My Christian Leadership

The least of these. Community.  Quality of living.  These are all words that hold importance to me and to many in our community.  But when the rubber hits the road, sometimes the politics of putting these into action can be ... shall I say... tricky?

Lately, I find myself centered in a dialogue about transportation.  I had been invited into several community conversations about transportation, but no other nonprofits were in the room, and the conversations centered on subtopics like community design (eat, work, sleep, play all within a walkable space), or roads or traffic.  Yet no one was in the room and nothing was said about our fellow community members who aren't even on the roads.  As a result, elderly can't get out at night or to the doctor.  There are families participating in programs like Capital Idea or Family Care at Texas Baptist Children's Home and seeking better lives.  The result can be a break generational cycles that have kept them down, and yet they can't land that new job or travel to other parts of the city or county for other services that help them get back on their feet.  We also have youth who are considered "couch surfers" or homeless.  There are after school activities that are designed to move them into being productive citizens, like at the Boys and Girls Club, The Nest or YMCA, but when the programs are over, the doors are shut, and how do they get to shelter or somewhere safe?

By default, I'm someone who can't stand by, so I began meeting with city and county officials to learn more about what's been done in our cities' pasts so we can make a plan for the future.  I have now hosted two forums seeking the involvement of my fellow nonprofits to begin to label and quantify the need.  Meanwhile, I'm a new mom, with a whole different set of job expectations to balance.

I begin to wonder- if I don't stay involved, will the momentum from these forums and discussions really go anywhere?  I wonder how we paint a picture of quality of life for all in our communities while also remaining aware that some people in our community think that if we provide transportation services, we will begin to harbor more of "those people", and their definition of quality of life is threatened.

Even in my own sector, you find those individuals who you can tell have been there, done that, and now would like to rain on any parade of progress.  I got this email just today regarding the forum I hosted last Friday:

Amanda
I appreciate the time you have invested in this but the event was hardly a dialog but rather an infomercial for mass transit. The information presented has little if anything to do with the transportation issues faced by the clients we serve and I suspect most of the clients served by nonprofits here in X. I saw  or heard nothing that caused me to be optimistic about any meaningful intra city transportation here in X  in the foreseeable future.

Mass transit will certainly help those middle and upper middle class workers in X who need to commute to their jobs and that will certainly be a good thing but it will not change the day to day  reality for our clients.

In my opinion I also think the concept that any significant numbers of nonprofit clients will continue to call  time after time following repeated denials to assist in data gathering  seems quite unrealistic. There needs to be a better way to gather that data.

The speaker at the next event (name) makes a living from contracting with government entities re: transportation so I have a hard time imagining that the needs of nonprofit clients will be a focus of that event either. The agenda of all of these presentations is to gain voter acceptance for these mass transit projects and I have no delusion that it's about what's best  our nonprofit clients so I have decided that it's not an effective use of my time.

Respectfully ,
(Name)

So putting together what I learned from my class "Leadership: Community" I reached out to this person with the following email:

(Name),

Thank you for your feedback.  I hear you.  Friday did not fully follow the script that I intended and (name)took more time providing an update, and the wrong update, regarding mass transit.  (Mass Transit Rep) came to the first forum, in which he received great feedback from our fellow nonprofit partners.  Much of which he said he had never heard before, and would implement in future renderings of their plans .  He was invited back on the basis of providing a 10-15 minute max update from the dialogue we had had with him last October or so.  As you mentioned and witnessed, this is not what we got.

I am not a proponent specifically of Mass Transit.  I just happen to be included in several regional meetings about transportation, and no other nonprofits were even represented, and I quickly realized that the conversations focused on Mass Transit or on road projects or on traffic congestion.  No one in the room was bringing up the people who can’t even get on the road.  So I’ve attempted to resurrect the banner.  It’s my understanding that many people from our sector have tried to engage in the past, but found that the dialogue was, just as I described before, not all encompassing, and thus I believe many have decided not to invest further time.  My fear is that our clients then go unrepresented, and then there isn’t a voice in the room to say that we, as a community, want to shift the dialogue.

The only starting place I saw for real change was to educate the public on what the city has done in the past (the panel), and educate the community on the real need for accessibility (LaLena and Leslie).  Could it have been done better? I’m sure.  My agenda was not to come in with guns blazing and making any assumptions about what the solution is.  I understand that we need to have everyone at the table to be able to have buy in from all parties and be able to understand more so why the cities haven’t assumed certain responsibilities. In the same, after meeting with key city officials, I saw that we needed to help the cities to understand the limiting parameters as to why the nonprofit community hasn’t “owned it”.

