Honored to attend the Post meeting and install the incoming 2019-2020 officers. The Helen K Denton Post 3650 in Fayetteville, GA is a solid, community based Post that continues to do the right things.
 Was honored to attend the ceremony in at Greenwood Cemetery in Atlanta to honor a World War I nurse, Camille O'Brien, who gave her life supporting troops in France and then lay in an unmarked grave for 98 years. That was rectified this week. (That's me, center back...) Full article at 11alive.com
In the words of Crocodile Dundee... "Now that's a knife..." I think I could use one of these. Reading an article by Seth Godin this morning and he pointed out: Traffic at work isn’t just a metaphor. It’s real. We get stuck. Surrounded by people who are just as stuck. It can seem like progress is at a crawl. This got me thinking about the VFW and VFW activities. We're all busy, I get it. But we have to stop and look at the lane we're locked into. Most Posts are doing good things, but some are locked into a "what's required" mentality. We've got to bust out of that. We need more Posts focused on the opportunities in their communities. Where we can go is so much bigger than we know. But we've got to band together and push.
It won't always be easy but it will be worth it. Nothing great ever came from doing the required minimums. Let's do something great.  I don't know if Teddy really said this, but I can believe he would. Either way, I said it.
Commander Dobbins, Jr Vice Willis and I met this morning with a representative from Governor Kemp's office. We want to get more involved with the Georgia Legislature and the Governor's office. Georgia has some amazing services for veterans but there is always room for improvement. We're trying to get our good people some better support.
Thought from Seth Godin this morning... We accidentally curate who comes to the meeting, who has a seat at the table where decisions are made. We almost randomly decide who is interviewing and being interviewed, who is brainstorming, who is reviewing the work… Too many of our meetings are happenstance. We need to take control and cultivate the outcome we want. As a leader, Post Commander, District Commander, or other, don't wait till you are in the meeting to see what happens. Leadership means orchestrating the discussion and making sure the right people are there whether it's a one-on-one pre-meeting, a meeting with a donor/supporter, or a membership meeting. You have to coordinate what happens when your organization meets. And don't be afraid of doing something new, just remember that you have to LEAD the way.
In Thomaston tonight to see how we can revitalize this Post. Had one new member and we focused on where the Post can go rather than on the past. Planning a pancake breakfast and an adjustment to the meeting time to see if that helps spark more interest.
I told the Post members we need to be thinking about the next event after the pancake breakfast. We have to keep looking forward in order to grow. It is very easy as a Post to get caught up in what has (or hasn't) happened and to let that overwhelm the conversations and the focus of the Post. This doesn't help. Posts and Post leadership have to be focused on the future and where the Post is going. We have to paint that picture for the membership that might not see it yet. No one is going to climb aboard a sinking ship (or a withering VFW Post). We have to be going somewhere and then we can invite our membership and potential new members to be part of an exciting and interesting future. These challenges are not specific to Post 6447, they are more common than we would like. Lets' focus on what we can do rather than what hasn't happened. Focusing on the past, especially when things might not have been great, is a sure way to kill a Post. We want the opposite. We want to grow our Posts and our Department! |
Jeff CarrollI've converted the site recently and am migrating and re-classifying old stuff as I go. Might take a minute... Posts about2nd Amendment
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