Did you think I would forget talking about my second experience when it came to working with males in managing The Raiser’s Edge.

BTW, I don’t know why I put the Unicorn Image in here, just stumbled on it and thought it was hilarious!

In my experience it’s a power trip thing for those who care.  During my experience I was brought into a University that had gone from only having the Alumni modules for The Raiser’s Edge to have the entire Blackbaud platform (with the exception of Education Edge).  Now this was before the Convio merger, but still a hell of a lot to implement.

A department was created for me to manage all of this for the University.  I initially started working for the VP of Alumni and Development.  However after some changes I was moved under the Foundation Accountants supervision (that’s a mistake itself).

As I normally do, I was living up to my name and implementing change all over the University by consolidating all data with the exception of Banner data.

The Foundation Accountant, getting pressure from all over the University, started to apply that pressure to me, which didn’t matter because I’m a brotha from Central Iowa.  If you think I haven’t handled resistance in my life, you must be in Denver during April 20th weekend.

I was in Iowa for Christmas and I get an email from him stating that he didn’t have administrative access over all Blackbaud products and asked why he didn’t.  He went on to say that I was trying to show my power over him.  He then went around my back and intimidated one of my staff members to give him access.  Which she did, but immediately texted me that she did.

I laughed and kept playing with my girls.  Two weeks later when I got back he came in my office and shut the door, told me that I F%$ked him over and that he should write me up.  My response “S#$t happens”, he didn’t like it very much but didn’t write me up.

A week after this, I walk in one morning with the office in chaos.  My boss had deleted 93,000 first names out of the database!

I fixed it.  Didn’t say a word to him.  Made an executive decision to remove his access.  Nothing was ever said.

Folks, it’s has nothing to do with power.  It’s simply the fact that we are the experts in this area, and they need to trust us to develop a solution to the need the organization comes up with.

If you’re one of my clients you’ve heard this before “Stay In Your Lane“.  I’ll tell an Executive Director this in a minute (obviously respectfully).  Focus on what you were hired to do, and allow the people who report to you to do the same.