Elizabeth Engel from Spark Consulting LLC has a great new white paper out on applying the Lean Startup methodology in the association environment. I only discovered Lean Startup when I heard Eric Ries (author of the book, The Lean Startup) speak at SXSW earlier this year (which prompted this blog post about it). I actually felt guilty that I was just discovering it, because it’s that important.

And Elizabeth and her co-author, Guillermo Ortiz de Zerate, do a great job of laying out the core principles behind this important idea in a brief white paper. They zero in on the most important concepts and also provide several examples of how actual associations actually applied these concepts in the real world.

So if you’re in an association, and you care about being successful, download this white paper and read it.

It doesn’t matter that you’re not a startup. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have VCs giving you funding. It doesn’t matter that you have to answer to a Board. It doesn’t matter that you’re small. It doesn’t matter that you’re big, for that matter (GE uses this concept).

There is just no excuse for not applying these ideas to your organization today. It won’t be easy, necessarily, but nothing worth doing ever is. The longer you wait, the farther behind you’ll fall.