Though often associated with unlawfully accessing computers, “hacking” has taken an entirely different meaning in recent years. “In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done,” Zuckerberg explained. “Hacker” culture has been in the tech/DIY lexicon for a number of years now thanks in large part to the popular DIY site Lifehacker.com.

“The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration,” Zuckerberg continued. “Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.”

The spirit of hacker culture, particularly the idea of continuous improvement, resonates closely with Sigma Nu’s vision statement Excelling with Honor. Additionally, embracing the concept that something can always be better fits right in with Regent Durham’s focus on chapter strength.

“We all have an obligation to make sure our chapters operate at the highest level of excellence, delivering our mission, pulling their own weight, and always striving to improve,” Regent Durham said in a recent interview. “[Sigma Nu's Founders] were not interested in mediocrity or being average.”

So you might say Sigma Nu was practicing the hacker culture before it was cool (that is, rejecting the status quo in favor of continuous improvement).

Even companies outside the tech industry are starting to realize the importance of testing the boundaries of how something should be done as they strive for excellence. And, more to the point, so are many of our collegiate chapters.

//Nathaniel Clarkson

1. A tale of two chapters – the opportunity cost of hazing

2. Time to stop blaming the media and start living the ritual

3. 7 Books Every Fraternity Leader Should Read This Summer

4. Four Reasons Ritual is Important to Sigma Nu

5. 6 Lessons Fraternities Can Learn from Google

6. Founders’ Intent: How Ritual Binds Us Together

7. “We can’t just let anyone into the chapter.”

8. Are you a fan or a fanatic?

9. RIP “Quantity vs. Quality” Recruitment Myth

10. Don’t Drink the Hazing Kool-Aid: Lessons from Jonestown

15.      Got LEAD? There’s a session for that.

Everyone is looking for tools to make life easier.  What’s out there that can make this faster, more efficient or effective, and simplify my life?

Fraternity is no different.

Why reinvent the wheel or come up with our own tools when a tested one already exists?

LEAD is a proven effective tool for improving individual members and chapters.

Here are some examples of common chapter issues and the related LEAD sessions that address them.

• Officer transitions are ineffective or non-existent
• All Chapter LEAD Module B Session 5: Officer Transition

• Chapter meetings are too long, chaotic, or ineffective
• All Chapter LEAD Module B Session 3: Effective Meetings

• Officers are overwhelmed by their duties or don’t know how to effectively use their committees
• All Chapter LEAD Module B: Session 2: Delegation

• The chapter lacks direction and clear plans for action
• Phase II Session3: Visionary Leadership
• All Chapter LEAD Module B Session 1: Goal Setting
• All Chapter LEAD Module B Session 4: Strategic Planning
• All Chapter LEAD Module B Session 8: PEP Strategy Session

• Members are not involved outside of the chapter, Brothers don’t see the benefit and opportunities of involvement in other campus organizations
• All Chapter LEAD Module B Session 6: Campus Involvement

• The chapter is struggling academically, grades are sub par
• All Chapter LEAD Module A Session 3: Scholarship

• Confusion about diversity – what is it, why is it important, how do we become more diverse?
• All Chapter LEAD Module A Session 6: Diversity

• Chapter has accountability, motivation, or discipline issues
• All Chapter LEAD Module B Session 7: Diversity

• Members don’t understand what is and is not acceptable or allowed.  Confusion about risk management policy.
• Phase I Session 5: Risk Reduction

• Addressing alcohol issues – misuse, over-consumption, how to help a brother in need, dealing understanding related alcohol rules, laws, and policies
• Phase I Session 7: Alcohol Misuse Prevention

• Time management and balance issues
• Phase I Session 12: Time Management

• Chapter is looking to get involved in the community.  Confusion on the difference between philanthropy vs. community service.
• Phase I Session 11: Community Service

• Unsure of how Sigma Nu works on the international level, what the Grand Chapter is, how the High Council operates, what’s in The Law of Sigma Nu Fraternity, Inc.
• Phase I Session 4: Sigma Nu: International Organization & Chapter Operations

