MAKING DECISIONS by Frances Hesselbein

JC: Have you ever faced choices where what was best for the cause and what might be best for you, diverged?

FH: Well, it could have been more for comfortable for me yes, yes. . . The organization was doing remarkably well—788,000 remarkable men and women serving 2.5 million girls and only 1% of that vast marvelous army employed staff, so they could leave if they didn’t like it. We had a group of 70 out of 335 councils demanding a program for little girls, 5 years old—no one else wanted it.

So what do you do? Do you mandate it? “You will take care of all little girls 5 years old” or do you serve those who would—are passionate about serving. So you have a choice and how do you bring everyone together? So, involving everyone, we developed this marvelous Daisy Girl Scout Program with only 70 councils out of 335—hardly great support. But when we presented the program in a videotape with these marvelous 5 years olds and we said “now only those councils who want the Daisy Groups Scouts should be with us in July when we do the training.” And the others feel very comfortable; you didn’t have to feel guilty about not doing it because it was not forced. By July when we gave the training, 220 councils showed up—not the original 70—and in another year the people most vehemently opposed were the greatest supporters and behaved as though they had invented it.