The Importance of having a "Why" for Freemasons & Lodges

From WBro Damien, Editor

Bro Justin Jones has been a Master Mason since 2006 and became a Past Master in 2012. He lives in Texas USA and teaches high school physics. He started a Masonic Blog in 2016 called the Lone Star Freemason, but renamed it to Masonic Improvement. His posts focus on management of Lodges and ideas to improve the Craft, so the new name better reflects the content and intent of his blog. Three months ago he also started posting on YouTube and I draw you attention to his second video drawing on a TED Talk from Simon Sinek: “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” focusing on the “Golden Circle” and applying it to Freemasonry.

The Golden Circle is an analysis tool which focused on three things, presented as three concentric circles of WHAT, HOW and WHY (see above), with the last being the most important because it is anchored in your motivation, your purpose, your cause, and what you believe. That should drive all your actions and plans.

Master Masons might find it interesting to reflect, for a moment, on “why” as the centre of the circle and that in the terms of the circumpunct - the point from within a circle every part of the circumference is equidistant and how a Master Mason cannot err if he stays true to it, but I digress...

Bro Jones observes how most Lodges work from the outside of the Golden Circle and that they never quite penetrate to the inner area of the “why” of what we do. He says “why” is one of the most important arrears to understand and that successful organisations have a clear “why” that drives them and it is that which inspires people to engage, belong or follow them. He then asks, how does your lodge operate, from the outside in or inside out of the Golden Circle? Bro Jones says that we are biologically designed to work from the inside out – to find our “why” and to then follow with “how” and “what”.

Bro Jones offers a “why”; that Freemasons believe by making good men better, we are making the world a better place. He also says successful organisations make their “why” common knowledge to all members. He asserts if we want to employ the best practise for our lodges, this is something we need to be doing – defining our own “why”. He also observes that too many Lodge simply wait for someone else to do it, often a Grand Lodge.

Do you know the “why” of what we do, and more specifically, is this something we should be talking about at Lodge Devotion ?

Bro Jones video can be watched here https://youtu.be/8LTsNSQD9bc

and the show notes link to the TED Talk which inspired his vlogg.

Bro Jones also has his interesting blog at https://masonicimprovement.wordpress.com/

A circumpunct