• Members lack direction or an understanding of how to be effective
• Phase II Session 1: Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
• Phase II Session 2: The Leadership Challenge

• Brotherhood is weak, need to integrate newest members with the rest of the chapter to create a cohesive team
• Phase I Session 3: Leadership & Working in Groups
• Phase II Session 6: Teams and Decision Making
• LEAD Team Building Activities library

• Need to spice up meetings, LEAD sessions, or other events.  Want help in introducing groups to one another.  Looking for retreat activity ideas.
• LEAD Team Building Activities library

Next time you run into a problem, want to address an issue, or are looking to implement change, ask yourself, “is there a LEAD session for that?”  Chances are very good that there is.

 Myth 14.      LEAD covers very basic information

In order to dispel this myth we must first have a common understanding of what exactly is considered “basic information.”

Basic information is intuitive and common knowledge (e.g. “the sky is blue”).

Topics such as leadership, ethics, and values may be considered as common knowledge.

However, LEAD takes an in-depth look at these topics and educates the participant to have a deeper understanding. When talking about basic information it just skims the surface while LEAD takes you to the next level.

Going in depth is what LEAD is based upon.

LEAD gives you the ability to answer the why.

Why am I a leader?

Why do I want to live a value-based life?

Why is it important to know how to work in a group?

How can I create effective change?

It gives individuals the tools and resources to teach others beyond the basics.

Basic information is the little things everyone can comprehend. LEAD paints the big picture for a participant to be able to articulate the importance of concepts like ethics, values, and leadership.

This post is part of a larger series to address the most common myths, misconceptions, and excuses that chapters and members have regarding the LEAD Program.  Follow the entire conversation and get caught up on each of the issues we are addressing by clicking here.

Myth  13.      LEAD is mandatory

If I don’t do LEAD does that mean I’m not a member of Sigma Nu? No.

If my chapter doesn’t do LEAD will we be closed? No.

Can LEAD have a negative impact on me? No.

LEAD was designed to better all our members and make them better men. To give our members the means to be successful throughout college and long there after.

Not participating in LEAD doesn’t mean that you aren’t a member but it very likely means that you didn’t get the full experience of what Sigma Nu is about.

Sigma Nu highly encourages all of its members to participate in LEAD because it can help develop every member to be a better person. Individually it is not mandatory in any way but definitely highly encouraged.

As a chapter it’s important to understand that although you won’t be shut down for not utilizing LEAD it can greatly affect your performance in Pursuit of Excellence. To be an excellent chapter means that the chapter operates at a very high level. Without utilizing what LEAD can offer and what our members pay for means that the chapter is obviously not operating anywhere near this level.

Do you want to be excellent? DO LEAD.

This post is part of a larger series to address the most common myths, misconceptions, and excuses that chapters and members have regarding the LEAD Program.  Follow the entire conversation and get caught up on each of the issues we are addressing by clicking here.

Myth 12.      Hard copy LEAD manuals are better than the new online sessions.

We hear this one a lot.  Chapters miss having something to give their Candidates that they can hold onto and carry around.  Some even think that having the book makes it easier to review the material.  We did not make the decision to convert from hard copy materials to an online experience quickly or lightly.  The truth is we had three years of responses from undergraduate chapter members that were telling us to: make sessions more interactive and discussion-based, make access to the program easier, and to drastically update the manuals and materials.  We believe the program redesign did just that.  Click the appropriate links to read more about the redesign or our scientific assessments of the LEAD Program.

The fact of the matter is that hard copy LEAD materials create a number of issues.

• They are expensive to print, stock, and ship to chapters.  This means that the Fraternity has to order them in bulk and in quantities that would last for 2-4 years.

Which leads to the next few problems…

• Hard copy materials quickly go out of date.  The LEAD materials include a lot of time sensitive information – active chapter listing, members of the High Council – and include resources and references to materials that are ever changing – websites, real life examples – that need regular updating.  Hard copy books don’t allow for much editing and updating year-to-year, especially if the Fraternity has to order books in bulk to keep costs down. 

