If you have a leadership role in any association, you’ve likely been charged to innovate. A little less clear, probably, is what innovate actually means. 

Part of the confusion, I think—and why it often gets reduced to a meaningless buzzword—is that while it’s an action, it’s also a process. No doubt, there are plenty of people who come up with great new ideas on their own. But it’s usually a collective activity. And though the romantic image of innovation is a bright lightbulb flashing on, it’s actually closer to a messy desk, littered with bad, wrong, and misguided ideas.

Writing at Fast Company, business professor Scott D. Anthony makes a point of stressing the messy, failure-ridden nature of innovation. It is, as he puts it, “disruptive work.” And because it’s inherently disruptive, leaders need to cultivate an environment where messiness is respected, even celebrated. “Leaders need to make sure that their environments accept and encourage the kind of intelligent failure that accompanies disruptive success.”

I have faith that associations with strong leadership can create that kind of environment. I’m a little less certain about another process that Anthony says is critical to building an innovative culture: letting go of stale practices. Organizations are often stuck with what he calls “zombie projects.” These are “projects that everyone knows will not move the needle, but they shuffle and linger on…. Zombies exist because failure carries such a stigma that organizations avoid killing projects.”

How many zombies stalk your association’s committee lineup? Your meetings and events portfolio? Your board nomination process? Your risk management strategy?

Innovation, for associations, is the ability to fearlessly question the rationale behind past practices in the name of creating new ones that better satisfy the association’s mission.

But that kind of transformation doesn’t mean you have to invent some new bright shiny object. In fact, you might be better served outright copying somebody else’s idea. Writing at the Harvard Business Review, a trio of business scholars note that for long-standing organizations in mature industries, borrowing from a competitor may make more sense than trying to invent ideas whole cloth. “Before asking how to innovate, managers should first ask whether innovation is the right strategic move at all,” they write. 

Thing is, though new associations emerge regularly to support new professions and interests, the association model is a long-standing one. So your bright new idea around what to do around membership, events, and more, is likely being done. Look at what other organizations are doing and use them as an example. 

And remember that having the examples isn’t enough—you still need the brave(er) culture that is willing to try them. “Doing new things is hard,” Anthony writes. “Having things not work out as expected is painful. Disruptive innovators question the status quo. Some people inside organizations love it, some are indifferent to it, some actively seek to subvert or sabotage it.”

But as a leader, the smartest move is to create space for new ideas to take shape. And for many associations, that in itself is an innovation.