What's Your Big Idea?
by Rocky Noe

"When people become involved in the problem, they become significantly and sincerely committed to coming up with solutions to the problem." From: Principle- Centered leadership.
by Stephen R. Covey


I joined the Facet Forum (lead People, Manage Things by Brian Ward) several months ago. To be honest, when I joined I did It for selfish reasons. I was trying to rebuild my career after losing my job. The company I worked for was shut down. In the process I lost my job, Career, retirement and a great deal of salary. I was hired several months later in my current position. After spending all of our savings to pay bills etc… I was hired at a significantly lower salary and had to start all over in my career, retirement… everything. Looking back, I think I was embarrassed, scared, humiliated and angry. I had worked hard for a lot of years to get to the point in my career I was at. I had a fairly prominent position, a nice salary and respect by my colleagues. I made a very poor choice to move to a company that I did not research very well. The reason was out of selfish desire. They offered me a big salary and many perks. However, I soon found out there were many downsides. I had to work a tremendous amount of hours. I missed almost everything my family did. I soon started to see questionable practices in the business. All this was not enough to overcome the selfish desire for the money and title the job offered. Don’t get me wrong I did work hard and tried to be ethical, but I was wrong in the fact that I should have done more to expose wrong doings by the leaders of the program. That is not the real story here so I will not dwell on that. In short I lost my career and was searching for ways to rebuild my career and prove myself and my intentions.

I really had a great need to prove myself. I did not want my career to be defined by a short stint that turned out so badly. One of my bosses told me that he was looking for people that could provide leadership. I was searching for things to help me make a success of failure. He talked of leadership, so I engulfed myself in studying leadership. I read everything I could find on the subject. I searched the internet. I eventually came across "Lead People Manage Things." The title caught my attention. I decided to order the book. I barely had enough money in my account to pay for the book. I went ahead and ordered it. I downloaded the book and began reading it immediately. It made a lot of sense to me and I started doing the exercises outlined in the book. I was really learning a lot. The part of the book that talked about doing something to change the world really stuck with me. The book encourages the reader to come up with a “big idea”. I developed my focus. My “big idea” was to put services in rural communities. I began to work the model. I put out e-mails to attract attention to my big idea and recruit people to help with the plan. I did not get very favorable responses at first. However, I did eventually get a few people to help. I eventually got some groups started. That is where the story begins.

I started some drug and alcohol education groups in some rural communities that had no previous services. It started slowly. I had a social worker that was really helping in the process. As fate would have it, she left her job and moved to another state. It was very difficult as I was doing many other projects and traveling a great deal. I eventually had success in getting a school system involved in one my counties. It took several months but we eventually got a group going there. I did not know anyone and started running groups with kids and staff that I didn’t even know their names. It was difficult, so I decided that I would just concentrate on the material. It was OK, but not what I wanted and it wasn’t really what the school wanted. We discussed the direction of the sessions and I asked one of the staff to help in the groups due to the fact that she knew more information on the kids and their life histories. She agreed and the following week we had a discussion on life histories. What came out of that discussion has truly changed me as a person.

A couple of the kids told their histories and it was very compelling. Things were going great until it got to the last two in the group. They told stories of how they faced tragedy in their lives. The first boy talked about his sister being murdered and how at 16 years old he is taking on the responsibility of trying to provide guidance for his 5 year old nephew who is now motherless and has never known his father. The 16 year old is battling depression and drug abuse and trying to get his life together to provide guidance for his nephew. The other boy talked about being raised by several members in his extended family, due to the fact that his parents are in prison for murdering his sibling. He was abused and neglected by some family members and was passed around until he settled in with his grandmother. His grandmother recently passed away, his father was released from prison and he now lives with him. He has a very poor relationship with his dad for obvious reasons. He currently is battling depression and drug abuse as well. He discussed this because he wants to help the other boy effectively help his nephew deal with his situation. He said that he feels he has a purpose and that his tragedy makes him imminently qualified to help. Needless to say I was floored. I have not been trained to deal with these kinds of issues. However, it seems as though this is where I am heading. Not long afterwards I was asked by my son’s 3rd grade teacher to help with a student of hers. This student had a twin sister that was killed by a police officer. I also had two boys that I coached that had their mother die of cancer.

My whole career has been working with troubled youth. It is a career that I truly enjoy. I tell people it is not my career, it is my passion. That is true. I think now I have found a whole new responsibility. I don’t know how I will learn to help these kids. I am not even sure I can. What I do know is that I feel a deep sense of responsibility. I no longer am looking to rebuild or get back what I lost. I am looking for ways to figure out how to make this work and help these kids make sense out their lives. I do need money to provide for my family. However, I look at differently now.

 If you want to know true compensation, it is when a 9 year old looks at you with big brown misty eyes and tells you the pain he feels for losing his twin sister and that he trust you. When you talk to his teacher and she tells you he is now doing better than ever. That is compensation. When a 16 year old tells you he has a purpose and says thank you. That is compensation. I may not make this work. I am not real educated, especially in this area. What I do have is a sense of "RESPONSIBILTY". Thanks to the FACET Forum (from Lead People, Manage Things by Brian Ward) for giving me the chance to come up with the “Big Idea”. 

I think that this is what rattle-the-Cage is about. It is about making a difference. Doing things to "Change the World". Having a "Big Idea". I have been very impressed with the quality of people in rattle-the-Cage. There are so many "Big Ideas". The impressive thing is the passion and quality of leadership. I think a missing component in leadership is the commitment to take action. True leaders are people of action. Cage rattlers are people of action. Join us on our journey of "action" and meet some truly inspiring leaders.              

Rocky Noe
Have a T.E.R.R.I.F.I.C. Day

About the Author
Rocky Noe is a founding member of rattle-the-cage.com He can be reached by e-mail at roger.noe@rattle-the-cage.com