Our Responsibility to Think Forward

As chapter members and leaders we assume the responsibilities of making sure our chapter survives and continues to provide a positive experience on our campus for our members and for others.  Many times though we find that challenging when the expectation around us is to live in the moment.  That is magnified by the immediate and/or instantaneous way things are communicated and happen around us.  I could preach for a long time on our responsibilities of securing the future.  Instead though, I suggest you ask these questions in your chapter:

1. What happens when we don’t continually recruit?  What happens when our chapter shrinks by 20% or by 50%?

2. What happens when an “innocent” rule gets broken and someone gets hurt?

3. What happens when we commit to service or philanthropy and then do minimal effort for it?

4. What happens when we spend that excess cash in the bank this week knowing bills come next week?

5. What happens when we plan that party the same week as mid-terms? 

6. What happens when we ignore a member being destructive?  To himself, to others..

7. What happens next semester if we allow a small hazing incident to go unaccounted for this semester?

8. What happens when we let members slide on the academic standards of our organization?

9. What happens when we only call our chapter adviser when something is wrong?  How about our campus adviser?

10. What happens when we let a member participate even though he hasn’t paid his dues?

There are probably 100’s of other questions that could be asked similar to these.  The challenge though is to think forward by answering these.  The bigger challenge is to think forward at all times…when new questions or decisions come up.  We have a responsibility to make sure our existence is positive and that it continues.  To do so we must always think forward.

Stick to the map!

Sometimes the easiest solution is right in front of you.  I call it the map.  It gets you from point A to point Z.  Are there different ways of getting there? Sure.  Can there be short cuts? Sometimes.  Sometimes though the easiest way is to simply follow the path already blazed.  Here are a few examples.

Example #1: Your members are not paying their dues on time and now the chapter is behind on bills.  Here are your options:

• Path #1: You hold them accountable.  You don’t let them participate.  You send them to collections.  You expel them if need be.

• Path #2: You fundraise.  You make members that have already paid their dues work to help pay off the chapter debt.  You fine guys for not helping…ironically the same guys that owe money.

• Path #3: You try to come up with a creative payment plan for the guys that owe you money and with the people the chapter owes money to/

Example #2: You have a chapter officer that is not doing his job and has been given plenty of opportunities.  Here are your options:

• Path #1: You remove him from his position and appoint someone that you think will try to do it.

• Path #2: You or others cover for the officer by doing his job.

• Path #3: You wait him out hoping he will quit or the chapter can fix the problems he creates after the next election.

Example #3: Recruitment numbers are not what you had hoped for.  Here are your options:

• Path #1: The chapter reviews what they have done already and adjusts its plan.  It then continues recruitment.

• Path #2: The chapter tells all concerned parties (alumni, HQ and University) that they recruited quality versus quantity this semester.

• Path #3: The chapter removes the recruitment chair and appoints someone new to “do better” next semester.

In all three examples it is possible that anyone of those paths might work.  The reality though is there is a “best path” in each example.  For those of you looking for the answer is is Path #1 in each.  Sometimes the first path is not the most comfortable but if you look at the other paths and truly consider all that is involved you should feel even more uncomfortable with them.

Why should members that pay their bills be asked to do extra work for those who haven’t?  Why should people or entities that provide you services be asked to hold off on getting paid because your members, that are taking advantage of those services, aren’t ready to pay?  Why should a guy that is not doing his job be allowed to keep his position or have others cover for him?  What if the other guys get burnt out for doing two jobs?  Why is one guy in charge of recruitment for the chapter?  Why is the chapter content to let itself shrink on the false premise of “quality”?  When is the last time anyone looked highly on a Quality Chapter of Only One Man?

The point of all of this is that sometimes when you have a problem you start looking for a bunch of different solutions when in reality the easiest and in many cases the simplest solution is already known.  Your chapter is in debt…and has members that still owe money…make those members pay.  If recruitment didn’t go well simply fix what you did and keep recruiting.  If guys in the chapter aren’t doing their job you just replace them.

