Page 30 - MFM MARCH 2015

Responsibility
Frank J. Struble, Grand Orator 2006,
Grand Lodge F&AM of Wisconsin
“When I talk about responsibility I try to divide it into
how our organization works, sometimes why it doesn’t
work and give you some suggestions. With that in mind
let me say that I was a member of an organization for
twenty-seven years that has organized a line and staff
function, the U.S. Army. The way the Army works is
explained by the Army’s organizational charts. If you
have ever seen these they look something like this, you
have the big square on top, then you come down. I am
sure you have seen organizational charts like this in
many organizations. They really don’t tell you much
except the size of your office relative to the other guy.
They do tell you other things if you change it a little
bit. When I was in the Army, I wanted to change all the
boxes on all the organizational charts into circles. The
reason I did that was that this guy was a big square and
I wanted to turn him into a big wheel and Generals like
being a big wheel. We all know what dogs do to wheels
so we passed it down through the organization and
made everybody a wheel. If you take this illustration
and make one other change and put ears on these
wheels, they become gears. Now you can start to
see how the Army works. It’s a big gear ratio thing.
Anybody who knows anything about gear ratios, knows
that if you move the big wheel up here with one little
click then you are going to spin the hell out of this guy
here on the bottom. Gentlemen, I am telling you, that’s
the way it works. We are organized much like this aren’t
we? The difference is that if you turn the illustration
from the flat surface this way, you realize that to get
these gears to engage you have got to get them to
pop up. They need to be under pressure. In the Army
they have a thing that gives them the pressure called
‘U.C.M.J.’, the Uniform Code of Military Justice - do
it or we’ll shoot you. That’s a real good incentive. We
don’t have that in our lodges, so often the gears don’t
get engaged. The guy on top goes ‘click’ and down
here on the bottom somebody is just free spinning.
They don’t even know that anybody went ‘click’. We
have a tougher job than the military does because what
we have to deal with is certain tools that are unique in
Masonry. We have brotherly love, we have inspiration,
we have friendship, we have things that help us engage
those things, but they are not forced. There are things
we have to coach, there are things we have to go out
and stretch and learn and work with. When we start
talking about responsibility in our lodges, often we find
that it gets real murky because it’s hard to get this kind ‘Grand Master’s Achievement Award’. ‘See, we did it.
of a relationship going and it doesn’t even always work
in the military. That’s why they have a thing called the
N.C.O. chain where the sergeants gets down here and
make sure that when the General is clearing his throat
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the word gets out. It’s really a communications chain
to make sure it happens. We forget that sometimes.
We forget that we have to communicate our
brotherly love to each other, we can’t just assume it.”
Responsibility is something that we have to manage and
it’s what somebody is going to hold us to if something
goes wrong. What is management? It is getting results
from people. Results tend to be cold, hard, unemotional
facts, they are written out, they have measurements. If
results are cold, what are people? People are warm,
soft, intuitive, creative, and unique. No two of us are
alike. For results, I am going to use a geometric figure,
in this case a rectangle. For people on the other hand, I
am going to use an ameba, a blob if you will, Each and
every one that I will draw will be unique, each one will
be different just like each of us are, just like each of
our lodges. Our lodges each have their own character,
each of our lodges have things that they do well and
things that they don’t do so well. When we start talking
about getting results from people, this is like trying to
go out and get a banana off of an apple tree, because
they are so different. To carry this illustration a little
farther, I want to give you an objective and some
subordinate tasks that you have to accomplish to reach
your objective. That seems pretty straight-forward.
You have sub-objective A to take care of and sub-
objective B, plus sub-objective C and sub-objective D.
I add those together and as a leader I can do this and
say I will reach my objective. It’s simple; A+B+C+D
gives you your objective. What am I missing from my
formula? I am missing people. I have no amebas. In
each and every one of these jobs you have somebody
who does parts of his job and other parts he just doesn’t
like too much so maybe he doesn’t get around to it.
Don’t you have brothers like that in your lodges? Sure
you do, everybody does. Over here in sub-objective
B you have a guy whose job is more than he is ready
for. In sub-objective C you have a hard charger, over
motivator, over-challenged, overqualified, which gives
him time to put his fingers in everybody else’s sandbox
and make this the biggest leadership problem you
have. Over here we have a guy that fits sub-objective
D like this. He isn’t even in the ballpark. He doesn’t
do anything that is part of his job, he does everything
else. Well, suddenly the math doesn’t work, does it?
But it does because year after year, lodge after lodge,
they reach in the hat and pull out a rabbit and say,
We survived another year. We are together.’ Do you
know how we do it? C has some overlap, so I am going
to have C come over and do that one. He’s going to
take that part in the ritual. And junior isn’t doing any