Addressing the Fear of Becoming Obsolete

It is 2025 and the the future of work of seems to be arriving every other week.

I feel like we can’t keep up with what our members need. Their jobs are changing faster than we can design programming to address it.

- Executive Director of a Global Professional Society

Soundbites like this are becoming increasingly common as we engage with the association community.

Beneath these comments isn't just logistical overwhelm—it is FOBO: the fear of becoming obsolete.

We usually talk about FOBO in tech or media—people worried about being replaced by AI or missing out on the latest platform. But association professionals are feeling it too, both in their own roles and in the member communities they serve.

The Quiet Crisis: FOBO in Associations

For decades, associations have been the cornerstone of career-long learning—certifications, conferences, networking, mentorship. But today, the rate of change in most industries has outpaced the traditional structures we have relied on.

Emerging tech, new regulations, shifting societal expectations—these forces are reshaping what “competence” looks like in every profession. And when members don’t feel like their association is helping them adapt, they often disengage.

This isn’t just an issue of member retention. It’s about mission. Associations were built to advance entire professions. If members are quietly slipping into irrelevance, associations are struggling to deliver on their core purpose.

Associations Are Uniquely Positioned

But there is good news: associations are perhaps better equipped than any part of the economy to tackle this crisis.

• Associations already have the trust of the workforce they represent (members).

• Associations sit at the intersection of employers, educators, and practitioners.

• Associations are not driven by quarterly profits—they are driven by impact.

The question isn’t whether associations should lead on workforce upskilling. It is how.

Traditional professional development often centers on one-way knowledge delivery: webinars, articles, credentials. These forms of learning can be valuable, but real transformation comes from shared learning experiences—the kind where members wrestle with new challenges together, across companies and career stages.

This is where RallyBoard plays a critical role.

We equip association leaders with the tools to curate peer learning cohorts, facilitate active learning, and measure behavioral insights that expose critical workforce trends.

More fundamentally, we believe that there are two key ingredients in addressing FOBO:

1. Connection

2. Adaptive Upskilling

Both of these are core to RallyBoard's mission and the competitive advantage association's possess in supporting their members.

Connection: the worst thing a professional can feel when facing the tsunami of technological change is loneliness. The reality is that most members of the workforce are experiencing FOBO on some level and few are better than association leaders at creating professional connection.

Upskilling: Community alone won't help professionals adapt to the future of work. This will require active learning. Whether or not an association has proprietary content or domain expertise, active learning can transpire when professionals learn side-by-side. It could be as simple as asking one member to share an artifact of their work with like-minded peers. The discussion that follows can serve as a launchpad for professional development.

Put simply, focusing on these two dimensions of member value—connection and upskilling—will position associations as a critical resource in the future of work.

At RallyBoard, we envision a future where associations offer cutting-edge learning experiences where members take on the professional uncertainty of tomorrow with a group of highly engaged peers.