GOOD BYE ETHAN DRADDY

You and your career are the perfect example of the Peter Principle gone wild.  In a movement that needs each and every experienced, successful professional you allowed your misperceptions and prejudices to run crazy here in Baltimore.

You have violated the trust of volunteers and contributors by spinning every number to your advantage.  You move to New York City as the Great Financial Wizard of BSA, Inc. and you’re a fraud—taking credit for the work and planning of some outstanding Scouters.  Anyone can cut services and be penny wise and pound foolish, but to ask everyone on your staff to take cuts in their performance increases while you take a 45% pay increase—the degree of your sense of entitlement knew few bounds. 

Baltimore’s board of misdirection is to blame for allowing someone like you to serve young people.  The National Council is to blame for allowing you to continue in BSA, Inc.  All of us here in Baltimore Scouting should have done more to question your leadership style.

Scouting is a self-correcting organization and before too long the same old hands will be running everything on the volunteer side of the house.  It will take a long time to rebuild the capabilities of the professional / support staff.  The three major reasons the board hired you: finances, Broad Creek use, and city Scouting are already caving in on themselves.  Friends of Scouting is way down, summer camp attendance is so far off the mark that you closed one of the camps and city Scouting, after all the crap you forced down everyone’s throat is in the same shape it always will be in.  Great job Ethan; go get them in the Big Apple!                            

Count down to Ethan be gone day T+2

Let’s throw the rest of the surviving Ethan Draddy ideas into a pile for you to review.  There will be little support from the board once Ethan gets going on messing with the support and professional staff.  Honest to God, you will have less than a year to find a new job, prepare to do battle with Ethan or sit around to  pray that you’ll somehow make it past the reign of career terror that is about to come down on New York City Scouting.

The volunteers are not going to help much once things get going.  Ethan is a master of playing one group off against another.  At first, the volunteers are going to get everything they want, another Wood Badge course, not a problem.  Improvements at camp, sure -- we will make that happen – in the first 12 months.  Then Ethan will start replacing the volunteers with his people, no more improvements.  Actually, expect some serious cuts in service.

The National Council is too busy fighting political battles right now to pay attention to anything going on in the nation’s largest city.  Just remember, Ethan wants to be the chief, so negative social media out of New York City can be used to leverage his thinking (or what passes for it).

Clean out your desk now.  It will save on having to do this while Team Ethan is watching you.  Document everything and keep your documentation at home.  Team Ethan will be monitoring your computer usage.  Keep your records at home (including copies of business cards, personnel records (yours), rosters and phone numbers).  Keeping your personal items at home will send a message to Team Ethan that you are not too comfortable in your job.

There is no training after PD-III in Ethan Draddy land, so find ways to get to Philmont, Sea Base, or other training opportunities when you can.  Network while there with other professionals and tell them how Ethan is doing.  The best way to stop Ethan from being the next Chief Scout Executive is for the guys in Irving to realize that Ethan is a threat to their jobs and retirement plans. 

Ethan will work around you, over you, under you – know who you can trust.  Be guarded in what you say.  Sand bag membership and money to be used to help yourself or to help someone else.  Pool money and place an attorney on retainer.  Ethan is a bully, if you hit him hard the first time he attempts to start coloring outside the lines he’ll follow the rules (for a while).  Understand the council audit committee and be ready to file complains with them.  Nothing will happen; but it sends a message and builds a record. 

Ethan will centralize decision-making and create an authoritarian structure to support his leadership style, which is based on daily chaos, confusion and discord.  Reach out to Charter Organization Representatives and Institutional Heads build relationships of trust with these people.  They can help you to overturn Ethan decisions.  Stall and delay Ethan projects as much as you can.  Collaborative action is what can change poor future scenarios – like losing your job or having a pay cut so Ethan can hire more people to work in finance.

Start reading about employment law, both state and federal, tie Ethan up in complaints with regulators.  Do not wait to see how the wind is blowing or to discern whether Ethan is really breaking the law with his employment decisions, trust the folks in Baltimore the man is not honorable.

Good luck New York, we hope you will stop Ethan from ever being the Chief Scout Executive at a minimum.  If you are able to help Ethan find employment outside of BSA, Inc. Scouting will owe you all a big debt of gratitude.                                 

      

Rule # 5 for surviving Ethan: Sell out!

Hey, he is the boss.  The national organization vetted the guy and the board selected and approved him.  End of story, time to get to work.  The thing is working harder, even leading in money, membership and manpower will not save you.  If you are going to sit back to see what happens, good for you, it is an approach to the situation.  Whether you sell out to Ethan or sit on the fence please use the time to think about what you’ll be doing after Scouting.  Most of the people who sold out are no longer with the Baltimore council; they were not able to beat Ethan at his own game.  We would write that the majority of the sellouts are in sales positions now.  If insurance, real estate or office products are of interest to you now might be a good time to explore these options.

