If your association has never consciously operated in maintenance mode, you’re not alone. Oftentimes, association culture revolves around execution. There’s always a conference to plan, a renewal cycle to run, a board to prepare for. It’s why intentionally doing less can feel irresponsible. However, maintenance is a strategic posture. Planning an association maintenance mode helps your organization maintain progress, reap the benefits of a recent initiative, improve team bandwidth, and prepare for the next growth cycle.
Maintenance Mode: What’s In? What’s Out?
Maintenance mode is a defined 4-8 week period (perfect for the summer months, spring break, and the end of the year) where your organization (or team) doesn’t launch a new initiative. Instead, they hold existing operations steady. You don’t freeze hiring, ghost members, or stop posting relevant content. Core operational commitments still run. What pauses: new initiative launches, major implementations, and projects that require a significant planning lift.
Associations Need Maintenance Mode
Intentionality is fundamental to the workplace. An intentional association maintenance mode prepares your association for growth. It allows your team time to absorb and adopt change, whether it’s a new technology tool or your workplace model. It lessens the change fatigue that can set in with perpetual change. Instead of change, we build consistency and discipline that allow new workflows to become ingrained. Thus, avoiding backsliding into familiar bad habits and shadow systems when we’re under pressure.
What Gets Done
Work doesn’t stop during maintenance. It’s when we:
- Update SOPs (move processes out of people’s heads and formalize them)
- Clean and audit your data
- Audit tool usage
- Fix workarounds that have accumulated since your last major implementation
- Take trainings that got pushed to “later”
- Connect with and listen to your team to understand how work is going and ideas they may have for improvements
- Emphasize “focus work”
We prioritize work that’s important but deprioritized when pressure to execute is high.
Tips for a Successful Association Maintenance Mode
The risk of maintenance mode isn’t doing too little, but the perception you’re doing too little (and its accompanying anxiety). Here’s how to enter it deliberately:
- Set a date. Tell your organization (or team) the specific dates you’re in “maintenance.” Be explicit. This way everyone is on the same page.
- Define it. Explain what it does and doesn’t mean. Yes, we’re expected to work a full day (unless we’re on vacation); but no, we’re not launching a new member education portal. Ambiguity breeds guilt, anxiety, and resentment. Clarity creates trust.
- Limit scope. Set an agenda but keep it manageable. Pick two to four areas. This isn’t the time to do everything that’s on the backburner. Concentrate on projects that complement recently completed initiatives to intentionally maintain progress without being too heavy a lift (e.g. update SOPs to incorporate new workflows from a recent tech implementation).
- Guard against scope creep. Don’t allow a “quick” new initiative to slip in. Assign someone to keep the team accountable.
- Assess. What worked well? What needs to be added next time? Was it difficult to stay present? Take time on the back end to ask and learn how it went: if staff feel the difference and any improvements for next time.
- Plan for it. Ensure your organization intentionally maintains progress. Add it to the organizational calendar, just like meeting season.
Make Association Maintenance Mode Part of Your Calendar
Maintenance mode is not about stopping work. It’s the presence of different work, the kind that makes everything else function better and prepares your organization to level up on the other side.
Ready to build a maintenance period into your calendar? Contact us to talk through how Achurch Consulting can help your team plan for it.