinary level of risk for all individual users, while AI’s corporate creators successfully lobby to minimize their risk exposure.

As this decade continues, the elevated level of systemic risks in the broader world will emerge as an even more significant threat to the stability of association work. While association boards and CEOs may choose to focus first on addressing financial risks, they must not ignore other forms of systemic risk, including environmental, human, reputational, and technical risks. A unique risk consideration for association boards is what I call “governing debt,” which, as I wrote in 2018, represents “…the accrued constraints, disadvantages and obstacles associations encounter due to the failure of their boards over time to prepare for the future.” Association decision-makers must prioritize the retirement of governing debt to reduce their organizations’ vulnerability to risk and expand their options for attending to other risk concerns and addressing systemic problems.

Systemic problems—The presence of both greater upheaval and higher risk demands the thoughtful devotion of our collective attention to solving systemic problems. Addressing systemic problems is made far more difficult by their “wickedness,” i.e., the presence of complicated and interdependent dynamics and the absence of agreement among stakeholders about how best to tackle them. For this reason, systemic problems are frequently deferred, almost always with an espoused commitment to “revisit them in the future’ when the conditions for working on them will be more favorable. Over the next 60 months, however, continuing to postpone the inescapable need for meaningful action on systemic problems is an irresponsible choice to prolong short-term pain while injuring long-term thrivability.

Association boards and CEOs should reframe their perspectives to regard working on systemic problems as an invaluable pathway for organizational renewal. Through stewardship, association boards commit to leave the systems for which they are responsible better than how they found them for the benefit of stakeholders and successors. This focus on stewardship presents a compelling opportunity for boards and CEOs to reconnect their organizations with the historical purpose of associations as builders of social capital in our society. By enabling sustained and trusted collaboration within and between industry and professional ecosystems to solve shared problems, boards can confirm their legitimacy with both stakeholders and successors, and their associations can demonstrate a renewed dedication to making a beneficial impact on the future.

Next Column

I will return with my next column in November. Until then, please stay well and thank you for reading.

About The Author

Jeff De Cagna AIMP FRSA FASAE, executive advisor for Foresight First LLC in Reston, Virginia, is an association contrarian, foresight practitioner, governing designer, stakeholder and successor advocate, and stewardship catalyst. In August 2019, Jeff became the 32nd recipient of ASAE’s Academy of Leaders Award, the association’s highest individual honor given to consultants or industry partners in recognition of their support of ASAE and the association community.

Jeff can be reached at jeff@foresightfirst.io, on LinkedIn at jeffonlinkedin.com, or on Twitter/X @dutyofforesight.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this column belong solely to the author.

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My Three Biggest Concerns About the Next Sixty Months