“Rotary Connect the World” is the theme that the new Rotary International president Mark Maloney will imbue on Rotary in 2019-2020. “Rotary is all about connection” he says, and I could not agree with him more. Being a private person the irony around this theme of connection has not escaped me. In 2019-2020 I am hoping the club sees the value in connecting with initiatives around the theme of “Youth and Education”.
Every year at Presidents Elect training the facilitators ask us to think about “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” (BHAG) – Jim Collins’s memorable phrase in his book Good to Great. The concept is, to have goals and plan around achieving them. The first step then is to understand the culture of the club. There is no sense in creating goals around initiatives the culture won’t except. Over the past 2 years our presidents, president elects, and vice presidents have attempted to identify our culture to create continuity and confluence between successive years. Our club like many have multi-generational groups, each naturally with their own cultural identity. This aspect of membership can make it challenging to have consensus around direction and goals. Over the past few months my newsletters have tried to paint a picture of our belief system “Service above Self” and that this belief can weather the storms of change and generational identity. For Rotary to stay relevant we must connect with our young leaders of today and create a system that reflects their needs around “Service above Self. The message from the RI Presidents have been consistent over my years as a Rotarian and that is, we need to pivot to the needs of business professionals of today and rebalance and recalibrate our conversation. In an op-ed to the Rotarian Magazine Neil C. Phillips concludes his piece on Mark Maloney’s perception of and necessity for change by writing “Here’s to Rotary accelerating that culture change and supporting leaders at Higher levels in the way that Mark speaks of.”
To this end we can not forget to connect and have fun. Big Hairy Audacious Goals are a natural for this club as is evident in the work that James Kay is doing in Lumby, the initiatives of Peter Schultz, and an upcoming idea By Anne Marie Kirby, just to name a few.
The mock interviews at KSS were amazing. Interviewing these young people instilled in me that our future is in good hands. Thanks again to Gordy Charles and to all the members that participated in this Youth and Education initiative.
See you all Tuesday. The place to be in Kelowna at noon.