I respect that you feel like this wasn’t an effective use of time.  I will say that since these two forums, two local foundations have approached me, letting me know that it has brought the matter to their attention and they are considering putting more funding out there for it.  I heard today from two people in the business community who came Friday that he didn’t even know this was an issue and was surprised by how many nonprofits were represented in the room.  Our forum was brought up twice today in a chamber transportation meeting by another business man in the financial industry, and he specifically shared about what was “eye opening” to him.

It sounds like you’ve been a part of the seasoned crew who have seen this dialogue pretty much go in circles with no real traction.  I’d ask you to reconsider your stance of disengaging from the effort, and rather, would you be willing to teach  me what you know?  I have tons of questions, and feel we can only learn and move forward by fully knowing our history- which is why there was such a focus this last Friday on the past efforts- so we all have a foundation to move forward from.  I respect the decision you make, but feel you could bring value to what is sure to be an uphill battle- but somebody’s got to do it.

Respectfully yours,

Amanda

So here I am, considering Christian Leadership... considering my community, and considering what my calling is to it?  Jesus knew politics of his time, and maintained his integrity of service and caring for "the least of these".  Here we are nealry 2000 years from the peak of his ministry, and still the objective remains to reflect him... and build comunity like He did.

Trail blazing

It's 6 months post-graduation, and I recently had the honor of serving as a guest alumni on a panel to Concordia's Board of Regents and Board of Trustees.  Being on campus felt like it was only yesterday that I was driving away after presenting my Capstone, and wondering as I looked in my rear view mirror when the next time I would be back.  And at the same time, since that moment in the rear view mirror, my world's been turned upside down by a sweet little boy named Wesley, who turned 2 months old today.  As I spoke to the crowd, I talked about the value I found in my journey at Concordia through the MBA program.  My journey was what I made of it, but what happened for me was a true paradigm shift.

Going forward I've looked for opportunities to use my developed skills.  Many times it has appeared as though I'm trying to identify existing opportunities to insert myself.  I'm looking for a fit.  But just as a key won't open a lock it doesn't belong to, I have come to a crossroads.  To continue seeking to fit a new mold, or perhaps, and what challenges me, is to destroy the mold altogether.

Perhaps my path isn't one modeled from current opportunities, or to be replicated from a compilation of paths that have gone before me.  Perhaps- that's not who I ever was, and perhaps... just perhaps it's time to fully embrace the unknown trail.

Trailblazing is a word I feel that's loosely used.  It stands for a woman who went into a "man's world", and did "surprisingly well."  It's used for someone who hit some cultural standard- one that hadn't been hit in their family's lineage.  Yet in all these circumstances, and those like them, there is already a forged path, and it is the kind of journeyer who breaks some chain of tradition.

What if we become true trail blazers?  What if we pursue the "original thought", even if Freud would disagree?  What does that mean for our jobs, our families, the story to which we pour our lives?

I'm enamoured with administration.  I have a thought that for nonprofits, Development is the cover of the book, and in addition to a well done cover, the content- the organization and the strategies have got to be page turning.

My pages just keep turning... and with a baby and return to work, the plot continues to thicken.  I'm excited at what lies ahead, knowing irony, surprise, and trail blazing will all be sure to come.

Change

This week I got to see my friend who is in the cohort that is next up for graduation.  I've shared many of my text books with her, and this week I owed her my Moon text.  I was really happy to see her, and in many ways its been a fun part of my MBA getting together with her and another friend who is in the cohort behind her.  We swap stories on professors and share how the program is molding and changing with each class that comes through.  If I were to start the program now, I know it would be a very different experience than having been the first class to come through.  I'm sure that it is a stronger program now, but I wouldn't change the opportunity I had to help shape that first year of the program, and really... how it shaped me.

It wasn't long before we both identified that common thought after such a rigorous plight- What now, or What's next?  My "what's next" should be fairly obvious...

That's what 6.5 months of baby will do to ya...

Anywho... I have a hard time with "the same".  Up until today I called it a problem with contentment, but really I don't think that's what it is... Life is dynamic... to think we can keep some sense of the same, to me feels like a dillusion... a static process to something that is ever shaping.  Having a baby is a handful, and I know I don't know to full story of what I am getting myself into.  At the same time I have all these skills and abilities and passions that I've acquired over the last two years, and largely I've thrown myself into community involvment to feel challenged and growth in the areas that I'm most interested in.

The answer is not there yet, but seasons change... I'm changed and continue to change... and I know life as I know it is about to change.

Reflections on the lazy CEO

About a year ago I was sitting in LAX.  We had just finished our annual national park hiking trip in Yosemite.  While my husband and I were waiting for our flight I had a chance to gaze at the planes, the different people, and consider the concept of going places, and where am I going?  For the literalist, Austin, TX, but for the bit more creative, I knew my MBA graduation was now under a year away.  Where was I going to go?

