News and Commentary for Triangle Leaders "Making Triangle more relevant and important"

"I believe in the college fraternity, creator of friendships. I believe in its quick sympathies, and its helping hand. I believe in its brave idealism, stirring every valiant emotion, rousing every potential talent. I believe in its compelling drive for scholarship, for genuine culture, for clear-eyed honesty, for business integrity. I believe in the American College fraternity, maker of men." --Arthur R. Priest, DePauw 1891

Triangle is what we make of it. Will you choose to cultivate it?

Contents

• Brotherhood
  • A small town in Tennessee
• Chapter Management
  • Taking Out a Contract on Your Brothers
  • You Can't Make Progress Without Making Changes
  • Recruitment Lessons Learned from the Road
• Spotlight on Triangle Chapters
• Spotlight on Triangle
• Spotlight on Prominent Triangles
  • Meet Your National Councilmen: Shawn Diedtrich minn90

A small town in Tennessee

Tim Eiler minn87

Reason 1: There are exactly 0 Brothers who live in Greeneville according to the current member database. As Greeneville is only a town of about 50,000, you probably aren't shocked. Another, more sobering statistic, however, is that Houston, Texas, a city of some 4 million, the 4th largest in the U.S., and a city heavily centered around technology-based organizations, has only 200 Brothers within its borders.

Reason 2: "You belong to what fraternity???" I'd venture that every Triangle Brother has been asked that question or one of its many corollaries. Few people know that we exist and those who do know are often incorrect about what we are.

By now you may have guessed how the 2 are related and where I'm headed with this. If not, let me explain...We, as a fraternity, are too small! We need to grow to develop more stability as a National Organization.

During my 10 years in Triangle, we have initiated our 20,000th member. Let me assure you that we aren't far beyond that mark of 20,000 men at this point. A little quick math will tell you that our addition to Triangle Brotherhood is about 200 per year nationally. At that rate, it will be 2096 before we hit 40,000 (if no one dies between now and then!). I don't know about you, but that's not a pride-builder for me. I like to belong to successful organizations that can weather out a storm, that people recognize, and that offer valuable experiences and growth to as many qualified people as possible. Right now, Triangle is not in a good position to handle even small catastrophes, isn't well recognized for the good that it does (let alone well-recognized), and I would guarantee that there have been more than 20,000 men in the lifetime of Triangle that warranted becoming Brothers.

The answer to this problem can be characterized very simply, but unlike your favorite professor or textbook, I won't leave it as an exercise to the reader... The answer has 2 distinct, but similar and uniquely necessary parts; we must do both. We must increase the size and strength of our current chapters AND we must increase the number of strong chapters of Triangle by expansion to new campuses.

Finding that solution set didn't take a rocket scientist, but, hey, it helped!! ;-)

I'll expand on both facets of the solution in upcoming issues of this newsletter.

Product

Taking Out a Contract On Your Brothers

Merle Newlon lou73

1. Develop a worthwhile or beneficial relationship as a sponsor (Big Brother).
2. Develop a worthwhile or beneficial relationship with alumni/faculty members or advisor. A retired faculty member may need his yard raked or snow shoveled, for instance.
3. Find your state's legal definition of hazing and report back to the chapter. Visit a law library or a lawyer/prosecutor. Compare that statement with our Triangle National anti-hazing policies and statements.
4. Improve the fraternity's relationship with its neighborhood by planning a party for their children.
5. Talk to someone about methods of solving roommate problems (on campus counselors, resident directors, National Headquarters).
6. Investigate how chapters can obtain second mortgages on chapter houses for use in remodeling and/or education purposes (library, computers, etc.).
7. Visit Triangle National Fraternity Headquarters (during office hours) to find out how the National Fraternity operates.
8. Find out how IFC is funded and what the money is used for.
9. Find out purposes for various activities and events on campus (homecoming, etc.).
10. Talk with faculty and get opinions about Greeks (why do they or don't they think they are a good thing).
11. Find out how to develop good alumni relations programs from other Greeks, National Headquarters, University Development Office, or the University Alumni Office.
12. Discover a chapter problem and attempt to solve it (weak rush program, poor calendar of activities).
13. Make a map showing all the chapters, colonies, and interest groups...both active and disbanded.
14. Find out if there is a Center for Voluntary Service on your campus or in your community. Will they help new members with service projects?
15. Have a new member program with another Greek organization - dinner, bowling, party.
16. Where is the University Learning Center and what resources do they offer?
17. Sponsor a program for members on resume writing. As the Placement Center, a business professor, and alumni to help.
18. Find out if there is a Leadership Development Course offered on campus. If not, see about getting one started.
19. Visit the meeting of another organization...not just other student organizations, either.
20. Rotate new members to assist chapter officers. Work with a new officer each week.
21. Find out information about faculty advisors, administrators, regional, or national officers and alumni in your area from other chapters.
22. Find out (by directly communicating with them) the duties and responsibilities of at least one Triangle National Officer.
23. Find out if a National Officer lives within 100 miles and visit them if possible.
24. Determine if your chapter house is safe against fires. Does it have a current inspection? Does the local fire marshal's officer, National Headquarters, or University provide safety information? Have you had a planned fire drill for the chapter lately?
25. Write an article for the Triangle Review or Exponent.

