New Paths

“If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success. 

-John D. Rockefeller 

This week, I have the pleasure and honor of attending the 2014 Alliance June Summit.

As with years past, this year’s event will include several representatives from Imagine!. Members of our Leadership Development Program will be in attendance, Imagine!’s Director of Business development Greg Wellems will be presenting on “Communities of Passion,” and even I will be getting into the action, moderating a panel discussion on Person Centered Thinking.

The summit will be somewhat bittersweet, however, as attendees will be bidding a fond farewell to Chris Collins, the longtime Executive Director of Alliance who is retiring at the end of the month. Chris has been a tireless leader on behalf of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities for more than forty years, and I wish her all the best.

But there is sweet with the bitter, and the sweet part is that the summit will also be a welcoming ceremony of sorts for the new Executive Director of Alliance, Josh Rael. I am greatly looking forward to working with Josh.

The addition of Josh to the Alliance team is emblematic of a change I see taking place all across the state in leadership roles for providing supports and services for some of our community’s most vulnerable citizens. Many organizations throughout our state have seen or are about to see changeovers in leadership, and the State is re-organizing and bringing in new leadership at all levels as well.

I think this is a welcome change, one that has the potential to change the entire atmosphere in our field. Many of us currently in leadership roles throughout the state have been in those positions for a long time. It can be harder to come up with new ideas and approaches the longer we are in those roles (and I include myself in that category and plead guilty as charged, at least sometimes). The new faces of leadership will mean new ideas and approaches and a different way of viewing things.

Those of us who have been in this field for a long time have paved and traveled on a road leading a certain way for our system of funding and delivering services. The road is very impressive, and along the way many great and noble structures have been built. But the road tends to lead only one way. These new Young Turks don’t necessarily have to continue down the exact same road, however. They can build their own off ramps and travel different paths. They can even abandon the road entirely and get in a boat on big lake instead.

None of what I’m saying is intended as any disrespect to those individuals and organizations that have established and continued to maintain the current path. Again, I consider myself one of those people, and I am proud of the amazing advances my colleagues and I have helped to foster in our system. But unique ideas and fresh perspectives will likely strengthen what we have already created, and everyone will be better off in the end.

Then again, what do I know?