I decided on the fly (insert ba-da-bum-ching for my pun) that someday I'll be a CEO, and so I better begin preparing myself as if that's really the track I am on.

My friend, Ben Haley, a fellow student in my cohort told me about an article his prior CEO had written.  I asked for the link in May, and have waited to read it for a time that I could really sit down and READ it.  So here I am in August, post graduation, and I finally have had a chance to read it for the first time.  The article is titled: The Lazy CEO. (For your convenience, I've provided the link here: http://texasceomagazine.com/tag/joel-trammel/).

Last Sunday, after leaving church, I contemplated Christian leadership.  There's the running joke in many churches that the right answer in Sunday School is always the first person to say "Jesus".  Through the school years and into adulthood I find this concept prevails.  In Sunday School you still find the people with the "right answers", and there's this obligation to "help out" the teacher by providing an answer, a fix, to the questions they pose to the class.  We're taught to be problem solvers, in a pretty direct, non facilitative way. Silence is awkwardness, and to the outgoing helpful student, you think you do a favor to all to close the silence with a nice pretty bow.  And the answer is "Jesus".

But Jesus and his leadership wasn't a pretty bow.  I loved how in the story about the Pharisees and writing in the sand that Jesus could have just called all of them out on the crap they've pulled as they attempted to stone a woman for her infidelity.  Yet he was directly subtle.  His response was empowering to dialogue.  He didn't GIVE the answer.  By how he engaged in dialogue (writing in the sand), he empowered each one to turn, drop the stone, and be a bit less knee jerk reactive.  It wasn't a pretty bow, a flat fix it answer... but talk about effective to the core.

And let's flash sideways (a LOST reference to any fellow fans) back to Joel Trammel's article on the "Lazy CEO".  There's again this idea of empowerment... of direct subtlety.  Joel does a great job of showing engagement beyond the fix it mentality prevalent in so many organizations today.  We're all taught to be problem solvers.  To focus on what I bring to the table.  We want to shine.  We want to be the one with all the answers.

For many Christian leaders, having all the answers means embodying the answers.  Joel focuses on employing the right answers, and then as CEO utilizing vision and proper context to fashion the proactive response.  This may come through a direct answer, but more often then not, there's an empowerment undertone that's directing the tide of culture and innovation.

There's still room for me to grow.  Sometimes more than I'd like to admit.  My MBA has done more for me than to feel equipped with pat answers.  I know there's a whole orchestrating to leadership that I'm much more aware of now. 

I look forward to the day and opportunity to serve as CEO, but for now, the best practice is subtle leadership directly from the position God has currently equipped me with.  Rather than fault find with systems or co-workers or be the one who has to shine or seek approval... there's a way to continue to challenge myself and my organization for better without the office usual suspects of gossip or complaint.  There are opportunities to encourage and empower those around me to achieve their best and gain a vision for what that means in each of their specialties.  I don't have to feel insecure or threatened by those that shine.  To have subtly played a role in their success is the greater achievement.

And the Post We've All Been Waiting for...

Graduation Day 8.4.2012

After two intensive years, the day has finally come- Graduation.

It's like after typing that sentence, I just feel done... like there's nothing more to say, or perhaps I just want to sit there, staring at those words to really soak it in. 

Of course it hasn't fully sunk in... after all we do have two more weeks of class to finish out our capstone presentations.  And, hearing from my other classmates we all still have guests in town, and I'll be the first to say between graduation parties and guests and other commitments, I haven't stopped running for 3 days straight.

That too, after determining to take a weeks vacation right before graduation.  Matt and I called it our Babymoon, and we enjoyed 7 days in beautiful Mexico.  It has always been important to me to find that work-life balance, and it was a great time to spend together away from the pressures of work, presentations and deadlines.  We swam with sea turtles, laid out in the sun, kayaked, rappelled, and he even zip lined.  All this to celebrate our monumental year where he graduated from Texas State as a Licensed Specialist in School Psychology and we found out we were pregnant and now my graduation.

We also celebrated with a party at our house.  Nearly 50 people packed into our 1600 sq ft house, and we had a desserts bar catered by my friend Paige Morgan of Paige's Bakehouse.  Since I missed the pinning ceremony at Concordia while I was in Mexico, I dedicated my pins at my party.  Pins went to my wonderful husband, to those who provided me scholarships and then to my mentors, Teri Hill, Dr. Edna Rehbein and Scott Alarcon.  We then passed around cake pops to everyone, counted to three and everyone bit in to display a blue center- We're having a boy!!!

