Look for the Hat

While undertaking the Christmas decorations ritual in January, I had the opportunity to sort through a bunch of children’s books. One of Nate’s favorites was in the pile. Where’s Waldo. The undertaking of searching for this quirky character was a nightly bedtime regime for years.

You know the books… a barrage of images fill a double page and your mission is to find the funny little dude, Waldo.

The pages depict dozens of people doing amusing, theme-related things at some fun location – the beach, a deserted island, a warehouse, etc. Waldo’s always in a red-and-white striped shirt, bobble hat and his round glasses make him slightly easier to recognize. But there are so many distractions on the page. And some illustrations contain "red herrings" that use loads of deceptive red-and-white striped objects. It can be quite overwhelming to look for that one special face in a sea of so many.


This weekend you can imagine my dismay when I saw one of my Facebook friends post this message y… “You can tell it is the beginning of a new year. The Y had a ton of new faces there this afternoon. Don't worry, by February 90% of them will be gone. Happens every year.”

Ouch.

I know you join me in hoping the cynical prediction of this Facebook user just isn’t true this year. But as I have said before, hope is not a strategy. Hope’s good, but it’s not a tactic that leads us too far.

So right this minute, I want everyone of us to think of one way we are going to search the sea of so many and make sure our new members (who themselves are so full of hope) make it beyond the February doomsday mark. How might you build a new relationship, ask about their goals, call someone by name? How will you notice and respond when that distinctly different individual looks lost, confused, discouraged?

The distractions are many. Seemingly important red herrings fill our days.

But we must look. We must notice. We must listen.

Now Waldo may be an odd some experiment. But looking for small steps to ensure we retain new members in the next critical 30 days, is not a whimsical past-time. It is our mission. Start looking.