I’ll admit, dear reader, that I never considered a blog to be part of my future at AOACC. You would need to look no further than my text messages to friends and family to understand why I might be apprehensive about putting my writing skills on display for all to read.

And yet, here I am committing to a blog. I’m going to start out this series by breaking a rule of blogging right up front, and that is to create a blog post that has no original content or thoughts, and simply acts as a platform to talk about myself. I promise you, dear reader, that this will be the only blog in which I focus so intently on myself as the central subject. My only goal here is to establish a beginning, and bring forth a few commitments I make to you throughout our time together here.

My first commitment is to non-biased, non-partisan, non-agenda pushing content. While leadership and organizational success are always shaped by individual and collective perceptions brought in from the outside (see: “real”) world, I am more interested in basing any claims I make on a scientific or well researched standpoint. That being said, when that is not possible (perhaps due to lack of data, or erroneous data) I will do my best to shape this content to be as clear and concise as I can without conjecture.

This is primarily because my number two commitment is to attempt to bring about a new way of thinking in my blog posts. While some posts will be simple book reviews that recommend or push back on a text I’ve read, the rest of the content may push your current perceptions to their limits and ask you to piece together the rest of the puzzle. In short, did the chicken or the egg come first? This blog is not going to answer that, but I hope to give you enough information in my posts to find a confident direction to the issue addressed.

Finally, and most importantly dear reader, I am committed to entertaining you. I have read and written enough academic papers to last a lifetime. What I want to do, right after pushing you out of your comfort zone, is to bring you some sort of entertaining muse that allows us to play in this new developing perception landscape openly and freely without those pesky defense mechanisms popping up. Don’t worry, I’m very funny.

If we didn’t laugh at that last joke then don’t worry, because even if I can’t make you laugh, I will at least ensure that I leave enough room for you to take in this information and not feel judged. Change does not have to be scary, momentous, or even permanent. But change is constant, and getting use to that feeling is what this little organization is all about.

Thank you for reading, dear reader, and I look forward to talking again with you soon!

Andrew Ross