What Floats your Boat? As a busy businessman, I enjoy the rough and tumble of being part of a committee that does something great in Rotary. I like to work with people from different backgrounds and learn/practise skills that I may not have had previously. If I am lucky, I might have the opportunity to pass my own skills to others. A committee is a terrific part of the Rotary experience. At the Club level, every member used to get allocated a position in a committee, given a job if you like. I never really liked that way of handing out the jobs because some members just didn't want to do their allocated job. Instead, I prefer to be sold on an idea and put my efforts into helping that idea become a reality. Passion becomes the driver and with passion you put in your all without even knowing it. In my business life, it is easy to pick people driven by passion. They love what they do, punch above their weight and are ready to take on more. The rest are plodders and while they eventually get the job done, they never seem happy. We are all different but to get the most out of life, I think you need to be enthused with everything you do. Yesterday, Judy and I had a meeting with our business coach. We need a coach to transition from working seven days a week to something a bit less, maybe six and a half days a week. Over the last year, we have been building a staff of passionate young people which my business coach met for the first time. One of the questions came up about why my staff like working for Judy and me. My business coach needed a bit of an insight to the workplace culture to use to recruit a new employee. So I gave my staff a bit of homework to write down why they like working in my business. I was blown away by the response with one of my staff writing a two-page essay. In essence, respect, fun, learning and passion sum up their reasons for being part of my (and Judy) team. In business, I am able to attract the right people to build a fun, productive and profitable business. In our Club, we also have in essence the same foundations as in my business. The respect, opportunities to learn and grow as well as passion are there. The projects, possibilities and areas of growth are there too. Our Club should be firing on all cylinders but perhaps I am not selling the idea to bring out the passion. There is not enough collective passion to get the motor running so I am going to have to work harder to sell the idea to spark the passion. Passion is the driver. So let me have a go to sell the idea of a very important project of the Club and see if I can create enough passion for members to join in to make it work. Presentation Balls.This project has been a decades-long project between RC Berwick and Berwick College. It has enabled a productive relationship between Rotary and the School and has provided many other opportunities for Rotary to touch the lives of the school community. Examples include funding a staircase in the school in which all students benefit, kitting out their school sickbay, and funding two gifted science students to attend the National Youth Science Forum ( Ryan Spelling will be presenting to our Club this week on the subject!). The Balls provide much-needed funds to the school and also to Rotary for our projects. Our work creates goodwill and opportunities for Rotary to be active in the school as well as a pathway of understanding the pressures of running a public school in Berwick. Schools create our future leaders and if Rotary can be represented during those school years, then those students may enlist Rotary somewhere in the future. Rotarians need to understand what is going on in the community to meet the needs of the community. We need to know what is under the surface to get a bang for our limited buck and this project rings loud on so many levels. The Presentation Balls have been running on a skeleton crew for a few years. That crew is not able to continue which means I need to find people who want to make a difference in the community. Earn money for the school and their projects. Earn money for Rotary and our projects. Be a beacon of light in the community. Be seen, be heard and be noticed as Rotarians at the front, doing something positive with their time and resources. The idea is there. Did I make it sound good enough to get a bit of passion flowing? I expect I will need a little practice.  Your job could be anything. YOU can make a difference in our community by getting involved. Send me an email, I'd love to hear from you. david.button@rotaryberwick.org |
