Quality over Quantity

 

"It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity."

 - Mahtma Gandhi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good Day EWI!

 

I found this photo of this "poor little donkey" and  thought it is an incredible visual analogy of the burden a lot of our Chapters have been operating under with their lofty fundraising initiatives.  Note: I am confident given the value of the donkey to this cart owner that he would have taken quick steps to lighten the load and get his feet back on the ground!  What is obviously missing from this scenario is the ability for the donkey to gain any traction, a necessary condition for any progression, or, if you like, "20 Mile Marching!"

 

Last week I had the pleasure of gathering with some of the Presidents from my "Fleet" of Chapters.  We had a wonderful conversation about their first quarter experiences in leading their Chapters.

 

I was so heartened to hear verbiage like "Quality vs. Quantity" being expressed as a mantra for their year of Chapter operations.  Kudos to Jill Gaffney, EWI of Spokane and her board for embracing this concept and doing only one event this year, a Black and White ball in May! I also applaud Megi Scowcroft, EWI of Denver and her board for recognizing that there was no need to exhaust themselves fundraising this year because they were in a solid financial situation.  All of the President's I spoke with have adopted recruitment as their number one priority and I am thrilled!

 

Unless a Chapter is in a healthy state of membership, i.e. 25 Member Firms or more, please, please don't over burden yourself with fundraising initiatives.  We all need to focus on growing our membership so that we have a healthy pool of talent to draw upon to execute fundraising in a quality way someday in the near future.  We all know the saying, "Many hands make light work."  So true!

 

The other key benefit to this approach of scaling down is that you and your current members will hopefully not be so exhausted and overwhelmed when potential new members receive their first impression of EWI.   It will also make recruiting for board positions much easier.

 

The Corporate team is continually searching for ways to ease Chapter operations and in fact we have a Corporate Committee dedicated to study additional ways we can help.  Thanks to Judy Russell, EWI of Tulsa for her work as Vice Chair on that Committee!

 

Short week as I am off to Las Vegas for a weekend of fun!  Quite an exciting weekend as we are dining at Hells Kitchen Friday night, tickets for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill on Saturday night and then a BeeGees revival act on Sunday night.  Too much fun, I am sure!

 

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

 

- K

Life Is Too Short

"Living your life in the service of other people... that is how you validate yourself, that is how you find purpose".

- Oprah Winfrey

Good Day EWI!

Well, the talk of the town here in Calgary this week was the fact that Oprah spoke here on Tuesday night to a crowd of about 14,000 people.  She was, by all accounts, her fabulous self.  Reading the reviews in the paper on Wednesday I was struck by this quote of hers and thought it a perfect summary of what EWI is all about.  We are helping people find their purpose and allowing them to feel good about themselves and how they spend their time.  I firmly believe that and can personally attest to, as I am sure we all can, that EWI enriches our lives. 

 

I was blessed to have parents whose greatest words of wisdom to me were to ensure that whatever I chose to do professionally, make sure it was what I was passionate about and that I would love doing, each and every day.  Sometimes that got pushed to the wayside in my career, but how grand is it to be turning 50 this year, knowing that each aspect of my current career brings some joy to me?  It was not an easy path to get here,  for sure!  There was a period of my life for about eight years when I was not following my passion but rather the pay cheque.  Thankfully I finally listened to my inner voice that said to me, "this is wrong and get out now before it kills your spirit entirely". 

 

However, as you may know by now, I am a firm believer in fate.  During those dark years, as I call them, I was introduced to EWI and can now look back and be so thankful that I did have that one bright spot in my life.  At the end of each of those days grinding it out in the corporate world, I knew that EWI was helping me to find purpose in my life.

 

Life is far too short to go to work and not love what you do, each and every day!  I truly hope that through your membership in EWI you are developing new skill sets that can lead you to your own "sweet spot" professionally while also bringing meaning and purpose to your life personally through the friendships made and our philanthropic efforts.  Know that through your service, you are impacting others for positive change!

 

We had our board meeting this week and yet again, I am amazed by all the progress our corporate committee Vice Chairs and committee members are making under the stellar leadership of our corporate Chairs.  I cannot thank these ladies enough for helping make our vision a reality:  Darlis Vauble, EWI of Omaha, Darlene Banogon, EWI of San Diego, Kim Fankhauser, EWI of Des Moines, Jeanette Davis, EWI of Dallas, Kerry Feltenberg, EWI of Phoenix, Jenni Burns, EWI of Phoenix and Pat Evans, EWI of San Diego and Carolyn Woodmansee, EWI of Spokane.  My deepest wish is that your current role as Chair is helping you find purpose each day too!

 

This week also brought some very sad news to EWI.  Our dearly beloved Max Helen Harrison, Past Corporate President 1964-65, EWI of Fort Worth, passed away last Saturday.   For those of you who knew her, you will understand what a loss this is.  For those of you who did not, let me assure you that she was an incredible lady, in every sense of the word.  I remember meeting her at  LCAM a few years ago and she was so proud to tell me that she had actually chartered our Chapter in 1964.  I feel so blessed to have met her.

 

Today, I believe, our search for the final resting place of our Founder Lucille Johnson Perkins, is over.  Anna McCutcheon, EWI of San Diego has been digging through public records and archives exhaustively on behalf of the 75th Anniversary Committee.  Thank you Anna!  It seems that our Lucille tragically died at age 32,  in 1942, just four years after starting Executives Secretaries.  She never knew what impact she would have on thousands of lives and that makes me sad.  Anna's brother is going to visit her grave and report back to us on the condition and if there is anyway we can honour her there, in this, our very special anniversary year. 

