HOW DO YOU SPELL SERVICE LEADERSHIP ? (click for video)

As children we learn the quasi-nursery rhyme song that concludes: now I sang my ABC’s, next time won’t you sing with me. The following ABC reflections are offered as a part of the song I’ve now been singing for about three years, specifically in relation to the development of a Kroc Center, but the principles are broader than Kroc. Hope you’re able to sing along.


Adaptability “Here is the principle...adapt your measures to the necessity of the people to whom you minister. You are to take the Gospel to them in such modes...and circumstances as will gain for it from them a hearing” (Catherine Booth). While we’ve been adapting in various ways since the days of William and Catherine, Kroc is a new song that we (individually and corporately) have never sung before. We are each searching for our groove, straining to hear the notes flowing through our days. We are adapting to a new paradigm, but none of us is quite sure what it will look like when it is complete. What saves us is that we know the Singer!

This adventure requires that we find both organizational balance and personal balance. Not the kind of wobbly, hold-your-breath kind of high wire walking, but a steady balance that lives from a well-grounded faith. As Oprah
Winfrey reminds us, “I've learned that you can't have everything and do everything at the same time .“ Even if we’re doing it for Jesus.

BALANCE This adventure requires that we find both organizational balance and personal balance. Not the kind of wobbly, hold-your-breath kind of high wire walking, but a steady balance that lives from a well-grounded faith. As Oprah Winfrey reminds us, “I've learned that you can't have everything and do everything at the same time .“ Even if we’re doing it for Jesus.


COMMUNICATION Even with all the expanding ways of communicating in our technological world, it remains a challenge to get and keep everyone on the same page. Lotus Notes calendars and e-mails are wonderful tools, but we each have varying technological savvy and comfort. We also have to realize that just because we sent an e-mail on a topic, it doesn’t follow that our staff has received and/or read their e-mail. Also, there are some communications that should be handled in person (as our lawyer has recently reminded our division).

Our on-going communication struggles are made more difficult by the longer hours that the RJKCCC is open. There are part-time employees that we may not see for a couple of weeks if our schedules don’t coincide. We do continue to have monthly full staff meetings where all employees are welcome but not mandated to attend. We’ve also established ‘section’ meetings to bring together all those working in a particular area that have met with some success. Yet if we were to name our biggest staff-related challenge, it would be communication. We need to TALK!


DETERMINATION There is a measure of resolve and even stubbornness needed to bring these centers to completion. There are times when we must do what we have to do to move the development ahead. There are times when we just have to jump through one more hoop, and there are other times when we need to battle to dismantle a hoop or two. Might we have the serenity to accept those things we cannot change, the courage to change those things we can change (or work to change), and the wisdom to know the difference.

EXPECTATIONS With all the hype surrounding the new centers, expectations have been flying sky-high. Joan Kroc’s expectations for excellence come to us from the grave. Our communities expect us to keep our promises, while many participants do not expect to have to pay for services from the Salvation Army – after all, ‘you are the Salvation Army.’ Our donors expect us to be the Salvation Army, careful of how we spend the money that’s been entrusted to us to use. Our DHQ’s may expect our centers to be a resource to the division without realizing the local commitments we have. Tourists expect to drop in and get a tour, often with the officers as tour guides.

We expect our staff to take a crash course in Salvation Army policy and procedure, and to know how to use systems that are still developing. We expect excellence in programs from the start, and we have a “If we build it, they will come” mentality that may be naïve, especially in tough economic times. We also expect too much of ourselves as leaders, and any workaholic tendencies we have are easily exacerbated in the Kroc experience.

To manage expectations, we need to make sure that we’re all telling the same story. We need to be willing to say, “This is what we can do,” and offer alternatives when we can’t help or provide a particular karate class. Even with the wonderful resources of the center, we cannot realistically be all things to all people.

FUTURE-THINKING What will our centers look like in five, ten, twenty or fifty years? We must think to the future, programmatically and facility-wise. Just having celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the Hough Center in Cleveland, it was apparent that its inflexible facility footprint, lack of preventative maintenance, and on-going financial struggle are limiting its impact in the twenty-first century. While we can’t predict the future, we can anticipate that change will occur and keep our centers open for shifting interests and needs within our communities.

GRACE Ah, it is an amazing grace. Now is a time to offer grace for each other and for ourselves. “You deserve a break today” isn’t only a McDonalds slogan –
it’s a gift we can give each other. In a big adventure like the Kroc Center development, we are sure to fail in some ways. For every Big Mac that sold millions, there was an experiment like Ray Kroc’s Hula Burger that never made it out of the gate (grilled pineapple topped with cheese on a bun). Dan Allender tells us that “to continue to dream when failure and disappointment cloud the sun is the radical gift of hope,” the kind of hope that is “a calculated risk that declares, whatever the loss, it is better than remaining where we are.” Like it or not, we’ve thrown our hat over the fence, and have no choice but to go after it and give it our best shot. When it doesn’t work out quite like we planned, we’ve got to have a large helping of grace to ease our sense of failure.

PART -1-

Major JoAnn Shade
Administrator