On Friday, July 12, 2024, our new President Brian Martin gave his opening address to the club. A full copy of his speech can be found below.
Fellow Rotarians, honoured guests. I am both thrilled and humbled to stand before you as the 105th President of this club.
I’d like to start by taking a moment to introduce your Board of Directors for the 2024-2025 Rotary year. Returning to the Board this year are Marty Fairbairn, Ian Smith and of course, Nanita Mohan in her role as Past-President. Joining the Board this year are Marva Bailey-Wisdom as our 1st vice-president, Crista Renner as our 2nd Vice President, Matt Webster, Dianne Dance, and Lawrie Jones, I’d also like to express my gratitude to the outgoing Directors for their service to the club. Gisella Gazzola, Margaret Trainor, Tim Mau, Roger Garriock, Jasmine Urisk, Rosemary Clark, Andrew Johnson and Domingo Bernal have all completed their terms.
One of my favourite leadership thinkers, Simon Sinek, encourages us to “Start With Why”, so I thought I would share with you my own Rotary why and how that shapes how I look at my role in the coming year and the club in general. As you all know by now, I am a practising martial artist. I have trained in the Japanese Goju Ryu style of Karate for over 21 years. My martial arts background influences how I think about the world around me. It has in part, lead me to a career in cybersecurity. It also profoundly influences my desire to serve.
The Japanese karate styles all trace their philosophical underpinnings back to the Samurai class in the EDO period of Japan, before the 1868 Meiji Restoration, when the Emperor was restored to the throne of Japan. The term Samurai derives from the word Saburau in Japanese, meaning to serve. In the dojo at which I train, giving service back to the dojo forms a part of the training. This takes many forms that may include cleaning, assisting in and teaching classes, and hand delivering flyers to gain new members of the dojo. Some people who came through the doors of the dojo would think that this was just a way for the dojo to increase its profitability by not paying for services, while others would find the experience of service rewarding in its own right. It was the former group that might stay a short while and then leave. The latter group became a permanent part of the dojo family. I always felt good after doing something for the dojo. My Sensei often talks about the power of serving something greater than yourself. It is easy for us to get caught up in our egoic minds and only decide to do something when we feel that it perfectly aligns with our views. Each of us in this room can look at any idea, issue or situation and interpret it through the lens of our own epistemology.
With so many different backgrounds, views and opinions, it would be easy for nothing to get done if we all chose to serve only our own interests or to refuse to support or participate in things that weren’t what we wanted. Yet Rotary's motto of “Service Above Self” continuously reminds us to avoid this trap. The four-way test further guides us to consider the bigger picture and act in the interest of the many over the one. Serving the greater purpose of Rotary, of the people of the City of Guelph, and of the members of this club, is what motivates me every day as a Rotarian, and it is what will guide my actions as your President.
That explains why I am a Rotarian, but not why I am President in this particular year. It’s no secret that the last few years have been difficult and have taken a toll on the club. Our membership has declined by over 20% since July of 2022. Covid has had a lasting impact on all service organizations. People have become used to staying at home. A certain social exhaustion has taken root. On top of this, the club has experienced some changes in granting processes and to the committee structures. Some people like the changes and some people do not. This has caused some division in the club. I am a problem solver by nature. I have spent more than 30 years running large technology platforms, figuring out how systems work and how to fix them when they break. I have spent a lot of time of the last year contemplating what makes me a good trouble shooter and problem solver. I have concluded that my leadership superpower sits at the nexus of three things: Vision – the ability to see the big picture; Listening – the willingness to actively listen to other’s perspectives; and Curiosity – the desire to understand people, systems and processes. This set of characteristics enables me to see solutions to conflict by identifying common ground where others may miss it.
Years ago, in a negotiating skills course, I was asked to be the moderator for an exercise where the class paired off and were given a scenario sheet where each individual was led to believe that they had to secure the entire supply of a commodity, a fictional vegetable. The kicker in the assignment was that there was no actual resource conflict because each party needed a different part of the vegetable, so both could be satisfied. What I observed however as I went around the room and listened to the negotiations, was that each person ignored what the other person was saying, and invested all their verbal energy in asserting why their need was paramount. This was a powerful lesson in Listening to understand rather than listening to respond. I believe that what the club needs is someone who can listen to all sides and find the common ground and I believe that is why the Universe has put me here in this role at this time.
Incoming Rotary International President Stephanie Urchick has declared the theme for Rotary 2024-2025 as The Magic of Rotary. It invites us to:
Innovate and Adapt:
Encourage your clubs to think creatively and embrace new ways of addressing community needs. Innovation is key to staying relevant and effective.
Foster Inclusivity and Diversity:
Make a concerted effort to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion within your clubs. Diverse perspectives enrich our organization and enhance our ability to serve.
Strengthen Community Connections:
Build and nurture strong partnerships with local organizations, businesses, and community leaders. Collaborative efforts magnify our impact.
Engage and Inspire Members:
Focus on member engagement and retention by creating meaningful opportunities for involvement and leadership. Recognize and celebrate the contributions of every member.
Lead with Compassion and Integrity:
Exemplify Rotary’s values in all your actions. Lead with compassion, integrity, and a genuine desire to make a positive difference.
