What's In a Name?

You've all read them. The articles documenting the most favored names of the year. Brittany's out. Emily's in. Jason's hot. Juan's not. Alarming parents of the so-called helicopter generation (as if they needed more to fret over), psychologists are beginning to learn what indigenous cultures have known for ages. Names matter. I'll circle back to the issue in a minute.

First, there is the issue of a late Friday blog. I am posting late this week because I knew what Saturday held in store for what I, and by extrapolation you, might learn. As I write, I sit on the balcony of Mom's downtown Greensboro condo, basking in the dimming light of a warm spring evening and replaying what I had envisioned would be and was a successful day facilitating a meeting.

Several weeks ago, my wife, a Family and Consumer Science teacher in Wake County, volunteered my service for her colleagues. "He's great!" Deborah told them. "And he's free." That's all it took.

From that declaration came the first of several phone calls with Dr. Jane Walker, Professor at North Carolina A&T State University. Jane was to convene a think tank of professionals who practice under the big umbrella of what used to be called "Home Economics."

I say "used to be" because, like every public endeavor, home economics is influenced by society and politics. Caught in a vice of high-stakes testing and girls aspiring to be less June Cleaver and more Madonna, practitioners and policymakers in the 1990s came to believe that sewing, cooking, and childcare, as courses of study, were either inadequate, irrelevant, or both.

Welcome then to Family and Consumer Sciences. The revised curriculum began to feature new and updated content, including financial literacy, interior design, culinary arts, early childhood education, to name but a few. As it turns out, however, the name change failed to quell critics or inspire supporters, because it failed to cure the underlying problem--lack of a professional brand. Tackling that problem, at least in North Carolina, was the major purpose of the meeting today.

Planning with Jane and aided and abetted by the practices we teach in Triangle Leadership Academy, my job was to design and deploy an agenda that would give members of the think tank an opportunity to collectively identify the issues of societal interest facing families and children; identify how they were intervening in those issues from role-alike perspectives, ranging from education at every level to support from every level; identify the challenges and supports to intervention; identify vision themes and bold steps to achieving those elements; and finally build an action plan to create ownership and accountability. 

Among the luminaries present was a past US House of Representative official, college deans and professors, a marketing consultant, public school teachers, and representatives of national and regional support organizations. Their energy was infectious and their ideas nothing short of inspirational.

No one suggested that the name of the field should be changed again, only that they work to integrate the pieces and parts into a whole and create a uniform message for every audience, parents to policymakers. It was very gratifying to be part of the work of these leaders. It should also remind all of us that it is a major task of leadership to brand the products and services for which the leaders are responsible.

What's in a name? The stories you remember when you hear the name. Make your names good ones.