New CEO Training

New United Way of Vinton County
CEO and blogger Joy E. Dickerson

OK. Ready...set...go (crazy). I took on a 1/4-time job several months ago, sort of a 16-hours a month job, sort of a few hours on Saturday and a meeting or two job. Turns out that I am classified as a Chief Executive Officer--the CEO of the teeny-weeny United Way of Vinton County (UWVC). Woot! This is a huge promotion from my paper-pushing day job. I'm a CEO. Does a BMW and golf culbs come with that?

I went to training...New CEO training...last Friday in Columbus, Ohio, at the attractively utilitarian offices of the Ohio United Way. There was a clutch of us hatchlings, some of us raw and new and a few United Way "lifers." The staff at Ohio United Way were terrific--professional, knowledgable, encouraging, and sympathetic. Thank you, Barbara, Cheryl, Char, Tim, and Nick.The material gave me whiplash. I either knew it already or was totally terrified by it. I alternated between giddy-up and WHOA.

The inner workings of the United Way are intricate, labyrinthine, roccoco, roccokookoo. I felt myself envisioning a tangled web of mammalian DNA, pi to the 10-millionths place. The great mysteries of the universe floated by and then paled in comparison. And I'm supposed to know this stuff. Abstractions littered the landscape. Acronyms crazied the cranium. My brain stretched and groaned as I told it to stay open, just stay open. We can control the cataclysm by and by, lord, by and by.

I love my brain. It is flexible and responsive. It holds a monstrous big storehouse of information and is networked not just by topic, but also by sounds and sound-alikes, history, images, strange co-vibrations of the gray matter with the sensory array. My brain (and most brains) makes the internet look clumsy. But it just wasn't enough to cope with this avalanche of information. New tracks must be laid down above the drum track, horns, bass, and strings--tracks for instruments undreamed.

I was glad to know that even the most experienced United Way directors (oops--CEOs) are still peeling back the rose petals of policy, still peeling leaves off the lettuce of the law. Knowledge of United Way habits and practices, policies and paperwork, campaigns and categories is like an old LAN--more knowledge in the group than in the the sum of the individuals. No one person can possibly know everything and shouldn't, but even in the room of newbies, we were quite a powerhouse of information. I was greatly reassured when an experienced CEO came in to speak to us and got some of her questions answered even as she answered ours.

So, I'm still in. I'm still swimming (in deeper water) in the oceanic United Way. The staff at Ohio United Way are my water wings; my CEO colleagues are my lighthouse; and seeing the good done by my tiny local chapter fuels my muscles. The wave has crashed over me and I am still afloat, still dog-paddling.

Thanks for tolerating my multitudinous metaphors. See you in the bloggy papers!