These areas fit beautifully with my goals for this year. There are 7 key areas I would like us to work on together this year.
- By the end of my term, I would like to have a fresh 5-year vision for the club developed. This will ideally be facilitated by the District and have participation from across the membership of the club. If we can’t get the District to help out, then Marva, Crista and myself will lead the process. The goal is to have a vision and plan that engages and inspires the membership to rediscover their why, engage deeply with Rotary and the membership, and build relationships that will sustain the club. At President Elect training we learned about the VPRM cycle of club vitality. VPRM stands for Vision, Relationships, Projects, and Management. The graphic they used shows a parabola. In this cycle, a club starts out at the x,y axis with a Vision, next comes the Relationships that sustain the membership, and you keep climbing the curve. Then the Projects get going and finally the Management of the club. That is the peak of vitality when the Club has all four elements. Unfortunately, what then tends to happen is that you lose the vision and start on the downward slope of the curve. Eventually the relationships deteriorate, then the projects start to decline, until all you are left with is the management of the Club and you are back at the x-axis. As a martial artist I have learned to look to nature and natural law. We see that everything in nature is a circle. All that is necessary to turn that parabolic arc into a circle of renewal, is to re-establish the vision and start back up the slope.
- I would like us to create at least one innovative new fund-raiser for the club that is capable of raising $40-50K. Roger has chaired a team looking at some new fundraising options. I do not know yet what that will look like, and I don’t necessarily expect to execute it fully this year, but we need to engage the community and the club to raise money so that we can continue to have the impact in the community that we have come to expect.
- We have created a branding committee, chaired by Noma Vales. Our goal is to build the brand of Rotary within Guelph, across all clubs. We want to develop a strategic plan that will involve targeted outreach to groups within the community that are under-represented in Rotary, that will leverage our membership in the Chamber of Commerce to continue to build on the theme that Rotary is Open for Business, and that will amplify our message consistently across social media. StatsCan data suggests that 8% of people in Canada belong to a service or fraternal organization. For a city the size of Guelph, that suggests that our total addressable market is more than 10,000 individuals. Our goal is to ensure that when people are ready to serve, they are aware of Rotary and that Rotary is accessible to them. My own journey to Rotary is instructive in this case. The history of Rotary being based in vocational representation with the need to be invited or proposed to membership made it somewhat exclusive. I had an interest in joining Rotary for probably 20 years before I did. I knew I wanted to join a service club and my research into the various options told me that Rotary was probably best suited, yet I did not know any Rotarians personally, and so I didn’t know how to get myself invited. It was my wife who suggested that I go down to Riverside Park on Canada Day and find myself a Rotarian. The first person I encountered collecting funds was Peter Vales. He directed me to Noma and she invited me to the next meeting. What this tells us is that there are probably hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people out there, who simply need a path to serve and we can provide it. They may not all join the club immediately, and they may not join this club, but it does not matter. Which club they choose to join is a matter of schedule for them.
- I want to strengthen and streamline governance within the club to make it less daunting for someone to step into a leadership role within the club. We now have a Google Workspace for non-profits which will allow us to digitize our club and make it simple and straightforward to find information. By moving our organizational knowledge out of the heads of the members and into the cloud, we can make it easier for people to chair committees, understand the governance of the club and take on some of the more complex roles. We are extremely fortunate to have, and to have had in the past, long serving members fulfill roles like Secretary, Treasurer and Membership Secretary for 20+ years. This is incredibly beneficial for the club and especially for any President, yet it simply postpones the inevitable day when a transition must take place. Moving forward, if we can democratize the data by putting it in the cloud, we can make these transitions easier.
- We have done a lot of good work with the grants process, but it has not been without challenges. The Grants portfolio is transitioning to Crista this year and I’d like to say a special thanks to Gisella who put in so much work getting it off the ground. I believe there are many positives to this process and we will continue to review and improve our grants process as we go forward. A couple areas where I see opportunity for improvement are in determining how to accommodate large signature projects that can help to build the brand of Rotary. It is not clear to me how we would do another Rotary Forest or Grove Hub or Food4Kids within the current granting process. I am interested in hearing from members on how we can ensure that we have the capability for these types of projects in the future.
- Another area where I believe that we need help is in reviving international service, which has been largely dormant since the unfortunate passing of two of our stalwart champions of international service, Ab Moore and Hal Jackson. I am looking for a Chair for the International Service committee. Someone with the passion to take up the mantle and carry us forward and to provide input on how to ensure that the granting process does not choke off our ability to partner in international projects.
- Finally, I would like to see us grow the membership of this club back over 100 members in the next 3 years and to have us consistently seeing 40-50 people at lunch. I believe that the branding exercise can create the pipeline of new members, but that alone is not enough. We must have a successful onboarding process, mentorship in Rotary and member experience that engages members both new and old, builds and cements relationships and creates excitement about projects and fundraising. This creates what the Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley refer to as a flywheel effect that keeps the club healthy and vital.
In closing, I encourage you all to reconnect with your why, commit to The Magic of Rotary,and join me in re-vitalizing our club.