"The Dangers of Idealism"

Idealism has prevented us from resolving issues once and for all that have continued to haunt us and caused ongoing difficulties and struggles for the organization. It leads us to avoid real, CONCRETE solutions to problems and rather steers us to the course of "if all goes well, this will happen." As a result we are far, far from the organization that we could be."

The rapid turnover of leaders within this organization has meant that with each new meeting there is a new influx of people who have a basic trust of the system--that decisions will be made, that those decisions will be followed and followed up on, that people will do what they say they will do. Our idealism continually ensures that our conclusions are limited to needing to hug each other more often."

Indeed, as this fellow repper mused, while this organization cannot survive without idealism, idealism can also be its downfall. Here, locally, as we seek to expand the membership in a way that is not only sustainable, but responsible, we should challenge the paradigm; or, more specifically, the assumptions on which the current paradigm rests. Assumptions that are abstract, and lack tangibility. Assumptions that are idealistic, but lack practicality.

I believe that we must prioritize the diffusion of our philosophy instead of our bureaucracy, and realize that the former does not requires the latter. We reject the Great Assumption: that we must continuously and endlessly expand the size of the LC to continuously and endlessly expand the impact that we have. It is a different vision, and—let this be clear—one that is no more or less ambitious than others.

The status quo sees the Dream and asks, "What if we got 5,000 people at a national conference?" My vision sees the Dream and asks, "What if there were 150-200 people at a national conference, and 80% of them had done or were on the verge of doing traineeships, and if 50% of them were engaged in national sales? [And it sees a 5,000-person national conference for what it would be, in all practicality: absurdly inefficient, horrendously impersonal, and logistically nightmarish].

Damn it, this was the entire philosophy behind the International Power Hour. Let’s do a different “recruitment”. Start internally. Utilize what already exists to increase efficiency and results. Because we can increase exchange—and thus our impact—without having to increase in size. Let’s stop the fluffy, B.S. rhetoric and focus on something tangible, an action you can take right now to greatly enhance our impact.

Growing the number of people we impact is a principle and a goal, but growing the number of members is not. But what the status quo advocates is membership growth for growth’s sake—and here is why. The process for determining recruitment numbers does not identify concrete goals and objectives for the semester. We do not ask each team what they plan to accomplish during the semester, and how many people they require and then approximate the number of members needed to complete the tasks at hand. Therefore it is not growing in order to accommodate a proportional increase in what we are trying to achieve in a given time period to expand our influence and impact. And we have many members that take advantage of the organization, and on whom resources, time and money are continuously wasted while work is created on an ad hoc basis (if it’s created at all). The question is “what can we take on?” instead of “what do we need?” Thus we are not growing out of necessity. We are growing to grow, because we assume that it is the only way to enhance our impact and fulfill our mission—thus failure to do so is “taking a step backward”.

Any efficient and successful organization—whether for profit or non-profit, Fortune 500 or humanitarian—does not operate in this way. You implement the structure, and then bring on the personnel. You have the work, and then you grow the membership. None of them champion unlimited growth as a necessary means to increase their influence and fulfill their missions. But not us. We either 1) bring on the personnel, and then put the structure/task in place, or 2) bring on the personnel as the structure or task is being created, refined, and put into place. As we are a functioning, non-profit business, this begs one question: why do we think that we can operate so differently?

Because we are unrestrained. Here's where idealism--such a vital and precious quality--becomes dangerous.

While growth in impact does not require growth in size, growth in size can also undermine impact. How? Greater numbers can overwhelm structures, and cause processes to break down and tasks to remain unmet. And in the past semester, this has happened. But here I must make an important point: as Bruni articulated (and did so surprisingly well), we could easily take on 100 more members next semester and not “collapse”. We could have a 300, 500, 1,000 person LC in the future that does exchange and impacts people and hosts events. It is not a doomsday scenario.

But in all this discussion, one vital element has barely been broached: that of community. We are a local community. At the LC retreat one of our four determined principles was community. So it must be pretty important.

Community is different than integration—the latter is about the individual, and the former is about the collective—and while the failure of all but 2 members to know the names of every single person in the LC is not indicative of a lack of personal “integration”, it does speak volumes about the intimacy and cohesion of the community. For me, community is reflected in the rapport of the whole, of people working not purely in factions or working groups or delegated teams but as a whole. When an important discussion breaks down, turns off members and is rendered completely inefficient for the second semester in a row, this is a blemish on the community as a whole.

This is why I take the stance I do. Because no one can tell me—concretely—how a community would be maintained with 300 people at Brats. Or 400 people at a social event. Or 150 people on the marketing team. Or 40 people on the coach team. Or a lecture hall full of 500 people for a GMM. The cohesion and closeness of a community—the strength of bonds which envelope the entire group—are contingent on size. This is a fundamental reality of human interaction. Factionalizing, while standing to expand the bureaucracy and make processes more inefficient, does not compensate for the diminishing of overall community. Nor does it ensure an increase in impact and work proportional to increase in membership. This fall we had twice as many members as the fall prior. Did we do twice as much work? Did we have twice as much of an impact?

I am a product of the community. And it is the disintegration of this community that "fucks" prior legacies and future potential, not a failure to produce unlimited growth. Remember when 10-hour road trips on a weekend with people you were just getting to know was the norm? Now we have seen this community, on a national level, completely disintegrate. But it still grows, and it still functions, and it functions well.

But I would still hate to see our LC take the same course.