Innovation. Braving the polar vortex to spend a
Where Do We Go From Here? L I N D S AY S E L L
“UNFREEZING” FRATERNITY & SORORITY LIFE
day at the NASPA Convening for Fraternity and Sorority Life with other campus-based professionals and senior student affairs officers, the conversation was lively, earnest, and necessary. It was the first time in recent memory that such a gathering had assembled for the sole purpose of grappling with how best to move from here to where we need/hope/want to be. In that space, and with those colleagues, it was once again all too easy to describe the myriad entrenched - and sometimes intractable - challenges in excruciating detail. Though much larger, and with more voices at the table, that conversation exhibited the familiar dimensions of the conversation many of us have renewed at least each December for as long as we can remember. The discussion was lively, earnest, necessary, AND appreciated. However, it was unsurprisingly impossible, in that one-day gathering, to parse the issues, define root causes, critique our approach, and delve deeply into a process meant to yield solutions that might only closely resemble those with which we are both comfortable and familiar. The concept of innovation seemed distant and unattainable. What would be necessary for those smart, talented, committed people with demonstrated investment in the future of fraternity and sorority, sitting in that room for one day, to truly think differently? Hopeless. During the past several years in what appears to be a crisis regarding the future of the fraternity and sorority industry, I have found myself feeling hopeless. I can easily critique others’ plans for how to move forward in a moment of significant challenge about our future, yet I am unable to conjure my own. Hopeless because, despite my recognition of what innovation I do not think is good or has been tried before, I do not have much to offer in its place. In other words, innovative thinking is eluding me at a time when I need it most. Being somewhat seasoned in my work with fraternities and sororities, I find myself resistant to our industry discussions about innovation. This resistance is informed by a sense of how much we recycle in terms of “new” ideas, and how little evidence we have for the effectiveness of those ideas. It is also informed by common scripts that exist about our collective definition of what is effective, and a sense that if others replicate our work, the work must be good. We celebrate and design entire conferences around best practices, but I have rarely found what counts as a best practice to be the best for every situation. More often, the most commonly accepted practice is what we deem a best practice. In this resistance, and in my own lack of innovative thinking during times of hopelessness, I have felt compelled to explore change models as I search for ways to pivot to a more innovative mindset and more useful mental models. I have previously written about John Kotter’s 8-step change model, which begins with the step of “creating a sense of urgency.” I am not sure how we typically define “urgent,” but it feels like we are there. This intermittent sense of urgency, driven largely by tragedy coupled with scathing Issue #1 PERSPECTIVES 08
