Preparing for growth - Column

The beginning of a new year is a time when many of us take the time to look at our lives and make resolutions for change. Those resolutions can be simple, such as, "By summer I will have lost 25 pounds." They may be complex and change the entire direction of our lives. An example could be a decision to leave an area of employment, return to school and embark on an entirely different career. Either one of these resolutions requires that we take an active role in changing our lives.

This particular new year, our country is at the start of a new presidential administration. This new administration is taking over power at a time when our country is facing challenges that it has not faced before. We all know that our economy has been in trouble for some time, but the economies of most developed countries have also been having difficulty. The attempt to improve economies, both in developed and developing nations, continues to place a heavy burden on the natural environment. The international political environment may seem less threatening than it has for more than a generation, but it is also less stable than it has been.

The challenges posed by the global economy, the instability of the global political situation and the continuing degradation of the world's natural environment clearly are going to be difficult for the new administration. Most important, the new administration will have to be an agent of change. In fact, the concept of "change," was a major factor in the campaign run by President-elect Clinton.

What are the challenges you are facing in the coming year? What changes will you have to incorporate into your life? What changes are you actively seeking and what changes do you see as being forced upon you? These are questions that you will have to deal with during 1993, and each year after. But now is a good time to contemplate the impact of change on our lives.

The concept of change and our resistance to it has been written about extensively. As I was preparing to write this column, I ran across a short article in Association Trends by ACA's strategic planning consultant, Henry Ernstthal, entitled, "Blazing the Trail of Change Could Bring Risks or Rewards to Associations." In that article Ernstthal states, "It isn't that people don't like change. It's that people don't like change that they don't like."

Ernstthal uses the example of asking individuals whether or not they would be willing to change their lifestyles to accommodate a doubling of their annual income or not. I think that we would agree that most people would not only be willing, but actually eager for that type of change in their lives. On the other hand, camp directors across the country objected to the changes required when the new commercial drivers license requirements went into effect last year.

The type of change that we tend not to like is the type that we do not initiate, or that is forced on us from external circumstances. That type of change could include: altering our dietary pattern because our old eating habits have caused a potential for significant health problems; remodeling our camp facilities to meet new state or local building codes; modifying our approach to programming because the children (or adults) we are serving in camp are unwilling to return unless our programming meets or exceeds their needs and expectations; and actively pursuing new markets because the traditional ones we have served have changed or disappeared entirely. Again all of these are response to external forces that require change on our part.

Associations are like people. In fact associations are people. In the same article cited above, Ernstthal states, "There is, in most associations, a bias for the status quo and an impulse to resist externally generated change." This should not be surprising. Most behavior modification experts will state that changing individual human behavior is an incredibly difficult process. How much more difficult that process becomes when you try to change the collective, organized behavior of a group of individuals who have voluntarily joined together in an association?

The pace with which change is occurring in our society can appear to be mind boggling, but humans adapt. During its second retreat, the ACA National Strategic Planning Comittee was debating some of the language to be contained in the report to the national board. The phrase "rapidly changing world" was being debated. Several members of the committee felt that the word "rapidly" was incorrect. The members of the committee who felt that way tended to be younger and therefore the current pace of change is all they had ever experienced. Their perception was that this is the way it is and we must be able to adapt.

How do you adapt? What can make coping with change easier? Of all groups of people I have worked with, camp directors should have more of the answers to these questions than most. We all say that camp is community, camp is caring, camp is a place where children and adults can have those personal growth experiences that are so necessary to being able to successfully live their lives.

What are growth experiences if not change? The word growth clearly embodies the concept of change. If we, as the people who are responsible for developing the ability to adapt to life within children, are unable to adapt to society as it evolves, are we not guilty of the "do as I say, not as I do" syndrome?

This column has been a long, involved way of asking you to look at ACA in a new and different way. The national board has adopted a new strategic plan for ACA, part of which requires action by the Council of Delegates. That plan appears in this magazine, beginning on page 15. Please read it with the perspective that our society is changing. ACA must change and evolve as well. This report outlines ways in which ACA can change over the next several years to make it a more effective organization for serving its QRmembers and the public.

COPYRIGHT 1993 American Camping Association
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