In the aftermath of the Apollo 1 fire in 1967, NASA didn’t just investigate what had failed technically. They investigated what had failed organisationally — the decisions, the culture, the dynamics in the room that allowed warning signs to be minimised and momentum to override judgement.

They identified something they called Go Fever.

I came across the term reading a book about the US space program (space nerd — my nerdiness honestly knows no limits), and it immediately lodged in my brain. Because I’ve watched versions of it play out in associations more times than I’d like to count.

Go Fever describes what happens when the momentum of a project becomes stronger than the evidence around it. The overwhelming pull to keep moving forward, even when every signal is telling you to stop, slow down, or fundamentally rethink.

NASA traced it through Challenger. Through Columbia. Each time, the same pattern: schedule pressure, sunk costs, and a room full of people who really didn’t want to be the one who said wait.

Here’s the thing that took me a while to fully appreciate though — and the bit I think matters most if you’re leading an association.

Go Fever doesn’t just happen to organisations.

In most cases, a leader starts it.

The Human Starting Gun

I’ve worked with more than one leader I’d describe — affectionately, I should say — as a human starting gun.

You probably know the type. They have an idea, find it immediately compelling, and — often within the same conversation — send people off to make it happen. The idea doesn’t need to be fully formed. It doesn’t need to be tested. It just needs to have been said out loud, by the person at the top, to set the whole organisation scrambling.

Staff jump into action — not because they’ve evaluated the idea, but because the CEO has spoken and the culture is one where you don’t push back. Resources shift. Conversations begin. Momentum builds.

And then, after a little time has passed, the original idea has quietly been forgotten, replaced by the next shiny thing, or stalled because it was never really thought through in the first place.

Here’s the thing — these leaders don’t mean to send their team running off wildly all the time. They just don’t fully appreciate the weight their words carry once they leave the room.

And that’s the first thing I’d ask any CEO or ED to sit with: your thought bubbles don’t land the same way to your team as they do in your head.

When you mention an idea, your team doesn’t hear “I’m thinking out loud.” They hear “this is what I want, go do it.” And from that moment, Go Fever has already started — not because of any formal decision, but because of the sheer gravitational pull of your enthusiasm and authority.

When the Urgency Is Real — But the Solution Is Wrong

Sometimes, Go Fever is grounded in fear.

I worked with a CEO who knew — really knew, with actual numbers and timelines — that her organisation was in financial trouble. The current trajectory wasn’t sustainable. Something had to change, and soon. Aside from her Board and COO, she was carrying that knowledge largely alone, and the weight of it drove a very particular kind of urgency.

She had an idea for a solution. A new product, a significant investment in new infrastructure. And once she’d landed on it, the project became not just a good idea to explore in her mind, but a necessary one that had to be executed. The organisation’s survival depended on getting this right.

And that’s where the Go Fever took hold.

Rather than starting with the members — understanding what they actually needed, what they’d value, what they’d pay for — the project raced straight to execution. Platform decisions were made before content decisions. Pricing structures were designed before anyone had properly tested the product. The solution was getting more detailed and more expensive by the week, while the problem it was meant to solve remained, honestly, a bit of a mystery.

When staff raised concerns, they were heard but not really listened to. When someone suggested doing proper member research first, it got waved away. She was trapped in her own certainty, thinking ‘we already know what we need to do, and getting a range of different opinions will just slow us down’ She was making decisions now based on fear and the feeling she just had to keep pushing her idea forward. To her, there was no time. Pausing equaled doom.

Because when you’re in Go Fever mode, pausing to take a step back threatens the solution you’ve already committed to. And if you’ve already committed — emotionally, politically, financially — then new information that complicates the picture feels dangerous.

So you keep going.

The irony in this case was pretty layered. This CEO wasn’t wrong that the organisation needed to do something, make changes. But by locking onto a solution before understanding the root of the problem, and being unable to hear her own team’s concerns — she created a different crisis entirely. The project stalled. Staff dragged their feet. Even people who thought the general direction was right didn’t share her urgency. The Go Fever burned hot in one person and fizzled almost immediately around her.

The organisation needed momentum. What it got was a CEO pushing a project uphill, alone, and wondering why no one else would get on board.

Why Associations Are Particularly Susceptible

Both dynamics come from the same root:

The leader decided, and then looked for confirmation rather than information.

Go Fever becomes self-reinforcing at every level. Staff stop raising doubts because they feel they’re wasting capital. Managers filter what makes it to the top. Committees find reasons to support momentum rather than question it. The whole organisation is participating in it, not out of bad faith, but because the culture has quietly shaped what feels safe to say and do.

Leadership behaviour is usually where it starts. But the organisation provides the fuel.

And associations are particularly good at providing that fuel. The rhythm of the calendar — renewals, conferences, AGMs — creates its own sense of inevitability, with little natural pause to ask whether something is still worth doing. By the time a project has board approval, so much political capital has been spent that stopping isn’t just an operational call, it’s a governance one. And then there’s optimism bias — the belief that once members see it, get used to it, or finally understand it, things will turn around. That one is, in my experience, the most dangerous of all. Wanting something to be true and it actually being true are two very different things.

The Antidote Isn’t Just Better Process

Most advice on Go Fever lands on “build in pause points” — structured moments to check whether a project should keep going. Genuinely solid advice, and yes, you should do that.

But it doesn’t fix the core problem.

Because the real question for a CEO isn’t do we have checkpoints?

It’s: would my team actually be honest with me at those checkpoints?

If the answer is anything less than an unambiguous yes, the pause points won’t save you. You’ll sit in a review meeting, ask how things are tracking, and get some version of “progressing well, a few challenges, working through them” — because that’s what people say when they don’t feel safe saying what they actually think.

The organisations that catch Go Fever most reliably are the ones where raising doubt has become, over time, quietly costly. Where the leader’s enthusiasm is something you get behind, not something you question. Where the unspoken rule is: come with solutions, not problems.

If that’s the culture you’ve built — even accidentally, even with the best intentions — no process will compensate for it.

So here’s what I’d actually focus on.

First: do the discovery you’re afraid to do. When faced with a problem, ask why it exists. And talk to members before you decide, not after. Because the gap between what leaders think members want and what members actually want is almost always bigger than anyone expects. That gap isn’t your enemy. It’s the most valuable thing you can know.

Second: make it genuinely safe for your team to push back. Visibly reward the person who raises the hard question. Change your mind sometimes, and let people see you do it. Remember that your words carry weight — and be a bit more careful with them.

A question I always come back to when something feels like it might have gotten ahead of itself: if we weren’t already doing this, would we start today? That’s a useful gut-check, but it’s still a question about the project.

The more important question is about you:

If your team could tell you anything right now — about this project, this initiative, this direction — would they?

Because the organisations that avoid Go Fever aren’t the ones with the best project management frameworks.

They’re the ones where the leader created enough safety that someone could say I think we need to take a step back and look at this whole thing.

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If any of this feels familiar — if you’re looking at a project, a platform, or a program and starting to wonder if the momentum has outrun the rationale — it might be time to press pause and take a fresh look.  

I often help associations step back and pressure-test major initiatives before they absorb more time, money and energy than they should. If that conversation would be useful, feel free to get in touch.