Leadership

You Can't Make Progress Without Making Changes

by Harvey Mackay
copyright 1996 United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

It's no surprise that D-H was a pioneer in establishing a corporate strategy for dealing with change. Change is the essence of retailing, an industry which depends upon keeping the customer dissatisfied with what he or she has in hopes of persuading him or her to replace it with something new. Maybe Gimbels, I. Magnin, B. Altman, Peck & Peck, Ohrbachs, Sterns, and Abraham & Straus did the same thing, but I wouldn't know who to ask about it because not one of those retailers is around any more.

Smart retailers do not just react to change, or even simply profit by it. The make it happen and, as a result, they control it on their own terms. Few of the rest of us are in that position, but we can still go beyond the mere "reaction" stage to the "profit" stage.

You have to have a plan. You can't get with the program unless you have a program. People fear change because they fear they're going to make the wrong kind of change. And they're often right: they are wrong.

The classical example is a brewery in a large industrial city with had the No. 1 label in town. They had a huge constituency among blue-collar workers. These were the guys who would stop in for a quick one or two after work. Suddenly, sales plummeted. The brand went from first to last quicker than you could say "gimme a beer and a shot." The company tried everything to find out what had gone wrong. They held focus groups made up of their previously hard-core customers, and the only thing they could come up with was that the beer "didn't task the same anymore." The beer drinkers said it was weaker, watery, and wimpy. The company checked the recipe, went over every pipe in the brewery, and nothing had changed.

Except for one thing: the advertising. Just before sales fell off the charts, the company had launched a new campaign that targeted the uptown swells they had never been able to sell before. The ads featured elegant gentlemen in tuxedos and ladies in formal gowns preening around theater lobbies sipping the company's beer from crystal stemware. No wonder the guys downing the stuff at Joe's Bar thought it tasted weak.

There's no happy ending to this story. The brewery guys never got their original customers back. Then there's Coca-Cola and the debacle over the change in their formula. Another change that didn't work. So Coca-Cola changed back to its original formula, which helped enhance its No. 1 market position.

Even though there's a good change you may fail if you change, there's an even greater chance you'll fail if you don't. The brewery may never have recaptured its pre-eminence, but what if they hadn't tried at all? Only a handful of regional labels survived the competition from the national brands with their huge advertising budgets, deep discounting policies, and saturation distribution. In the example given here, the brewery's response to changing conditions may have been disastrous, but the same fate befell their unchanging fellow regionals. They all wound up in the graveyard of forgotten labels. And, yes, some changes do work - exceedingly well.

AT&T claimed that the government antitrust action that eventually compelled them to break up the company would destroy both the quality of phone service and the value of the company. They were dead wrong, or rather "live" wrong. A decade later, the change has worked so well that AT&T is being broken up again; this time it's on the company's own initiative and wholly voluntary. In the marketplace, the stock jumped nearly 20 percent when the change was announced.

Mackay's Moral: "The man who achieves makes many mistakes, but he never makes the biggest mistake of all - doing nothing." --Benjamin Franklin

Editor's note: Harvey Mackay is a management author and has written many books related to success in management, including the "Swim with the Sharks" series. He founded and successfully grew (a Minnesota-based business) Mackay Envelope from one small manufacturing and distribution warehouse into the dominating force in that market

Management

Recruitment Lessons Learned From The Road

David Stollman, NIC Recruitment Consultant
excerpted from NIC Campus Commentary (April 1996)

Sometimes the leaders try to "fix" recruitment problems at a system level. As many have learned, the only way that recruitment can improve is at the chapter level. Recruitment is an individual process. People join people, not a Greek system. Policies and procedures will not get more men to join fraternities.

It all comes down to the difference between "Rush" and "Recruitment." Rush is a period of time. It is a period of time which is decided upon by the IFC or some central authority. Many do not like Rush because it can be so fake and superficial.

Recruitment is a process, a process between people. Recruitment is not fake or superficial when done the right way. It is fun. We have all heard about the five steps of recruitment: Meet him, Make him a friend, Introduce him to your friends, Introduce him to the fraternity, Ask him to join. These steps should extend far beyond the period of time we typically call Rush.

The key to recruitment is going from steps two to three. Many of our Brothers are friends with men who are not members. We all know how to make friends. What we do not do well is get these friends to be friends with our Brothers. We do not introduce them to our friends. When this happens, recruitment is just hanging out with a bunch of friends, some in the fraternity and some soon to be joining. Although it sounds (and is) less formal than Rush as we know it, it does not happen by accident. Chapters must prepare and plan in order to be successful in their recruitment efforts.

