We Have Always Done It That Way

Blogger Maddie Grant (who, for all you trivia buffs out there, was the first person to get all five authors to sign a copy of the book) wrote a nice post today about how grateful some of her members were to be even ASKED their opinion. It reminded me of Amy’s post about Generational Education. And Maddie points out that sometimes you need more than just the epiphany that asking people what they think is a good idea:

But my biggest “Doh!” moment was this: at the end of the discussion, I was thanking everyone for giving up their break time and talking to me about it, and someone said, “No, we want to thank you for coming here – nobody has ever asked us what we thought about it before.”

I mean, I knew this was true, because I have made it my number one priority for us staff to have a real presence at all of our events and for all of our members to know who we are and be free to talk to us about anything. But to have someone actually say it, point blank, made me realize that there is a HUGE cultural shift that I need to make happen, where all members and students are made to feel part of our community, not just the core few who are involved the most. And all it takes to make that shift start to happen, is to be able to show that I care what each of them has to say. Which I do! So I will keep asking.

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