We know of only two senior professionals who were able to move to other councils, one was a female finance director (not a lot of those in Scouting) who took a lateral move.  The other was the director of field services, who was promoted to a Scout executive position.  It’s a little harder to side-line your number two, better to get him promoted.

There is a great deal of interest here in Baltimore in what happens to the guys Ethan brought in, especially Baltimore’s Late Night Bumper Car Champion.                                  

Rule # 4 for surviving Ethan: Become a camp counselor

Ethan’s career, at its foundation, is program.  Unlike the majority of Scout executives who built records on membership growth, or raising money, Ethan made his name in program related functions.  In a very real sense, he continues to view himself as a camp director.

How do you use this knowledge to survive Ethan?  The closer you are involved in council level programs the higher Ethan will evaluate your worth to the organization.  He still believes that professionals should always be the directors of summer camp programs – not an especially bad idea; but this worked when United Way funded the majority of a council’s budget, not so much anymore. When you’re out getting your hair colored, drinking your diet soda you need to start seeing yourself as a summer camp counselor.  Not only does Ethan need you to appear youthful, he needs you to think like a teenager.  Be eager to take on new tasks (while increasing your numbers for money, units, and membership).  Be willing to work for less than you are worth because it’s all about Ethan…we mean the boys!  Be adaptable to change, much like a teenager, don’t think about next month or next year (or your mortgage payment, family, life outside of Scouting).  Ethan will take care of that for you, don’t worry – be happy.

Once you have lost a few pounds, your hair is now an unnatural looking brown and you have signed up to be the next camp director, just remember this:  there have been few Baltimore staff members who survived Ethan by attempting to beat him at his own game, so be committed to being thought of as a camp counselor for next four plus years.                             

Rule # 3 for surviving Ethan: Be youthful and attractive (young and male helps)

Would you appear a few years younger if you lost a few pounds?  Is that grey hair all that important to your sense of self?  Now is the time to lose those pounds and color that hair.  Ethan likes everyone on his professional staff to look like camp staffers.  If you are young, attractive (height and weight appropriate), and male you’ll have a good chance of making it in Ethan Scouting.

If you are not height and weight appropriate, are a man or woman of a certain age, well…what did you think about being a DE?  It does beat not having a job at all.  We watched field directors and district directors demoted to DE positions, normally for no other reason than Ethan not liking their looks (or age).  If you thought this was going to be your retirement job think again.

Rule # 2 for surviving Ethan: Protect your on-line information from the Cyber Stalker

Now would be a good time to change your security settings on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the rest.  It’s actually a little late.  We would bet money that Ethan has already started his nightly troll through your on-line lives.  He would respond, we’re sure, with “just getting to know my future staff, good leadership, right? Right?”  It would be if he wasn’t looking for angles to leverage you to Team Ethan. 

Do you have a part-time job that is referred to on-line?  Do you own a business with any type of on-line presence?  Are there pictures of you missing articles of clothing at a party somewhere on the web?  Ethan is going to find all of this.  Close as many trap doors as you can.

It’s always better to have a seat at the table, rather than being on the menu.  We’re here to tell you, you are on the menu.  Don’t give Ethan knowledge about where to put the fork and knife.                   

Rule # 1 to surviving Ethan: Never Say You’re Sorry

Ethan got into his head that requiring employees to apologize to each another or to adult leaders that complain is a super trick.  It normally cools a situation down and he gets a written statement made by you that you did something wrong.  This will then get filed in your personnel file.   Don’t do it.  To meet his requirements, and keep your job, a simple statement of attrition should do the number. 

"Please forgive me for being a less than perfect creature / Scouter / executive." 

Just don’t get into specifics. Guard information about yourself.  Now we have never been able to find anything about this practise in any BSA human resources manual -- welcome to Scouting by Ethan.            

How to survive Ethan Draddy

It would be nice if you didn’t have to be concerned about this Scouting Wonder.  After all, you have chosen to work in an underappreciated, time consuming, underpaid position in Scouting.  The last thing you need (if you are hitting your objectives) is someone to come in to play games with your careers.  Sorry folks the games are about to begin.  Volunteers – the volunteers on the executive board – run Scouting and they don’t seem to care too much about the people doing the work. 

The same goes for those of us that volunteer on the council and district committees.  We love this organization, have given hours, days, weeks and years of our lives to it, but have had to face Ethan (or one of his cronies) asking us “what else would you like to do in Scouting?”  Done either to punish us for not joining Team Ethan or to reward one of his volunteer accomplices we were suddenly out of our Scouting positions.

We’ve come up with a list of actions you can take to survive Ethan.  We’ll start with the professional Scouters (as they will be the first to go) and then provide ideas to volunteers. 