• Editing material and adding content to books is a very slow process.  What if we print the books and find a major misprint, like omitting a letter from the Greek Alphabet (it’s happened before), or we want to add a whole new session (something we just did last January)?  Hard copy books make the LEAD Program very slow to addressing mistakes and adding new content.  The new online LEAD materials can be updated and expanded in a matter of days as compared to months or years for books.

• Workbooks make LEAD feel like a class.  Who wants another workbook with tear-out handouts and assignments or chapters assigned as homework?

• The online content allows chapters to start LEAD at any point of the year and provides members with 24/7 access to the program.  There’s no more waiting 1-3 weeks, or more, to start LEAD with new candidates.  They can get started as soon as they register and are approved as candidates in the Members Area.  Books required a chapter to order and have them shipped and distributed to candidates before LEAD could begin.

• Books make chapters lazy.  Rather than using the facilitated sessions – chock full of real life examples, stories, discussions, team builders, and other activities – some chapters were simply having candidates go around in a circle and read from the books.  We can’t think of something more boring or off-base from how the program was designed for chapter use.

The online LEAD materials have some other key benefits over hard copy books.

• The online materials allowed us to create a user experience and introductory materials for Phases II, III, and IV where none previously existed.  That’s right, prior to the LEAD redesign only candidates were provided with any kind of individual materials.  For everyone else that meant that if your chapter wasn’t offering a specific phase or if you missed the facilitated session that you were completely out of luck for experiencing that content or learning about the material.  Now anyone with a Members Area account (candidate, initiate, or alumnus) has full access to the materials and interactive experience offered by the online content for Phases I-IV.

• With the online content it’s so much easier to show off the program during recruitment, to parents, and guest facilitators.  Preview accounts can be set up on request to give access to potential members, faculty, non-Sigma Nu advisors, guest facilitators, parents, you name it.  Think about the selling points of being one of the first and only fraternity groups to offer such a comprehensive and cutting-edge online program.

• The online content provides videos, audio voice-overs, links to additional information, quizzes, as well as read/write/save journals and worksheets – something a hard copy book could never do.

• The online content is much more comprehensive than the books ever were or could reasonably be.  Not only did we add individual content and a user experience for Phases II, III, and IV, but the online content includes everything and more than the Phase I books did. 

• Local chapters are able to review user records, track chapter participation, view trend data, and grade the embedded quizzes with an administrative tracking tool (learn more here).

• Breaking sessions into an individual self-paced, interactive, online experience and group facilitation requires less time per-sitting of members.  We essentially broke each session in half and removed the lecture and training components out of facilitated workshops.  Now group sessions are able to be much more interactive, hands-on, and activity and discussion-based than before.  LEAD participants that have reviewed the online material prior to attending the facilitated session are already primed with the concepts and information to approach the session’s topic in a meaningful and interactive way.  These shortened facilitations mean not only less of a time commitment from your members but also less of a burden on facilitators.

Put simply, the benefits of the online materials far outweighed any benefits from printing hard copy workbooks.  Log in to the Members Area and give the online materials a fresh look if you’re still not convinced.

Photo credit: KT King (via http://blog.newsok.com/thunderrumblings/files/2011/11/kd_stillwater_1.jpg)

Deadspin

Pistols Firing blog

Newson6.com

LA Times

Yahoo News

Flickr page

SportsCenter

UPDATE: Kevin Durant and LeBron James planning flag football game?

Then on Tuesday, James tweeted to him that he was interested in setting up a showdown between Durant’s team and his own team in Akron, Ohio. Durant answered back that his team is ready and James should set it up.

Feel free to add links to additional coverage in the comments section below.

The first thing I do during the course of my change-agent work for Fortune 100 companies is to establish the 4:30 rule. The maximum number of people in any meeting should be four, and meetings should never last any longer than 30 minutes. No phones allowed. You may think this a little radical but, if you want to act entrepreneurial, then these are the most important steps to take.

…

If you’re able to get the right people into one room over two days, the stage is set. Make sure the room is far from the office and prep everyone on the notion that it’s essential to not only come up with ideas for change, but actually lock them in by the end of the second day. If the incentive is great enough, and everyone’s prepared to roll up their sleeves, in my experience, it will happen.

