Key Questions

I've been meeting with several people interested in assuming the important position of writing for this blog. (There are other responsibilities, too.) It has felt strange, as though I'm some impostor pretending to speak authoritatively about a job I've only just settled into. It has felt forced, as I try to distill a rich, complex experience into short answers (and failed). It has made me reflect and that has illustrated for me some leadership choices that I made. Some I had forgotten I made and some I never really realized I had made until now. One that falls into the latter category is disengaging with the structured social scenes at individual services. I think now that my prioritizing other things over being visible at service events was well-intentioned but misguided. So I'm telling people that, because if I had another year, that's something I would concentrate on. But it seems that what I'm doing a lot of, more than giving answers, is asking questions.

We have an expansive and wonderful ability to take ourselves seriously, to soul-search, and commit emotional and cognitive energy into figuring out the Corp, figuring out its problems, idiosyncrasies, inefficiencies, and virtues. Engaging in these conversations is a blessing of transition time. We get to talk about the Corp and grapple with issues, like others have before us over and over again. The ratio of strategic thought to action in the Corp is, I think, probably very high historically. This is an examined organization. Over and over, we ask questions and demand things of ourself and our organization. And again, this year, I can see that a group of talented and devoted Corpies will continue that tradition.

I had intended to list the questions that have engaged me and the people I've talked with here in this post. Suffice it to say that there are many of them, and if I had another year, I might succeed in making betters sense of half of them or even making progress on a tenth. I think Corp leaders' strong tendency to wonder whether we're good enough, making an impact, or improving the organization stems from our own set of questions, which are unique to each leader's experience and continually evolving. So I'm not going to list mine. But I hope you try to list yours, or at least be unafraid to engage with them. Having the opportunity to delve into and wade through the key questions of an organization that you love enough to do it over and over again is one I will certainly miss.