Its not rocket science and in most cases you don’t need rocket science to solve a problem. 

Getting back into the swing of things…and making a clean start.

It is a new semester for our undergraduates which means it is time to get back into the swing of things.  I have been absent from my blog for awhile so I thought this was a good point to start back up.

The fall semester is an exciting time for Fraternity chapters.  We are back on campus with our friends.  We are starting new classes.  We are recruiting new guys.  The year has been reset and nothing but potential exists on our plates.  What better time than now to hit the reset button on all of the things we have done wrong as a chapter or individual in the past.  Here are some ideas of possibilities:

1. Revamp your new member education process.  Maybe you do some things that are not correct (like hazing), maybe your program simply lacks substance or purpose.  Now is a good time to fix that.  The new guys won’t know the difference.  The old guys can be told that “things change and we have to”.  The point is to take advantage of the new year to fix what is broken.
2. Start in the positive financially.  Guys coming back to school are probably going to have more cash right now than any other time of the year.  The reason for this is they have been saving from the summer.  Get them to pay their dues now instead of after they refurnish their rooms, buy new video games or start hitting the campus social scene.  Having all your dues paid up front means the chapter will have less constraints on its activities throughout the fall semester.  It means you aren’t spending precious meeting time harassing the guys that have fallen behind.  It also means the individual members truly know how much they can spend outside of their fixed costs.
3. Recruit the right way.  You have 8 months to find the right men for your chapter.  Take advantage of the time you have to continue to find qualified men.  Don’t stop looking after “Rush” is over.  Don’t settle for less than standard men either.
4. Re-energize your alumni communication.  Create a semester newsletter that tells how the chapter did last year and your plans for this year.  Share with them upcoming event dates like homecoming and Ritual.  Do not ask for money!  Set up a Facebook Page for the chapter, a Twitter account and so on.  Make sure you highlight those information opportunities.

There are probably a lot more things you can do or change.  Start brainstorming now.  Start chapter off right this fall by making the changes you know you need.  The Fraternity New Year is the beginning of fall semester so treat these like your New Year’s resolutions.

Think before you “Social Network”

It was inevitable.  A handful of years ago I “had” to join Facebook.  I held off as long as I could.  The concept “if you dig deep enough you will find skeletons” constantly was my excuse for not joining.  It became too big though to ignore.

In my job I didn’t want to see the party pics.  I don’t care if the rules were followed I just didn’t have interest in seeing my group of men perpetuate a stereotype that Greeks have been fighting for a century.  When I first joined Facebook that seemed to be the reason Fraternities were using it.  To share the stupid stuff they did.

It was just the beginning though.  Youtube became more of a norm.  Twittering started to become a regular thing.  This whole “social network” was not going away.  Guys like me were going to have to join…if for no other reason than to stay relevant and connected with the students we work with/for. 

We have come a long way.  I can’t say that social networks are “cleaner” than what they used to be but I can say the use for them has branched out…at least in the demographic that I have to work with.  I am more likely to see pics of my guys doing community service than partying.  They learned.  That is something I am proud of.

Now we have a new problem (in my opinion.)  I like to call it “social diarrhea”.  This is the phenomenon in which we individually cannot turn off what we share on social media.  It is the concept that we feel the need to share our bathroom successes in the morning.  The idea that foul language is OK to use because we are in a social setting, not a professional setting.  We feel the need to post our politics without thinking how others will react to what we say…then we feel the need to complain that others don’t like what we say.  We just can’t turn it of!

Part of being human beings is being considerate of others.  Caring for each others finer feelings.  Part of growing up is knowing when to share and when not to.  I think we forget these concepts with social media because the connection is virtual…not physical.  This is going to have to change or the world as we know it is going to become a lot more bitter.

