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I occasionally go back to Indiana University and visit my home fraternity chapter. When I go back, I notice that the chapter has changed a lot. The guys are significantly better looking, more athletic, and more socially adept than we were. They definitely have better grades. They enjoy a top-notch facility, and they run the chapter like a well-oiled machine. At last check, they had around 160 members, and a budget about four times greater than ours. They hang with whatever sorority they want to (we sure didn't), and they collect awards left and right.
When I go back and visit my chapter, I look around and think, "I honestly don't think I could even get into this chapter today."
You know how that makes me feel?
Fantastic. It makes me feel like my brothers and I did something right.
As a student leader, you should be putting things in motion and recruiting new members into your organization that will take your group to new heights when you're long gone. Your goal should be that you would come back in five to 10 years and be blown away. If you do your job as president today in 2009, you should come back in a 2019 and question whether you could have been elected president of the 2019 group.
We get bogged down in the short term goals, sometimes. Every now and then, you have to do some things that will yield benefits down the road. Remember to thing big and far into the future. Don't be short sighted.
What are you doing, right now, to make your group amazing for those students who will come along five years from now? What will the future rock star leaders on your campus see in your organization?
What can you do this year so that when your son or daughter walks onto your campus in 25 years, he or she will be blown away?
Put the building blocks in place so future leaders can take things farther than you were able. Lay the groundwork. Build the organization you wish you had joined. Dream a little about the amazing places your group could go. Then, start recruiting in the young leaders with the vision to take it there.