In a few closing posts I hope to evaluate more about what my MBA means to me, and even update how our capstone presentations go.  For now, I'm just going to focus on finishing strong, and trying to keep my 4.0 in these last two weeks, when my mind is thinking about preparing for our little one, and trying to not fully check out... seeing as how I've already walked and all.  Guess all that's left to do is as the title of one our texts said- to Walk Out and Walk On.

An MBA that is Music to my Ears

This week we had special guest, Dr. Matt Hinsley, Founder and Executive Director, Austin Classical Guitar Society visit our Entrepreneurship and Innovation class.  Matt began the class with what had to be one of the best starts we ever had... a personal concert in classical guitar fashion.

I really appreciated the perspective that Dr. Hinsley had to share, especially regarding his background.  When Dr. Hinsley was in undergraduate school he talked about the many times that people encouraged him to major in something other than classical guitar.  People were talking about how there isn't a viable future in the arts.  Dr. Hinsley then set out to do a dissertation focused on the disconnect between the sustainability of the arts and our culture.  He even pursued an accredited mentor to guide him through the dissertation, who was in full support, but surprised Matt when before he graduated.  This man pleaded that he not continue a career in the arts, and instead put his mind into law school.

After discussing his background, Dr. Hinsley shared about the connectivity of nonprofits in the arts and the value of connecting with community, youth, patrons, and donors.  Each of his perspectives embodied the heart of passion he shared for his service, and he did so in such a polished manner.  One can tell this man is well thought out, as he discussed even the nuances he instructs his staff to never begin an email without a salutation to ensure the value of the message is upheld.

What I took from the night is a glimpse, hopefully, down the road from my own journey.  I believe in pursuing life and the passions you are gifted with.  It would be easier in life to find a viable and sustainable career.  To go with what seems safest in the long term of building a resume and what is guaranteed to provide a sustainable financial future.  This is smart, and has its own rewards, but it's not what holds me.  I didn't pursue my MBA so I could just find the next bigger or better thing.  I did it so I would be well equipped to push the limits.

Dr. Hinsley is a great example of what goals I am aspiring to.  He's not just all heart and following his passions.  He's pursuing the best with smart and calculated moves.  He's strategically embracing and moving his passions forward and to a place where it betters the lives of youth, patrons, donors and the community.  So often it seems that the nonprofit world can contain great people with a passion to do something.  But how they do that something is everything.  We must be calculated.  We must be founded, well rooted, and smart about how we advance the mission of the disenfranchised.

Business school and theory are all great.  It's important to know.  What I appreciate about my experience here, is I'm learning how that all works within the systems we have.  These systems are flawed, often unpredictable.  They are within the confines of human socialization.  I'm thankful to have the educational experience that provides this balanced perspective.

The end is just the beginning

Graduation is now more than a light at the end of a long dark tunnel.  It's technically a month away from two days ago.  Now technically we have two weeks of class required after that, so there's 6 more weeks of MBA as we know it.

This has been a tremendous experience for me, and I am so thankful I decided to take on this additional challenge the last two years.  I've gained remarkable friends through the program, learned far beyond what I ever would have gained in the work place, and have the confidence to know what I can specifically bring to a team.  I've identified my strengths both personally and professionally, and I am eagerly looking for opportunities within my work and volunteering to utilize these skills.

I'm so glad for the experience, but also eager for it to come to a close.  I've been putting together agendas for my capstone team's meetings, and on this last one, I outlined what projects remained that we didn't have completed yet.  There were only like 4 projects left.  We put together a suggested timeline, and I'm hopeful that we will have absolutely everything ready to go and completed by Aug.3rd.

August 3rd is a special date for me... as I've mentioned in a prior post, there's a new development on the way for the Keeter's, due Christmas Day.  I've been very conscious about mentally finishing school out before I really dive into anything baby related.  We've not talked names, we haven't picked out nursery themes, we've been holding for Aug 3rd.  August 3rd is our second sonogram, and supposedly when we find out if we're having a son or daughter.  For me the 4th will not only mark graduation, and the following celebration, but it's when we will share with our families the sex of the baby.  For me this will be such a celebration.  It will be the marker of completing the race.  Of working to put both my husband and me through school, of finalizing a chapter of a successful run at an MBA (currently, still holding onto that 4.0), and the real marker of the beginning of Matt and my next chapter with starting a family.  I'll be learning how to balance who I am as an advocate for community and some one's momma. I'll get to balance thoughts from innovation and entrepreneurship to names and nurseries.  Really, as I finish out school, I get that feeling after you've finished packing and are just about to head out on a big trip.  The tools are there.  Everything's prepared- now it's time to go.  The journey's just beginning.