Thank Goodness for Good Coffee

I'm sitting in my hotel room on the 7th floor, looking out over the harbor in San Diego, sipping expensive coffee after eating an expensive breakfast. I find it interesting that my national association picks upscale locations where meeting attendees don't have a lot of options within walking distance. "Lock in" is real.

(Coffee fuels these meetings. We've had a few where the coffee ran out and things just seem to grind to a halt. Coffee is as important as session programming.)

I'm seeing lots of new faces and many familiar faces, albeit some look a bit more care worn than the last time I saw them a year or two ago. Few people are wearing masks, suggesting that fear of COVID has waned, even though COVID and RSV are still marching through our population. I, too, have a strong desire to act as I did before COVID (and by definition, this makes COVID a time marker in our lives).

There is not a lot on the formal agenda for today, at least not for me. I could attend a board of directors meeting, but other than "showing the flag," there is no need. Yesterday was dominated by cloudy weather and this morning the sky is mainly blue, so a walk along the waterfront in a different direction seems indicated.

I ironed my week of dress shirts last night, fueled by small sips of Jamesons. By the last shirt, I was not nearly as picky about getting the little wrinkles flattened into invisibility.

Today I'm thinking about how we hold onto the past. During my walk yesterday, I thought a lot about my cousin, who was born here in San Diego when her father was in the U.S. Navy. Our family has a connection to this place, making this visit a little more meaningful for me.

The past is a comfort zone for many of the people attending this meeting alongside me. Hundreds of people. We hang onto the old ways because they are known and therefore more comfortable than the unknown future. And yet, to a very large degree, these meetings are about inculcating change and the way it is done is by slowly introducing ideas and examples.

I think of this as the slow cooker method: put in the ingredients, turn the cooker on low, and walk away. Come back some time later to give the dish a stir and then let it sit for a while. Repeat as needed until the dish is done.

New ideas are often best treated this way. Show an example and plant a seed with a few people. Those people come back the next year to share how a new idea or approach worked for them, and more people take up the practice. In a few years, a good number of folks are doing it and it is fast becoming an embedded, almost standard practice.

That's what this meeting is really about, at least from my perspective. Someone is thinking years ahead to architect the introduction of ideas over time. I think it is a particular staff person, simply because staff seem to outlast the tenure of most board members. That presents an interesting conundrum: if the role of elected leaders is to lead, why are staff doing it?

I believe that when you have a great thought leader, you should take advantage of that, whether that person is elected or hired. We elect people as leaders but their most important role is to govern and guide. They act as checks-and-balances and remind us of the guideposts that keep us on our primary mission as we strive to create a better future.

And all the while, we cling to the safety net that is what we have done before, even as we poke our toes into new thoughts and actions. It is a bumbling, stumbling way to change a large organization, but I can't think of another way to do it without wholesale revolt. As this is a membership-based organization, it's important to keep dues flowing into the national coffers, and that inflow tends to get interrupted when people are deeply upset.

Expensive coffee in hand, I stare out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the harbor and think about the intersection of old and new, about organizational change, and about the people that make our system work. We could do better. We can be better. We are working to move the dial but it can be excruciatingly slow. Thank goodness for good coffee.