Do yourself a favor and set aside 5 minutes to read the full story.

How could you apply Lindstrom’s other ideas to your chapter?

These “exceptional social skills,” many of which are practiced in the LEAD Program, can have tangible benefits in the form of higher compensation.

Analytic and social skills add greatly to wages and salaries: after ranking every occupation by the type of skill required to perform it, we observed that on average, occupations in the top quarter as measured by required analytic skill pay $25,600 more than those in the lowest quarter [...]

Fraternities enhance social skills for many – nothing we didn’t know already. But what about the analytical skills? How does your chapter’s culture foster strong critical thinking skills (i.e. sound decision making and good judgement)?

“We’ve always done it this way,” “It’s tradition” and other common defenses of the status quo do just the opposite. Where does your chapter fall?

You’ve probably heard many times before how Sigma Nu and the LEAD Program prepare collegians for life after school. But how exactly? What skills? Florida outlines a few here:

Highly developed social skills are different from mere sociability. They include persuasion, social perceptiveness, the capacity to bring the right people together on a project, the ability to help develop other people, and a keen sense of empathy. These are quintessential leadership skills needed to innovate, mobilize resources, build effective organizations, and launch new firms. They are highly complementary to analytic skills—and indeed, the very highest-paying jobs (and the most robust economies) usually require exceptional skill in both realms.

“Bring the right people together” = Recruit the people who will push the chapter to new heights while maintaining the discipline to avoid those who join for the wrong reasons.

“Develop other people” = Build people up through a legitimate new member process free of hazing and other arbitrary time wasters. This also means using all phases of LEAD to develop members through graduation and beyond.

A growing chorus has noted the failure of U.S. schools to adequately teach math, science, and technology, but social intelligence is equally important, and we need to cultivate it more systematically.

Today’s students need a stronger focus on teamwork, persuasion, and entrepreneurship; a better integration of liberal arts with technological literacy; and an emphasis on the social intelligence that makes for creative collaboration and leadership.

Fraternity, when done the right way, builds this teamwork, collaboration, leadership and entrepreneurship that is apparently missing from so many job seekers.

Will you take advantage?

Read the full story here.

-Nathaniel Clarkson

By Director of Recruitment Josh Green

Tough times have forced businesses to slash their headcount, marketing budgets, and other resources. Managers at small start-ups and Fortune 100 companies alike are now expected to do more with less-but how?

I recently attended a meeting of young non-profit professionals that discussed the book Zilch by Nancy Lublin. The book covers a number of important topics with a focus on non-profits that are expected to perform at a high level with limited resources (sound familiar?). After leaving the meeting I had this idea based on the title of the book: what if we had to recruit without using money?

The first thing that came to mind was getting back to basics. Swearing off money would require us to practice the fundamentals: going out and meeting people, making friends, bringing them out to meet the chapter members, gauging their interest and then extending a bid after the chapter votes.

How can this be done? I started a list of recruitment tactics that don’t really cost anything. Here’s what I came up with:

1. Talk to your high school friends, or even a past principal or guidance counselor, and see who is planning to attend your college or university.
2. Talk to your fraternity and sorority life professional to see if you can acquire the contact information for all incoming male freshmen. Depending on the number, call or email them and let them know what Sigma Nu has going on – maybe campus orientation events, move-in assistance, new student workshops like student skills or time management.
3. Post information on various Facebook groups. An example could be to post on the page for the upcoming freshman class.
4. Once school starts, introduce yourself to as many people as possible. After all, we are a social fraternity, so you shouldn’t have any issues being social and meeting new people.
5. Join a club or student organization to meet some additional friends with similar interests.

These are just five ideas I came up with on the drive home. I am sure that are many others that could be developed. And these are just a few ideas on how to meet people. This doesn’t even get into brining them out, which can still be done at no additional cost.

Recruiting without spending a dime relies on creativity and will. This is thinking like an entrepreneur – innovate and be social.

Relying too much on a large recruitment budget may be the subtle sign of a recruitment strategy lacking substance and genuineness. What are some additional ways your chapter can bring a culture of innovation to recruitment?