It's the final countdown...

Do do doo doo. Da da doo doo doo.

Well, this is it. It's time to make new signs for the office, hang some signs around the new officers' necks, and start handing off my responsibilities to my replacement. I'm not quite sure how it will feel once it's February, I don't have a desk anymore, and I'm free on Sundays at noon for the first time since March 2008. But for now, I'm just excited for the three people who are about to have several years worth of management training over twelve months. Sadly, I won't be around for much longer to see where they take this company, but I know that many of you will be, and it's going to be a great year.

I'm trying to balance this excitement against wondering what we could have done with another year. In some ways, that would be good, for all the boring reasons--continuity, comfort with the job's responsibilities, cultivated relationships. But, this is the Corp. I had my year. And for all the exciting reasons--new ideas, unpredictability, energy--it's someone else's turn. But even still, I'm understanding the Corp better every day, learning new perspectives and adding depth to the ones I already have.

On the first day of Fundamentals of Finance, I learned what a CFO does and what a CEO's responsibility to the Board is. It made sense, obviously, because Phil's been doing all that for a year and I've been fulfilling those responsibilities, but I hadn't really understood it in a macro sense until I heard it in class. That's a gratifying experience, to know that we're doing things right and that we really are running our own healthy and legitimate business.

But beyond the facts, there's the Corp imagination. I'm in a class that discusses the Catholic imagination, which our professor said goes something like the following. So something happens, or you're told something, and you won't, at first glance, think it's possible or plausible. Maybe you don't think you're equipped enough or good enough to understand it or achieve it. But how would you act if you did believe? How would you act if you signed up for what they have to say? What would be different and how would you be different? Could you do things you couldn't otherwise or would you do things you wouldn't otherwise if you stopped focusing on what couldn't be or shouldn't be and instead, just let it...be?

And I was sitting there listening, thinking only about the Corp, and its vibrant personality. I've phrased it different ways before, here on this blog, in General Meetings, and thought about it in so many of those great discussions that I've had with so many of you. Every time we dig in and argue tooth and nail for one initiative or another, we're expressing the belief that we know how to run this large and complex organization, and that we're not afraid to make mistakes. People at other universities wonder...shit, how do they do that? They shouldn't be doing their own accounting. They couldn't have a student-only Board. How could they possibly survive with every position turning over every year? Let them wonder.

The Corp imagination is to embrace the organization as it is and to let it be, every year anew. We let ourselves sacrifice time, tears, and effort to believe that not only can we keep it going, but we can make it better. We let ourselves dream and we let ourselves fail so we can give those dreams, well, the old college try. I may be leaving my leadership position in the Corp, but there's one thing that I won't ever walk away from, and that's a Corpie's imagination.

It has truly been a pleasure to work with you all and to write my reflections here, and even if the entries were at times, long, rambling, or entirely nonsensical, the therapy of writing and the reflection it encourages have, I think, helped me to do the job as well as I could. Best of luck in the next year.

Love isn't extinct,

Ryan

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.

Is it sustainable?

I didn't know the word "sustainable" when I got to Georgetown. It was one of those moments in discussion section when someone said "I just really don't think this is sustainable" and then felt really proud of him/herself that I realized it was something I should learn. Sustainability is like a religion of Corp leaders, who demand high standards of sustainability, lest their ideas and efforts last a mere 1-12 months and be duly noted in the little-read annals of Corp history.

I'm now meeting with people who are interested in my job - to be CEO of the Corp. And over this past weekend, we had a mini-retreat that encouraged all of us to look back and evaluate what we had accomplished as a Corp Upper Management. And I'm proud of what's been done, but I increasingly worry about our ability to transfer it to the next group, even with the best of intentions.

Take this blog, for instance. I think it's a valuable look into what it's like to be a Corp officer. I started it because I wanted to leverage one of my strengths--writing. The next CEO might not enjoy writing, or writing a blog that encourages public introspection. That's fine. But what about DPAC? How do you transfer all the work that went into DPAC Director applications, effort that produced real, creative, and useful knowledge capital for the Corp? Sure, it's on the website, but you have to take the time to look at it, to recreate the context, to value it, and to revive it. I'm worried about this. I'm worried that it won't happen, despite the efforts I'm going to make in transition season--but sustainability isn't in my hands, and I think I've missed the boat in that sense up until now in my job.