THIS IS GOING TO HAVE TO CHANGE.  Universities have made the news for not graduating students because of their social media.  Employers are reviewing people’s social media prior to hiring.  Potential love interests are scrolling through your profile to see if they will simply be a fling.  Families are getting into fights over what their members post.  Politics…well we are seeing a more divided country than ever before.

I think there is a simple solution.  Simply think before you social network.  Ask yourself these questions:

1. What is the intended outcome?
2. Who is going to see it?
3. Who will be offended?
4. Will it represent you as a person, as a member of an organization, as a company in the way you want it to?

Sometimes you may want to stir the pot so to speak with your post, and that can be OK.  Sometimes you don’t care what others will think, and again that is OK. 

Just realize in the long run you are branding yourself with what you post.  It will have real consequences and outcomes.

 

A Valentines Day Message to Fraternity Men – Love Your Brother

One of the unique attributes of Fraternity is the concept that our Brothers are our family.  We will use the phrases “I am my Brother’s Keeper” and “Brotherly Love” to describe it.  We spout the term loyalty as well.  When Fraternity is understood and done right these are true. 

On the International Day of Love it is a good time to refresh the idea of what it means to “Love Your Brother”, something every real Fraternity man does.

1. Loving your brother means holding him accountable for his actions and mistakes.
2. Loving your brother means intervening before he makes a mistake or does something wrong.
3. Loving your brother means making sure he is succeeding academically and helping him when he is not.
4. Loving your brother is getting him help when he really needs it.  This could mean calling his family, calling the school or in some cases calling the authorities.
5. Loving your brother is putting his needs above yours.  It can mean personal sacrifice sometimes.
6. Loving your brother means respecting his opinions.
7. Loving your brother means dropping everything to be there for him when something goes wrong.
8. Loving your brother means not hurting him by not meeting your own obligations…financial, via participation or in other ways.
9. Loving your brother means accepting his difference.
10. Loving your brother means telling him you love him, you care about him and you will never hurt him.  This includes your new brothers (pledges).

There are many other ways of showing you love.  No matter how you do it the important thing to remember is that you do it.  It is what makes Fraternity and Brotherhood so special.  It is why guys have reunions every year, attend each others’ weddings, celebrate their successes and help bury them when that final time comes.  It is Fraternity.

Failure Guaranteed…How Will You Respond?

Ever heard the phrase “Satisfaction Guaranteed”? It is a pretty big statement when someone makes that.  They either have a very good gimmick or they have a great product/situation.  The same can be said of “Failure Guaranteed”.  In this day and age when people get 10 tries to do something and/or many times get recognized for simply trying it can be very hard to fail.  But there are exceptions and I felt the need to share a few today.

1. Don’t go to class.  Don’t take your exams = Fail.  It is truly hard to get a 0.0 in college but I am amazed every semester by at least one person that used the equation above.

2. If you don’t try to recruit you will Fail.  Effort…even minimal effort will lead to some sort of result other than a goose egg.

3. If you don’t show up for work you will not get a pay check.  You Fail.

4. Break the rules regarding alcohol, hazing or other prohibited activity…you Fail.  Even if you don’t get caught. You threw your values under the bus.  You soiled your letters.

5. Don’t pay your dues or bills will result in failure.  Right or wrong money is apart of almost everything in life.  A church need to pay its bills, a landlord needs to pay their mortgage, utility companies need to pay their employees.

The list could go on and on.  The good news is that if you failed you can fix it.  I know because I have failed a few times so I can speak from experience.  Failure is a part of life but if you learn from those failures and try to improve things can and will change.

The big question is how will you respond?  Will you continue to Fail?  How you answer this question, I believe, identifies what type of person you are and want to be.

Sad Truths: Sometimes you just have to wait it out

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you know something is going to happen, you want to help but no matter what you do you can’t?  It can be very frustrating.