This recruitment process does not include an IFC's mandatory sign-ups or tours. Formal Rush is merely a time for those that already know that they want to join a fraternity to choose. That quantity of men, "Always Joiners," is shrinking consistently. the group that we need to target is the growing population of "Maybe Joiners." These people are not interested in participating in a formal IFC Rush process.

Five things I have found to improve recruitment are:

1. Educate Fraternity Members: Teach the Right Way to Rush philosophy and methods, give workshops on communication and recruitment skills.

    

2. Create Opportunities for Brothers to Meet Non-Brothers: Get involved with a fraternity forum at your campus (if there isn't one, get IFC to start one), Participate in new student orientation, Give a welcome bbq for new students, Help with new student move-in.

    

3. Maintain Basic Rules: Dry recruitment! When you sell yourself on alcohol, you'll only attract members who are interested in little but alcohol. Use decorum at all events, activities, and in publicity. Get IFC to increase the allowable bidding times to the entire semester and to remove as many restrictions on new members as possible.

    

4. Promote: Get IFC to promote fraternities to augment chapters' Right Way to Rush methods.

    

5. Facilitate an Evaluation of Recruitment Efforts: Get help from IFC about how to evaluate your chapter's efforts, Try to find out information about how non-affiliated students feel about the Greek system , your chapter, recruitment efforts, and reasons why they haven't yet joined.

Minnesota changed the format of its newsletter. There are three articles about the Triangle Experience, one each from a Pledge, an Active, and an Alumnus. These are some very inspiring words and we at the EXPONENT urge you to get a copy of the newsletter, or to visit it at the Minnesota chapter's Web site.

A heartfelt thank you goes out to all chapters who participated in this year's Regional Workshops, and especially to the host chapters! We hope that you found what was presented useful and the interaction you had with your Brothers from other chapters a great help. To those who didn't choose to take this opportunity to improve yourselves, your chapter, and your Brotherhood, we missed you and look forward to having you jump right in next year--we know you will!People The National Nominating Committee recently convened and nominated Brothers Kurt Over pitt83, Matt "Stan" Czyzewski tol89, and Kevin Fong ucla84 for election to National Council seats for the upcoming year. In addition, the committee nominated Brother Jeff Scott wis87 to the National Vice-presidency and Brother Tim Eiler minn87 to the National Presidency. Look for information about the plans each of these men have in the upcoming Triangle Review, but don't hesitate to contact any or all of them to find out what they think, etc. Many thanks to those Brothers who participated in Triangle more fully by their work on the nominating committee!Reminders Don't forget to prepare for sending someone to this year's National Convention and Herb Scobie Leadership School August 9-12 in Minneapolis, MN. We'll even have programming for spouses and families! For registration information, please contact the National Headquarters. Information is also available on Triangle's Web site. This is Triangle's 90th anniversary and we'll have a museum of Triangle history on-site for you to visit. We hope that we can add this convention to the next history museum as the largest and most successful National Convention to date! This is an opportunity for you to renew old friendships, to make new ones, and to improve yourselves. Finally, you'll want to be there as the National Chapter Leadership rolls out some significant new programs and changes to Triangle!

Meet Your National Councilmen: Shawn Diedtrich minn90EXP:

Tell us about yourself.

Br. Diedtrich: I am 25 years old and married to a wonderful wife, Heather. I work with the Computer Science Department at the University of Minnesota as the World Wide Web Administrator. I graduated from the Univ. of Minnesota in a self-designed degree majoring in Chemistry and Political Science. Also, I am a part-time MBA student specializing in entrepreneurial studies (marketing, finance, strategic mgmt, and business innovation all rolled into one).

My hobbies include wine collecting, skiing, drinking quite a bit of coffee, reading and thinking. I co-own a small web communications business (with another Triangle brother) and plan to make the business my full time career when I graduate.

EXP: How have you been involved with Triangle over the years?

Br. Diedtrich: I was pledged Fall quarter in 1989 and initiated in January 1990. During my undergraduate years I was elected Pledge President, President (twice), Vice-president of Membership, Vice-president of External Relations, and Secretary (not necessarily in that order). I have served on the Minnesota Triangle Alumni Board for six years (four of them as an active chapter representative). I also represented the chapter at various conventions, leadership schools and regional workshops.

My National Chapter work includes employment by the National Office as a field consultant, volunteering for a few Council committees, and even creating a Recruitment video.

Locally, I am the Alumni President-elect and Interim Treasurer. Occasionally, I have been known to pen a dinosaur story or two.

EXP: What do you see Triangle doing Nationally in the future?

Br. Diedtrich: I see our chapters, active and alumni, rediscovering a national identity. My hope is that we will start to talk of ourselves as members belonging to Triangle Fraternity rather than members belonging to the chapter of Triangle Fraternity. (I know this is a subtle distinction, if you would like to discuss it, send me an email). Backed with this strength in numbers, I see Triangle aggressively expanding and becoming innovators in the Greek world.

TRIANGLE FRATERNITY

Is Serious about Scholarship

Sets and Demonstrates High Standards

Celebrates Achievement