There are two easy ways for professionals and support staff to survive Ethan right off the bat and not have to worry about a lot of what Baltimore and Ethan’s previous councils have gone through.  Organize yourselves for collective action.  Pool some money and place an attorney on retainer.  The first time Ethan goes after someone you’ll be ready.  Just make sure you have an understanding of employment law.  If someone is not making his or her numbers, life gets a little more difficult.  

If you are over 40 years of age we would highly recommend you reach out to other people within the council your age and older.  Ethan has a thing about people his age and older, he likes to demote and fire them. 

Hold on to your seat, we’ll be giving you some ideas to survive Ethan in the coming weeks, but remember – walk away power is the strongest medicine for the illness headed your way.                

     

The number one item to know about Ethan Draddy

At the number one spot on our list is something that we heard before Ethan ever got here to Baltimore, he is vindictive.  Sure enough, it turned out to be true.  This guy will make sure you are burned if he goes after you.  The sad thing is he will go after you for some of the most childish things imaginable – such as just not liking him personally or disliking one of his ideas.

Ethan was very careful his first year in Baltimore.  There was no big staff or volunteer committee changes.  All bets were off at the start of his second year.  The first people he when after were those who did not support him during his first year.

He’ll play this game of getting back at people while at the same time establishing his total control over the council.  To gain total control he starts with the professional staff.  Moving people around, changing critical tasks, placing pressure on supervisors to understand who plans to put up a fight and who is willing to join Team Ethan.  Once the professionals are in-line he can go after the chairs of the council committees.  He will start with the committees that are most important to him – anything that can communicate the dual brands of Scouting and Ethan.  Scouting for Food will be an easy target.  Council activities will be at the top of the list (he has to control the people running the coming Ethan Shows).  Camping and the OA will be in the top five to have Team Ethan members at their helm.    

Be on guard, don’t think Ethan wouldn’t remember you once the honeymoon period is over, because he will and he is one vindictive man.

             

Ethan’s Friday Evening Club

It’s Friday at the Baltimore Area Council.  Most of the professional staff has left for the day to get ready for Scouting events in their districts in the coming morning.  Ethan’s Friday Evening Club is getting ready with boxes.  The call has already been made to the IT folks to migrate files and information from your computer.  It’s not like you didn’t know this was in the works.  About a year after you were promotable Ethan and the boys moved you to one of the largest districts in the council, over 100 units, a district that had two full-time professionals before Ethan started cutting unit service to fund the expansion of the finance department.  Let’s face it, that is all BAC is anymore, a fund raising operation that occasionally puts on large Ethan events (that lose money, but make Ethan look good).  You’re a single father, veteran, over 40 and one of the few African-Americans on the professional staff.  You take the promotion, because not to will not work with Ethan.  Within a year, you’re on a work plan.  It’s an Ethan work plan, which means you have 90 days to get done what the last three DE’s were not able to do (yes, over three DE’s in the past four years). 

So you knew this was coming.  You thought you could out last Ethan, hell you’re about the last person over 40 who has been here since Ethan was hired who has not been fired, or demoted, you just needed a month, then no more Ethan.  Of course, that is not how Ethan works.  While you’re meeting with the late night bumper car champion of Baltimore the Friday Evening Club boxes up your belonging.  It’s after 5:00PM, no one is left in the office as the boys escort you out to your car.

Hell, it could have been worse.  You didn’t get a call during the weekend telling you that you needed to report to work on Monday to be fired because you should not have been fired on Friday.  You didn’t have to go through one work plan (successfully) only to be demoted and moved to another district (across the council) and placed on another work plan and when this work plan was not working for Ethan have the job eliminated.  Or told at camp on a Friday not to go back to the office while your co-workers call your cell phone asking why Ethan’s boys were piling all your belongings into the middle of your office.  The stories of Ethan’s Friday Evening Club are truly mind opening – yours is really pretty tame.

Your district chairman and commissioner have received calls, they most likely knew about Friday before you did.  Don’t expect any support from volunteers.  They really don’t care about the DE’s that work the districts.  You’re just like a person at McDonalds to them, “would you like popcorn with your order?”  You’re just another tree to the board of directors who can’t see the forest in front of them.  BAC’s board of misdirection has had three strikes in  a row with hiring Scout executives; John Maxwell got BAC into financial debt, Hugh Travis got BAC into membership debt and Ethan has gotten BAC into a program debt (with the closing of one of our camps due to attendance).  The best thing this board of misdirection could do is outsource the selection process for a new Scout executive to…the Girl Scouts?  The National Council will be of little use.  This same bunch recommended Ethan to us and now Greater New York Councils.

We wish you well and thank you for the work you did for Scouting and we're sorry that Ethan was your Scout executive.