It is especially true when you become a seasoned professional or an expert in something.  When you do something for a long time you become very good at seeing patterns, trends and predicting outcomes related to what you do.  Sometimes you are able to quantify it.  You can use metrics with pretty graphs and statistics.  Other times it is simply a gut feeling you have or simple wisdom.  No matter what it is that gives you this foresight the reality is you want to do something with it. 

The problem is that no matter what knowledge or experience you have the person, group or situation you want to help needs to believe in what you say and needs to want help.  Sometimes that person or group needs to hit rock bottom before they will let you in.  Sometimes their view is different then yours and you won’t be able to change their mind.

Does it mean you stop offering? No.  Does it mean you stop trying? No.  But it does mean you may have to accept that change won’t happen short term…you may have to wait the situation out.

A New Year Means New Opportunity for AKL Members

The best part about the “New Year Traditions” in our society is that it gives us permission to change things we for some reason do not feel empowered to do normally.  We can make resolutions, hit a reset button or make dramatic life changes and attribute it all to being “A New Year”.  I wanted to take a moment and encourage every AKL Member to consider how they can do this with their AKL experience.

Alumni have the opportunity to change their “perception of membership.”  For many AKL was just a 4 year college thing.  Yet if they remember the creed they learned it is an affiliation that is binding for life.  If your new year’s resolution is to view your membership as such there are ways to show this.  You can volunteer to advise a local chapter.  You could attend a regional or national event.  You could donate to the AKL Education Foundation.  You could suggest recruits for our chapters.  There is so much opportunity with a simple change in perception and understanding of membership.

Undergraduates have the opportunity to redefine their experiences.  If risk is an issue in your chapter you can pledge to change that behavior this year.  If recruitment has been weak you can make that your resolution to fix.  If your “Brotherhood” is not as strong as you would like it can be the focus of your efforts.  If you personally have not been involved in the chapter as much as you should  you can start today at being a better brother.

Nationally AKL is constantly looking for new opportunities to improve.  One example is on the Fraternity side we will be adding staff this year to provide continued and improved support to our chapters and alumni.  On the Foundation side, as another example, we will be wrapping up a feasibility study that will help us set a course for the future of our educational support we provide our chapters and members.   We have a long list of other projects you will be hearing about over the new year.

The great part about our Fraternity is that while we celebrate past achievements we don’t dwell on the failures.  Instead we look forward using our 5 Ideals to identify how we can improve.  Remember, we have Ideals because they give us something to constantly strive for but that will never be fully achieved because there is always room to do better.  Hopefully you will choose an area of AKL Membership in which you can improve and you will include that in your New Year’s resolutions.

So Happy New Year Brothers!  We look forward to seeing what resolutions you set.  As an aside, thank you to all our members and volunteers that continue to give and participate in the AKL Experience.

 

Simply creating restrictions won’t fix a problem. We need to teach compassion.

This past week a national tragedy occurred that may never be explained.  Some sad individual went on a shooting rampage and killed 26 people, 20 of them children ages 10 years and younger.  As with almost any tragedy there is automatic reaction.  In this case there are calls for gun control and restrictions.  There are also calls for better understanding of mental illness.  There will be debates ongoing and there maybe some changes made in gun laws but if so I personally do not think they fix the problem.

For disclosure purposes I am a gun owner and I have my carry permit.  The purpose of this blog though is not to argue for or against what I perceive as my rights.  My ownership of these items that range from rifles to  handguns have no direct bearing on what took place last week or why it happened.  I do believe though that taking these things away from me won’t keep a similar tragedy from happening again.

In all honesty I think society needs to do a few things other than simply creating new restrictions to cause positive change.  First maybe it will take a look at our culture and the glorification of violence that exists with in it.  The body count in movies and TV is outrageous and concern is only established for lead characters.  Send a hundred men to die in an ambush and no one cares.  Send a Ned Stark to the gallows and people freak out.

What about the games we play.  Technology has provided some cool opportunities in this day and age.  The violence in these opportunities seems to have increased significantly though.  Just look at the names of the games: Grand Theft Auto, Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty.  In all of these games you are a winner if you kill people or break the law. 

