Authored by Default

I once overheard a Shliach venting to a friend about one of his congregants.

This man, a regular, comes most weeks, sits through davening, stays for the kiddush. He has done so for years. "He's a warm guy, great to have around," the Shliach said. But ask him where he belongs, and he would not say Chabad. He would tell you about the Conservative temple in town, where he pays his membership and never goes. Chabad is where he actually shows up. And everything he gives Chabad in a year does not add up to what he pays that temple in dues.

The Shliach was truly bothered by this: this person comes here, participates in our programs, uses the resources, so the man should be standing behind this place, not a building across town he never enters. That a congregant could miss something so plain felt like being looked straight through.

Although this reasoning seems obvious, it rests on a couple of assumptions worth pulling into the light. Both are places of worship, so the same rules should apply, and the place a man actually goes to is the place his donations should follow.

It sounds like plain sense. It would even be right, if showing up to a shul meant the same thing everywhere. It never does. Nobody walks into a place and relates only to the obvious elements of the experience. He is not simply buying a seat, a minyan, a sermon, or a kiddush. There is always more happening.

This is why he has a real and separate relationship with each of them, and gives each exactly what that relationship asks. The temple gives him a membership; "You are a member whether or not you ever walk in". Chabad gives him something different. Perhaps a warm room, a relaxed atmosphere, a more meaningful way to connect spiritually. And for him, showing up and engaging satisfies his obligation in the relationship.

Somewhere along the way, he learnt that his bond with Chabad is the kind you show up for and not the kind you belong to.

And despite never being written anywhere, the terms of this relationship were absolutely authored, whether the Shliach realizes it or not.

This is one of the most impactful and least noticed parts of leadership: designing the meaning behind the transaction. I call that authorship.

Designing the meaning behind the transaction. I call that authorship.

Whatever you make that involves other people, you are doing two things at once. You are running the transaction; the program, the class, the service. And underneath it, you are deciding what the whole thing means to the person on the other side. What he becomes by being part of it. Which part of him wakes up when he walks in, and which part stays home. How this experience colors his identity.

This idea might sound novel, but you are already doing this. The only question is whether you are doing it intentionally.

You are already doing this. The only question is whether you are doing it intentionally.

Operators tend to look right past authorship, because the transaction happens regardless. Leaders, on the other hand, know that authorship is where real impact happens and unwanted issues are avoided.

In 1997 Apple ran the Think Different campaign, and there was no product anywhere in it. No computer, no price, no feature, nothing you could actually buy. Black and white photographs of Einstein and Bob Dylan and a few lines about the ones crazy enough to think they could change the world. Apple spent near $100 million on this campaign.

What they were buying with all that money was the thing underneath the transaction: who you would be for purchasing one of their machines, which part of you would come alive when you did.

This practice of authoring the experience isn't limited to Apple-sized budgets. Look at a twenty-two-year-old bochur named Yossi Farro. With no shul, no building, no budget, and no title, he established himself as the address for any Jewish celebrity or billionaire looking to put on tefillin. The actors, the founders, people whose schedules you could not get near. And he built it doing the most ordinary thing a Chabad bochur does. The difference is that Farro doesn't treat it as only the mitzvah. He authors the whole thing around it: who he goes after, how he posts online, the way he celebrates the event afterward. And because of that, a celebrity who wraps with him does not just experience having done something Jewish or spiritual, he also walks away feeling more like a celebrity, more like himself.

Apple authors with a hundred million dollars, a bochur does the same thing with very little. The reality is so do you. Authoring establishes the experience you provide your people, what going to Chabad means to their self-image, how giving happens and at what level, what to ask of you and what not to. Your crowd gets segmented and a hierarchy forms, even if your brochure says that everyone is equally welcome.

Your crowd gets segmented and a hierarchy forms, even if your brochure says that everyone is equally welcome.

Walk into a Walmart and a Whole Foods. They sell the same milk and the same eggs, and yet you know exactly who is standing in each line, what they are wearing, with which car they got there. A Whole Foods shopper might slip into Walmart now for something on sale. The Walmart shopper will pop into a Whole Foods to get something specific. But the former will never call himself a Walmart shopper nor will the latter ever refer to himself as a Whole Foods customer. The surprising thing is neither store ever published any description of what their customers should look like, and yet it's so clearly defined.

This is why so much of what we spend our days troubleshooting never leads to substantial results. We aim at the transaction, at the activity, at the components. We update the graphics, we try a different coach, a new fundraising course, as if the fix for what we are up against were found in adjusting the activities themselves. It is not. These challenges are not happening at the level of the activity. They are happening because of the floor below it, because of what was created there.

And that floor is yours and so are the problems that come with it, knowingly or not. The donor who won't give past a certain number, the program that's active but never grows, the people who keep coming and the ones who never walk in. None of this is bad luck or a difficult crowd. It is the experience you authored, doing exactly what it was authored to do.

This awareness is not meant to throw you into questioning everything you are doing. Rather it is a chance to pause, turn around, and look honestly at what you are authoring. And then to choose it, or to author it differently, this time on purpose.

Keep Integrating,

Yosef