It's not about how much I want it to be sustainable. It's about how good each initiative is. It's about its quality, how impactful it is, how much people like it. Sustainability is achieved at the mercy of the next generation of Corp leaders, who will be tempted to look only to the future in their ambitious agendas. And who am I to demand that they look back? In a few months, just a shift manager at Vittles. So I hope, I really hope, that the people who take the leadership jobs are keen to continue on what we've started.

And by that I mean, I hope what we've done deserves their attention and buy-in. And by that I mean your attention and buy-in. Here's hoping The Back Hallway is still around come November 2010!

What would a consultant say to the Corp?

So I just spent the last few hours studying for case interviews at consulting firms. A case interview contains one or more business problems that the interviewee has to analyze and recommend a solution for. The Corp has plenty of business problems, like the ones we worked through at the last Managerial Training Seminar. Taking an example from MTS, we talked about a marketing response to a new competitor in our core market. That is, Starbucks getting all up in our [Center] grill.

Corp leaders often approach their jobs like consultants. What's the situation? Student-run business. $4 mil annual sales. At this point, the new service director or officer has a pretty good idea of what the Corp is all about and can state the situation, but what are the problems? What's the complication? One of our struggles in transition is going to be communicating exactly what the top problems are, what we've done, what hasn't worked, and what they might try. When we came into our jobs, we had a list of priorities, which was helpful, but the temptation is to take a complex issue ("DPAC") and start digging around for problems. Not everything is a problem worth tackling, and the problems we can identify aren't all the problems that exist from year to year!

I doubt the Corp will be hiring a consulting firm any time soon. But we can pay more attention to keeping some sort of coherence in our focus from year to year so that more progress, meaningful progress, can be made on a few key issues (see: vendor negotiations, internal service integration).

Back to the preparations!

Wild ride.

Since I last posted in late August, it's been tiring. And it should be tiring, but always in a good way that keeps burnout at bay. Around this time every year is when Corp leaders can get just a little more tired and bounce back just a little slower. Lots of reasons why - school, jobs, senior year, rough landing from summer fun, etc. One that isn't mentioned often, but that I think plays an important role is that the ends of our terms are now a lot closer than their beginnings, and with talk of transition and handing things off to "next year's people", the conversations change tenor. We start to realize the limits of the limitless potential that comes with the first few months of the job.

For those of you reading thinking about applying for officer, remember that the potential is still limitless for you to shape the Corp and make it even better! It's just that we've now done most everything we're going to over our first nine months. The most important thing we have left to do is pick the right people to have our jobs next year and give them everything they need and want to do a great job, have an amazing and exciting year, and be proud of their year as officers.

Corp leadership jobs both demand and engender intense devotion to the company. What tires us also keeps us from going to sleep late at night and gets us up in the morning. It's often different from person to person, but I think at the core of it is just that the job is cool. It's creative, fun, and powerful, in a business sense. And while the resources at our disposal earn the Corp superlatives, one that can't be measured like our revenue or employee base is how much people care, and it's the most important one, far as I'm concerned.

Because Corpies care about having a good time, running a quality business we can be proud of, and improving themselves and the Corp, they're willing to put in the hours and put up with being put in unfamiliar situations, passing up more lucrative job opportunties, and staying self-motivated. That's a priceless resource for the Corp's leadership, but also a source of pressure to direct the company in a way that's deserving of these employees' devotion.

And once the end of that responsibility and the end of that pressure on you draws near, the conversations change from "how do we do a good job?" to "did we do a good job?". Asking the latter means confronting the mistakes, failures, and frustrations, which is one way I think burnout can creep in. Keeping that at bay for me is knowing that there are Corpies out there that are willing to take a crack at fixing what we didn't have the time, energy, skill, or creativity to get to.

So, no post in September. My apologies. Things were a little busy. And I got a little tired. But I'm damn glad to be back, damn glad to be here, and damn glad to be a Corpie.

I'll be 22 tomorrow. How did I get to be so freaking old...?

Corp Summer Wrap-up

So, tomorrow is the start of NSO, and if you ever wanted to seize control of the Corp, this next week will be the time. There are lots of Corpies involved in NSO, including me, and we'll be under the benevolent rule of Acting CEO/COO/CFO and Director of Vittles Mr. Dave Shevlin until school starts. Maybe I can get him to write a blog post in my absence. But with the start of NSO also comes the end of Corp Summer, one that I (foolishly) expected to be one of the more gentle and relaxing of my time at Georgetown.