Another avenue of concern should be our media.  They glorify tragedy.  Whether its a nurse who has hung herself, a plane crashing into buildings or children being shot they make sure it is front and center.  In this process they mainly focus on the evil doer, not the victim.  They make them legends by default, someone for future bad guys to look up to or emulate.  They are so impatient for these things to occur they will make mistakes, use bad information or blame the wrong person just to make sure the story hits the front page by deadline.  They will even distort information to make it more juicy.  It also all happens in real time.  Live feeds of people running from buildings, people crying and ambulances taking off with victims. 

I have to admit though I enable them as much as the next person.  I watch the movies, I play the games, I read the news.  So why do I not feel the sudden urge to go on a rampage?  Why do I know that it isn’t right?  I would venture to say because at some point in time I learned that these things were wrong.  I learned to respect life.  I learned there are consequences not just for me but for others because of my actions.  I learned the difference between entertainment and reality.  A lot of this came from religion and faith but some of it came from simple conversations with good human beings. It also came from my parents.  They monitored what I did and had conversations with me when needed. They taught me the concept of compassion and caring for others.

That is one of the things I think needs to change now.  I don’t feel confident that these things are being taught well if at all.  I am not sure the conversations are happening when they are needed.  If we are not teaching compassion and respect for life how can we expect these tragic things will go away?  History proves that simply outlawing something doesn’t stop it.  Prohibition didn’t stop drinking.  Speed limits didn’t stop speeding.  It is against the law to murder someone but that didn’t stop the young man that did it last week.  We can put more rules in place but if we don’t change our culture or at least try to teach compassion at the same time we teach our kids how to do mass killings (via movies and games) we will see this all happen again, and again and again.

I don’t think we have to wait any longer to have these conversations but I would argue that we need to be careful of what immediate solutions we find.  Are they of a political/philosophical persuasion being pushed via the vehicle of tragedy or are they an acknowledgment of an issue and focused on trying to solve a problem?  Also who can solve it and how?  Is the Federal Government able to enter our homes and monitor/educate/teach?  Is it a community responsibility?  Is it a family responsibility?  I am sure you could say yes to all but at what percentage and who gets to do what?

Just my thoughts on a sad Monday morning.

Hitting the Refresh/Restart Button

Change can be good.  New faces can bring new ideas.  A change of scenery can spark a change in behavior.  That is why December is always a great month for me.  It is a time for change and the opportunity to shake things up organizationally.

First the most obvious change is the chapter leadership.  We celebrate the successes of the outgoing officers and honestly we celebrate the transition of burnt out leaders at the same time.  The new guys stepping up are fresh.  Many times they haven’t heard the word “no” yet.  They are talking about setting goals for next year, not why they achieved some successes and suffered some failures this past year.  Everything can be new again.

At the office we change things as well.  Our consultants learned earlier this week that their regions changed for the spring.  There was some disappointment and concern up front.  Not because of the new assignment but because of the loss of the old one.  The change though was needed because we think our chapters need to see different faces and hear from different people.  Continuity can be beneficial but so can hearing the same messages from multiple people.  Sometimes it is a different message based on a different perspective…which can still be good.  It also can be refreshing for a staff member that may have had to deal with a struggling chapter or two in the fall to have a break and be able to transition to new groups.

My hope for the organization and our undergraduates this spring is continued success through new ideas and new energy.  I want my chapter leaders to throw out all that is “known” regarding what can and cannot be done. Look at everything as possible.  Start thinking about what they might accomplish if past precedence did not exist.  From there start setting goals.

Staff will be doing the same.  We are looking at new and/or different ways of helping.  It could be a change in how we bill our members their fees.  It could be a change in how we coach our members in recruitment.  It could be a review and remake of our membership education program.  Whatever could change the organization for the better.

The limits to your success is simply the limit to your imagination.