The September 13, 2009 New York Times Magazine had a fascinating article (www.nytimes.com) by Clive Thompson. Thompson discuss a study conducted by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler on the impact social connections have on your life.
Christakis and Fowler used the Framingham study (www.framinghamheartstudy.org) to research the connections between over 5,000 people in Farmingham Massachusetts since 1948.
What they found is astounding. Clusters of people began smoking, or quit smoking, or gained or lost weight, not just within their circle of friends, but friends of friends were impacted by the clusters behavior.”By analyzing the Framingham data, Christakis and Fowler say, they have for the first time found some solid basis for a potentially powerful theory in epidemiology: that good behaviors — like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy — pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses. And the same was true of bad behaviors — clusters of friends appeared to “infect” each other with obesity, unhappiness and smoking. “
According to the study “the social effect appeared to be quite powerful. When a Framingham resident became obese, his or her friends were 57 percent more likely to become obese, too. Even more astonishing to Christakis and Fowler was the fact that the effect didn’t stop there. In fact, it appeared to skip links. A Framingham resident was roughly 20 percent more likely to become obese if the friend of a friend became obese — even if the connecting friend didn’t put on a single pound. Indeed, a person’s risk of obesity went up about 10 percent even if a friend of a friend of a friend gained weight.”
Wow, think about the impact for those of us in association management. It impacts us in multiple ways.
On a personal level, I suspect we in this business tend to be happier and more satisfied partially because we will usually have more social connections. What we do is by nature, a social activity. I talk with members by phone every day. And we don’t just discuss business, we ask about each others lives, our families, we truly care about each other. As an association executive, my network is pretty large. (This can drive my wife crazy, she says I will run into someone I know, no matter where we go. On the airport shuttle in Dallas, walking to the hotel in New Orleans or a shopping mall in St. Louis, I see someone I know)
On a professional level, it is clear that your members relationship with your association impacts multiple levels of non-members.
We have long believed that “one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel”, and it turns out it is true.
So what do we do? It may be that we truly are better of watching a few of our grumbling members walk away. And we may need to consider focusing recruitment efforts on the happier folks. And we sure as heck need to be willing to cut lose the bad apples on our own staff. We have all seen a disgruntled employees drag other staff members down the rabbit hole with them.
Let them go before they can destroy the association.
AssociationOkie 
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