Summer is when everything gets done. Everything you want to do gets done during summer. I've heard it over and over from Corp elders, putting the pressure on the summer crew to fix what needs fixing, start new projects, finish big projects, and generally just crush it. I suppose that means it's time to look back on what we accomplished this summer and see how we did, since we've now done the majority of what's going to get done this year. It's of course true that not having to worry about/attend/worry about not attending class leaves us free to concentrate on the Corp, but it's also true that the projects we save for the summer are complicated, important, and time-consuming.

Subscribing to an attitude of doing a few things well the first time means we need to learn to be satisfied with a shorter and less ambitious list of projects and be willing to concentrate on details that can seem trivial and annoying. Making something sustainable isn't necessarily the fun part. The fun part is saying "hey, we're students, and we can change whatever we want! Let's change X, Y, and Z into A, B, and C". Problem is, two, five, or twenty summers ago, someone may well have said "let's change A, B, and C into X, Y, and Z" and did an OK-but-not-great job at it.

While we will certainly repeat some mistakes, I'm proud of what we've done so far, and if we can finish everything we started, get people to buy into a new way of doing some things that haven't been done as well as they could have been, keep up the enthusiasm and Corplove and keep down the burnout, we'll be in great shape come spring. To give you an idea of what exactly we've been up to (besides getting up to our -ahem- summer weights and acquiring respiratory infections) I'll hit the highlights of Corp Summer 2009.

New pastry vendor means no more cardboard cookies. Cr-ice-is continues, but ends in new ice machines in every coffee shop. DPAC director is Joel; great applicant pool and enthusiastic support from Corp focus groups. GeorgetownYou revamp with online design tool. New age in HR: interview training, hiring reform, and performance reporting. Online system lets you submit praise for employees or complain about a terrible shift. Corp off-site storage organized (to any alumni reading, I blame you...) and audit successfully completed thanks to HUGE performances across the Corp. Catering continues to make moves, ready to make a splash. Vittles completely repriced. Negotiated better cup deal to save money and get sweet cups. Made contact with 1100 alumni, new age in alumni relations. Crossovers, administrators, and cash counters. Sweat. Love. Summer.

(Stay tuned for details.)

What do people see when they see the Corp at its best?

I was talking to someone who is not in the Corp last week, and as we were talking about the Corp's image, she said something that was pretty straightforward, but that has stuck with me since she said it. After I had said something along the lines of "yeah, we're working on making the DPAC Cafe a little more professional, a little more classy," she responded with "but you guys have to make sure you stay cool...you know, like the funny tip signs...they're what makes the Corp great."

I, for one, haven't made a new tip sign in a while. When I was first hired, I was really into it and poured a not insignificant amount of energy into making tip signs that were funny, attention-grabbing, and/or pathetic to encourage people to leave change. Full disclosure: I have never received more than $5 in tips in a shift, and I was even a lunch rush specialist freshman year. I hardly think about it anymore, though. When I buy food at Vittles, I can count on there being a tip sign there, more than likely one that makes me laugh. But when I think about what people appreciate or criticize about the Corp, I would never have thought about tip signs, and that was the #1 attribute in this girl's mind.

Makes me think, as the CEO, what I really should be encouraging and pushing for. To "Serve Students", what should we be thinking about? Does that kid in our discussion section want consistency and professional-quality appearance in Vittles? Does the student leader want more money to be given out by philanthropy? Do the new students visiting the DPAC Cafe want to see something with the gleams and polishes of a Cosi?

Or...do they want a funny tip sign? To see a casual, cool fellow student behind the counter, to hear the same music that's on their most recent playlist, to order drinks with creative names and to leave the store in just a little bit better of a mood than when they came in? Isn't that our most important customer - the one that finds what they're looking for in more complex ways that just caffeine -> mouth or boxes -> storage?

I suppose in my position, it's my job to push for the things in the first paragraph so that they can sustain the existence of this company and its reputation for providing needed services well. But it's also my job to help craft the Corp's image, and that's a challenging balancing act. Because if there were no tip signs, boring names, scripted customer service, and Musak, would we still be serving students? This is especially pertinent for the DPAC Cafe, where I really do believe enhancing the quality of our equipment, the precision of our planning, the training of our staff to a level the Corp has not yet demanded of its services will pay off in so many ways. So when we seek to preserve the Corp's identity in a new form...how can we make those mesh?

I'm not sure. Still working on it. I guess there's just a faith that I have that the virtues that make the Corp the Corp can be preserved while eliminating those faults that make the Corp (sigh...) the Corp.

And do not get me started on equipment maintenance. Argh.