The Crosswind

Daniel could feel the room turn toward him.

The spring luncheon had come in short for the second year running. The treasurer had the numbers on the screen. Nobody was rude about it. Nobody had to be.

“So what’s the plan, Daniel?” she asked.

He had a plan. It was in his folder. But the question under the question was whose fault this was, and eleven people were waiting to see where he would put it.

He could put it on them. Half the board had never turned in a guest list on time. Two members had not invited anyone at all. He had said as much once, two years ago, and the chill lasted a quarter.

“We had some execution problems in development this year,” he said. “The invitations went out late. We’re working on it.”

He felt the room relax. Someone asked whether development had the capacity it needed. Someone else wondered, kindly, whether it was a skills issue. Jen, his development director, was not in the room. Nobody said her name. Nobody had to.

The meeting moved on to the parking lot.

The ledger

That night Daniel opened his ledger. Keeping one was still new for him. He had started last fall, a little doubtful, after a colleague described hers: a plain record of the promises you make, to whom, and whether you keep them. Once a month he marked each one kept or slipped. A slipped promise asked one more question.

He read the hint under the question and typed her name anyway. It was true. The list had been late. Jen had told him on February 26 that it would not make the printer.

He had a second slip that month, a promise to get four board members to host a table. Under what produced it he wrote, “Board won’t ask friends.” Also true, as far as it went.

Two slips, two names. It felt like a complete account. He closed the laptop.

The clip

In April he went to an AFP chapter program on major gifts. He sat near the back and answered email under the table.

Near the end, the speaker played a short clip of the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, filmed in 1972. Frankl described a lesson from his flight instructor. Say you want to fly east, and a wind is blowing from the north. Point the plane straight east and you drift south of where you meant to land. So you aim north of your target. You point the plane in a direction that looks wrong, and that is how you land where you meant to.¹

Frankl said people work the same way. Take them as they are, and you make them worse. Aim higher, at who they could become, and you help them get there. He was borrowing the idea from Goethe.

People nodded. Daniel thought it was a nice way to end a talk. He wrote nothing down. He had a donor lunch at one.

The same slip

In May the ledger showed him something he had not asked for.

It keeps a short list called Promises that keep slipping. Anything carried forward two or more times lands there. The invitations were on it. So was something he had forgotten: the fall appeal, mailed late last October.

He opened October. Under what produced the slip, in his own words:

Mark had been development director before Jen. Daniel had let him go in December, partly over things like that.

He looked at the two entries side by side. A different person. The same slip. The same few weeks before a mailing, the same scramble, the same kind of note.

He did not like where that went, so he went somewhere else. Jen really was slower than Mark with data. Mark really had been disorganized. Both things were true. He typed a new cause under the May slip, read it and deleted it. He left the field blank for two days.

The wind

Pieces came in from places he didn’t want them.

Jen, in the hallway, when he asked about the summer mailing: “I can have it right or I can have it Friday. I usually get the board’s names the week of.” She said it flatly, without heat, the way people say things they have stopped expecting to change.

Ray, a board member, in the parking lot after the finance committee: “Honestly, I never know what you want from us until it’s late.”

Jen had never said hers to the board. Ray had never said his to Jen. Each had said it to Daniel, in a hallway and a parking lot, and moved on. He was the only person who had heard both.

And his own calendar, when he finally looked. Board guest names were due two weeks before the printer. He signed off on the list himself. He usually signed off the week it was due, because he was busy. Every year the list reached development with days to spare. Every year development was late.

He thought about the clip, which surprised him.

The wind had been blowing the whole time. The board blamed him. He blamed the board, quietly. Then the two of them settled on development, because that kept the peace. Each verdict came with evidence. Each one pointed the plane straight at the runway, and every year they landed in the weeds.

The pressure from the board landed at his seat. It always had. Where it went next had always been up to him.

The correction looked wrong. If it wasn’t Jen, and it wasn’t Mark, then it was a calendar he had set and a sign-off he had held. That felt worse than blaming either of them. It felt like admitting he wasn’t the leader he was supposed to be.

He wrote that down too.

He looked at it for a while. It was the same move aimed at a new person. “Not good at this” didn’t tell him what to change on Monday.

He deleted it and wrote:

Then a new promise.

The next meeting

He did not do this well.

At the June board meeting the treasurer asked about the luncheon again. Before he had thought about it, Daniel heard himself say, “Development is working through some capacity questions.” The room relaxed, just as it had in March.

He noticed that night, entering the month in his ledger. The promise he had made Jen sat right above the space where he was about to type her name again.

He called Marisol, the board chair, the next morning. He told her what the ledger showed: two directors, the same slip and a calendar he controlled. The board’s late names were part of it. His late sign-off was part of it. He wanted to fix the calendar with her, not hand it to her.

Marisol was quiet. “Are you telling me this is the board’s fault?”

“No,” he said. “I’m telling you it’s the calendar’s.” He wasn’t sure she believed the difference. He wasn’t sure he did yet.

At the July meeting they presented it together: a new guest-name deadline, owned by the chair, and a two-day sign-off, owned by him. They would report on both at every meeting until the luncheon.

Some members were relieved. The treasurer asked whether this was a way of avoiding accountability for results. Ray said, “About time.” Two members still turned in their names late.

When Daniel told Jen, she listened. Then she asked, “Is this the part where it’s the system, and then my job gets restructured?”

He had no good answer. “It’s the part where I move my deadline,” he said. She did not smile. He didn’t blame her.

Traction

The next spring’s invitations went out four days late instead of three weeks. Seven of the eleven board members turned in names on time. The luncheon gap was smaller. Nobody could prove why. A better economy, a new sponsor, the calendar, Jen’s second year. Probably some of each.

The ledger shows it plainly. The promise to Jen: kept. The table hosts: two of four, still slipping.

Daniel still feels the pull every time a number comes in short. A name arrives first, fast and convincing, usually with evidence attached. Some months he catches it in the room. Some months he catches it that night, on the page.

That is what flying in a crosswind is, he has come to think. Not one correction. Many small ones, all the way down.

What we can learn

When something keeps going wrong, every seat has a name ready. The board names the director. The director names the board, and then the staff. The staff name the director. Each name comes with evidence. That is why it feels like the answer.

It isn’t. Change the person and the problem comes back, because what produced it is still there.² Asking what before who feels like flying the wrong way. It isn’t letting anyone off the hook, and it isn’t blaming yourself instead. It is the heading that lands.

A practice for the month

If you keep a record of your promises, look at the last thing that slipped. Read what you wrote about why. If it is a name, picture someone else in that seat, under the same calendar, the same deadline and the same late hour. Would the same thing happen? If so, write down what produced it, and make one promise about that.

If you don’t keep one yet, start small. This week, write down three promises you make, to whom, and by when. When one slips, write down what produced it before you write down who.

Then check it next month.