The Process of Becoming President

I'm now four years into Rotary and have seen a variety of Presidential styles. In addition to activities in my own club, being the district webmaster, allows access, and results in a lot of insight into the district as a whole, including lots of leaders. 

A large number of incoming Presidents seem to just do their own thing. They don't avail themselves of the enormous amount of knowledge provided by RI. The other group I see does use information presented, although they may only follow it loosely. The difference is one group has taken the time to absorb the information.

Watching all this I'm thinking the latter method is the way to go. The knowledgebase maintained by RI through various documents provides a framework on which I can build my Presidential year, and relieve me of reinventing the wheel.

A few years ago I was reading a history of music, the author observed that "In the 16th century the creation of the western musical scale and rules, didn't hamper the creativity of musicians, it unleashed an explosion of creativity. Composers no longer needed to worry about wolf tones and other problems, the well tempered musical scales resolved this for them" [1]

The Rotary body of knowledge is similar. Learning it, following most of it, means I don't need to reinvent the wheel. It also means I can avoid many pitfalls because others found them the hard way, and have passed on the collective wisdom of how to avoid them.

One of the documents I really like is RI's checklist for Presidents Elect.  An important lesson from that is to get going early, immediately after the December vote that identifies your board. That contrasts vividly with the more common, wait until PETS to get going. I've also seen the advantage of this watching district operations vs club operations. Our DG's have all been really good at getting it together early.

[1] Not an accurate quote, need to look it up, correct it, and give attribution.

Why, Why, Why?

I attended the District 7780 membership seminar this fall. Brad Howard was one of the speakers and it was terrific. The video below is from a different event but gives a good sense of the talk.

Having been membership director I found Brad's comments a great contrast to the norm for the membership function.

What Brad suggested as a way to recruit members, and to motivate those you already have to stay, also applies to me personally. We're in the process of getting sponsors and selling advertisements for the 2014 Winterfest, a collaboration between the club and the city of South Portland. Why am I doing sales? I hate doing sales, and I'd just as soon get a tooth drilled, at least the tooth would be over in an hour.  Because I need to learn to do sales, I don't want to, I need to for my business. And this was exactly Brad's point, Rotary gives members opportunities to improve themselves, not just opportunities to do service.



Brad Howard Keynote Address from Andy Mills on Vimeo.

Rotary provides opportunities to learn leadership, public speaking, sales, project management, and more.

It also provides a great networking opportunity to those willing to go the extra distance. Unless your the member of a really large club, the in house networking opportunities have limits. But as a member, all of the Rotary world is yours, you just need to show up at someone elses meeting or event. It's a huge potential network. Getting known to this network is simple, just be willing to help.

Pondering

The pondering that got this blog going was thoughts about what a Rotary club president is the following.

Basically a Rotary club is a collection of like minded volunteers interested in service. The key here is volunteers. Thus the president leads people who join Rotary because it helps them achieve their goal of giving back to society. Yes there's fellowship and more, but if the club didn't do service, it would just be a dinner club.

 The President of a company doesn't lead volunteers, he generally leads people who need the job. In the case of a company, the President is at the top of a command and control structure, virtually everyone below needs the job, and will tolerate a lot to keep it. In actuality, most business Presidents also need the job, high incomes generally lead to costly lifestyles...................

The President of a Rotary club is the President of a group of volunteers. The volunteers may have a desire to do service, but feeding themselves and their family, housing, etc, doesn't depend on the Rotary job. The motivation is completely different from that for an employee in a company. Certainly Rotarians are motivated, why else would they pay money for the privilege of doing service work, and put up with rubber chicken meals?

As a result a Rotary President is a steward of the club, not at the helm of a command and control type position. It is a position that requires leadership and vision. Unlike a company President where the vision can be the President's vision only, a Rotary President needs to understand the vision of the club as a whole.  And must follow the club's vision to keep members engaged.  A Rotary President has the opportunity to guide the club's vision, to effect some changes, but it needs to be through leadership, not force of will.

How did I get here?

Bug Light - A project of the SPCE Rotary Club

After a diligent effort by a neighbor and friend, I became a Rotarian in June of 2010. At that time I knew very little about Rotary, but was willing to give it a try. My wife, Nancy, joined in October of 2010 and for a while we were the only couple in the club.

I was tagged early on to work on the club's web committee. This fit well with my likes and abilities.  After about 5 months, I became the club webmaster when another committee member left to move out of state. So far, so good.

In the spring we attended the District Assembly, a really good event to learn lots about Rotary. We met the District Governor Elect, Gary. Nancy asked how it was going, and when Gary noted that he was filling positions but having some trouble with district webmaster.... at that point Nancy told Gary that I was the club webmaster and really liked it. As a result, one year after joining I became the district webmaster in addition to being the club webmaster.

In December of 2011 I added the role of club membership director  for the 2012-2-13 Rotary year to my Rotary resume. In addition the District webmaster role morphed into District Technology chair. Clearly not doing well with the word "no".

This fall I agreed to become Vice President for 2013-2014. This of course puts me on track to become President Elect in a year. I can't decide if I'm nuts for doing this, but I am looking forward to it. I expect it will be a good experience.

All that for a back ground as to why his blog exists. At the moment it sounds like a good idea to blog about my journey to being club President, if for no other reason than as a tool to reflect on the journey and do it better.