 

We must hold on to the belief though that Lucille too must have been following a passion of hers when she started our organization.  After all, she said it best of all, as in our Chartering documents it states, "She who serves most, profits best".

 

Cherish your days, honor yourself and be proud of how you serve others with EWI!

 

Have a great weekend!

-K

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Connections

"The best way to lead people into the future is to connect with them deeply in the present".

- James Kouzes and Barry Posner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good Day EWI!

 

It does indeed seem like the two weeks since I last posted.  My apologies for not posting last week but this is rather hard via an iPad.  It is hard to imagine a week ago I was in Mexico, but true.  We had a glorious week in Cabo San Lucas returning early Sunday morning.  I then had a mad dash trip to Montreal on business, back late Tuesday night.  Wednesday was full of emails and catching up and I also had the pleasure of being the guest speaker at our Chapter meeting.  Suddenly, it is Friday once again, which I will not complain about at all!

 

As I grow older I am always amazed at what a small world it truly is and how everyone, regardless of where we come from or what we do for a living, can connect.  While at our resort in Cabo we made friends with a wonderful couple from New Jersey and had the pleasure of dining with them on a couple of nights as well as spending a day touring with them.  They lost everything in Hurricane Sandy and have been staying with friends since.  They had booked this trip as a late honeymoon before the storm and thought that regardless of how dire and depressing their lives have been since the storm, they needed to get away from it all.  It was uncanny watching them slowly relax, rejuvenate and come back to a position of positive thoughts about their future.  Meeting them literally changed our whole vacation and helped us to create some incredible memories.  If you ever get to Cabo, be sure to dine at Sunset Mona Lisa (one of the top five places in the world to watch the sunset).  We experienced something majestic together that will forever create a bond between us.  We connected deeply by pure happenstance and now have two new amazing friends that we cannot wait to see again!  I have to share the sunset with you now too:

 

 

 

As I was going through security in Montreal for my flight home, I happened to run into a cousin of mine that I have not seen in about 10 years.  Thankfully, we had time to grab a coffee and have a quick catch up before our respective flights.  The thing was, I recognized him first and while we are not close with his family, I took the chance and thought, why not introduce myself and re-connect?  I could have walked away and found some peace and quiet, but chose to engage instead.  We had a great visit and I was able to share with him some family history that he was curious about and he updated me on his siblings.

 

So, if all that connecting was not enough, today I had my first call with a Corporate Board member of International Executives Association and this is going to be HUGE for EWI's growth in the future!  I will be attending an IEA Calgary Chapter meeting on the 06Feb and then meeting afterwards with two of their corporate board members, who just happen to live in Calgary to discuss and create a plan on how we can properly align the two organizations to allow us to both aid in one another's growth objectives.  Next step will be to identify a mutual date for me to sit down with their Corporate President and Executive Director, who both happen to reside in Edmonton.  In just a short hour long conversation we were able to really delve into the issues and opportunities facing both of our associations while recognizing the synergy that already exists.  Again - it all came down to listening and deeply connecting with one another.

 

So, lesson learnt for me this week?  Grab hold of every opportunity that presents itself to reach out and meet or reconnect with others.  You just never know what rewards are waiting!

 

Have a wonderful weekend EWI!

K

 

 

 

 

New Beginnings!

"And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been".

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Good Day EWI!

Happy New Year to each and every one of you!  I wish you and your member firms great prosperity in 2013!

This has been a momentous week for EWI as I, on behalf of the Personnel Committee's Hiring Task Force and the entire Board of Directors, was able to announce that we have hired a new Executive Director/COO!  In case you missed the news....Wendy Cowley, EWI of Salt Lake City and Past Corporate President, has accepted the position.

So many of you know and love Wendy, but for those members who do not, let me assure you that Wendy is bringing over 25 years of EWI experience to the table, along with a successful 35 year career in management.

We were very adamant when entering this hiring process, that we wanted to first open the search internally within EWI.  We recognized that the one key skill set we would never find with an external candidate was institutional knowledge.  We felt this is critical as EWI is very unique.  The role of the Executive Director is really to manage over 60 separate "companies" if you will, all with their own unique needs, history and expectations.  We have been challenged with past hires in truly helping them understand this diversity and how Chapters are impacted by what decisions are made at the Corporate level.

Like the Board, Wendy is committed to the Carver model of Board Governance and is eager to review all processes with the ultimate goal of easing Chapter operations. She has also been Chair of our Audit and Investment Committee for several years, and as such, has a comprehensive understanding of our financial operations.  She has been a trusted advisor and has always stepped in as the "local" Salt Lake go-to person for board members.

Please join the staff, the board and I in welcoming Wendy when she assumes the role on February 4th, 2013!

Again, a HUGE thank you to Carolyn Woodmansee, Personnel Committee Chair, Ronwyn Anderson, Lisa Stokes, Verla Kelley and Karen Thomspon.  Ladies, you have made these past three months much easier for me from an HR perspective and I cannot thank you enough!

This week I reviewed the financial audit documents from our accounting firm and am excited for our first EWI Annual Report to be delivered to you at the end of this month.  As a charitable organization that is comprised of a membership body it was a key goal for us to deliver an annual report to you this year.  We hope this will become a key recruitment tool for you for the next 12 months!

Gathering with my fellow Board members tomorrow for our monthly "Coffee Chat" session so that we can catch up mid month.  I am leaving for a week of vacation tomorrow afternoon to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, so I will probably not be blogging next week, although one never knows....

Wishing you all a stellar weekend and week ahead,

- K