It’s time to get geared up for the ASAE Annual Meeting in St. Louis. I’m on the agenda this year, though it’s not a typical session for me. I am facilitating a “town hall” meeting for the Young Association Executives Committee (Monday afternoon). So if you’re a YAE (or curious to see what YAE’s think), then come on by.

In addition to that, however, Maddie and I are going to do an “unsession” about our upcoming book, Humanize. Back in December, when we had to put in our proposals for sessions, Maddie and I realized that the book would not be done in time for ASAE, so we didn’t put in to do a session on it (but I am on the agenda for Tech in December!). So instead it will be an unsession in a room that ASAE has set aside for just such a purpose (but we won’t know the time slot until we get on site).

So my question to you, dear readers, is what piece of the book should we talk about in this sneak preview? The book is fundamentally a challenge to make our organizations more human. For decades we all have been tolerating less-than-ideal organizations that have been modeled after machines. This book presents an alternative, inspired (ironically) by the technology breakthroughs in social media. Social media’s growth was driven by the fact it was organic, natural and to a large extent uncontrolled–quite the opposite of the way we run our organizations and at the same time quite resonant with what it means to be human.

So Maddie and I came up with four human elements that can be infused into our organizational cultures, processes and behaviors. The four elements are:

• Open (decentralized, systems thinking, ownership…)
• Trustworthy (transparency, truth, authenticity…)
• Generative (inclusion, collaboration, relationship building…)
• Courageous (learning, experimentation, personal development…)

So here’s how you can help: of those four, which one do you want to hear more about in our sneak preview unsession? Let us know in the comments.