Archive for August, 2008

Welcome to Leading to Serve

Fri • Aug 8th, 2008  •  by Tom Nees  •  Comments 0

Thanks for coming to this new site and welcome to what I hope will be a network of leaders learning from one another. 

Leading to Serve, Inc., exists to help leaders, particularly those in nonprofit and faith-based communities, advance their leadership skills to help others succeed.  

            The tabs across the top which will help you navigate - 

  • BLOG - the home page with regular reflections on leadership development and issues that affect nonprofit and faith-based communities
     
  • ABOUT - purpose statement and my personal profile
     
  • SERVICES - information about executive coaching, conferences and consulting
     
  • RESOURCES - book reviews, articles and the Community Resource Center – a place for leaders to post information and comments about books, articles, websites, and videos they’ve found helpful
     
  • VOICES - interviews with leaders who fit the Leading to Serve profile
     
  • CONTACT – a way to communicate with me and the Leading to Serve network 

This website is a work in progress.   The site as well as the organization will always be a work in progress, adapting to needs and opportunities. 

Please contact me at info@leadingtoserve.com with any ideas or suggestions. 

Tom Nees

 

Change is difficult – when vanity is stronger than misery

Mon • Aug 4th, 2008  •  by Tom Nees  •  Comments 1

“If we want things to stay as they are some things will have to change.”

This is, according to Rachel Donadio, in her essay in the July 13, New York Times Book Review, the most famous line in “The Leopard,” an Italian novel recently reprinted in a new 50th anniversary edition.

The young protagonist in the story is speaking to his uncle about the refusal of Sicilians to change.  He complains that “their vanity is stronger than their misery.”  He knows that for the Sicilians to preserve their culture they would have to change.

In real life as well as the novel not everything needs to be, nor should be, changed, but everything is changing.   That’s our dilemma.

In their book “Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics,” political operatives Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, observe and predict the changes that this new generation (born between1982-2002) has already brought, and will continue to bring to politics.   They don’t claim to know which political party stands to gain the most from the Millennials.   They do, however, advise that the party and candidates that figure out how to adapt to the new generation will dominate American politics for decades to come.

The Millennials – the oldest of which are now 26 – are different in many ways from their parents – the Gen-Exer’s and Baby Boomers.   Their coming of age coincides with major social changes in communication and community brought on the Internet.   Connected as they are by text-messaging and social networks, Millennials are more concerned about quality of life issues than ideology.   They are more interested in finding common ground than being defined by their differences.

I read the book wondering if I might learn something about how the Millennials – larger in number than the Baby Boomers – will affect nonprofits, faith-based organizations and churches as well as politics.   Like the authors I can’t predict what’s ahead, but I too am convinced that the organizations that will thrive in the future will be those that are agile enough to adapt to the changes this new generation is bringing.

“The Leopard” is a cautionary tale.  We must be willing to change if the things we care about are to survive and we want to avoid the misery of our decline and irrelevance.