by Beber's Ghost | Feb 2, 2008 | Members
AZAleph posted an insightful comment here, that is deserving of further response. He talks of faith and programming, but even he does not reach high enough.
So let’s talk of faith.
AZAleph believes that a great I-Board could be selected by a dedicated and informed assembly of delegates (such as CLTC graduates). I believe that, given the right encouragement, almost every Aleph in the order could become informed enough to help select I-Board. BBYO is all about faith, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it is that ANY statement that casts doubt on the potential of a BBYO member to participate, accomplish a goal or make a wise decision is a mistake. It is only through faith in members that you can create an order consisting entirely of members who will become leaders and take responsibility and choose wisely.
So all of you who have cast doubt on the ability of members to make wise choices (whether at elections or otherwise), you are right in a sense, but fundamentally wrong. The error is that even if you are right now, the only way to change this is to raise expectations, to have faith and act under the assumption that every member can rise to the high standards you expect. If you have faith, the membership will prove themselves worthy of that faith.
AZAleph states: …every chapter needs to involve their inexperienced members. Alephs do not gain leadership experience by doing (almost) anything EXCEPT FOR hands-on planning work.
Truer words were rarely spoken, but to see this as just a dream is a mistake. I know of more than one chapter where the rule is “everybody programs”, where most members plan their first event while still in 8th grade, and where, in any given term, the majority of members have planned at the very least a program at an event, if not an entire event.
How is this possible? It happens because those chapters have faith in their members, even the very youngest.
If you truly wish to change and improve the order, here’s a good place to start: trust your members. Set high expectations of them. And don’t lose faith even if they falter along the way – in the long run your faith will always be rewarded.
by Beber's Ghost | Dec 22, 2007 | Members
In a recent comment, Baer’s Ghost (a ghost whose identity is not actually known to me), continued a debate relating to international board elections. I’ve been arguing that right now IBoard is chosen by a relatively small group of BBYO members who are active in summer programs, and that with modern technology there is no reason for this to be the case. His response:
I do agree that an online voting system may be of benefit – but what about politicking? That’s part of the reason why we don’t have open elections, isn’t it? So how do you suggest getting around it?
This raises a very important and deeper issue, one that is particularly relevant as we enter our national election season. What exactly is politicking, and why and when is it bad (or good)?
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by Beber's Ghost | Dec 12, 2007 | General
Last month I made a somewhat humorous attempt to address the impact of bureaucracy on chapters. The truth of the matter is that (as a number of people informed me), that the ability of the bureaucracy to cause harm in BBYO is self-limiting. When the complexity becomes too great, it is simply ignored.
That’s one reason that Dashboard adoption has been slow when it comes to chapters using it to manage and clear events. While I expect many chapters are now using it for basic functionality (such as clearing events), I’ll bet it’s a rare chapter that uses it fully as intended (or even understands how to use it as intended). Chapter leaders have better things to do with their time than take long training courses on Dashboard – courses made necessary by the fact that it probably has one of the single most non-intuitive user interfaces in the history of the web. Seriously, whoever designed the user interface should be banned from any web development until they’ve taken a multi-year course on remedial web design.
That’s the nature of unintended consequences. BBYO invests in a very detailed policy manual intended to create uniform standards and procedures. Unfortunately, regions, staff, chapters and advisors are anything but uniform, so inevitably many of the procedures seem foolish at best, harmful at worst. The unintended consequence? Large numbers of individuals at the regional and chapter level (staff and members alike) end up interpreting, avoiding or ignoring policies in order to make things work.
This is not really a good thing. While it does protect the international order from lawsuits, it does shift the liability to the local level. It also creates a general disrespect for the rules – even those that do make sense.
BBYO staff will argue that standardized policies and rules is necessary to protect the organization and that it is too difficult to either create different rules for different localities or to allow local regions flexibility. This simply is not true. Yes, it would be difficult to allow individual regions to propose and adopt variations on policy – those changes would need to be reviewed by BBYO’s risk management team. But difficult does not mean impossible, nor does it mean it is not worth doing.
by Beber's Ghost | Oct 26, 2007 | Members
I have to share with you the amazing success story of Thomas Carlyle AZA. I don’t know that any chapter has ever started out so strong. Consider their first event: “Chapter Launch Overnight” that took place last week.
The process began a few weeks earlier when they recruited their advisor (parent of one of the Alephs). He filled out Advisor Appointment Request (form ADV-1) and submitted it along with the Consent to Background Checks (form ADV-2), getting that process rolling.
Getting the charter members signed up with the next job. An informal get-together was held during which the soon-to-be members all joined b-linked. They took home and also printed out extra copies of the Annual Participation Authorization (PRO-3), Universal Parent Program Release (PRO-4), Universal Teen Program Release (PRO-5), Membership Release (PRO-1) and Participant Medical Information and Consent to Treat form.
After a bit of calling around, they were able to find a parent willing to host the overnight, and got her a Consent to Host a Chapter Overnight Program (PRO-2).
As you can tell, these guys really had their act together. They were making new shirts for the event, and since they wanted to sell the extras regionally they also filled out a Merchandise/Apparel Approval Form (0PS-2). Since they were planning to play Broomball they also filled out an Insurance – Certificate Request Form (0PS-3).
They did have some obstacles to overcome. Some of them lived a bit distant from the overnight house, so they had to fill out Mileage Waiver Form PRO-6. Regional staff discovered that one of the prospectives had slipped and broken a fingernail during their informal meeting, so they had to fill out an Accident/Incident Notification Report (0PS-1). The staff didn’t have time to check all the prospective advisor’s references so he wasn’t able to start by the time of the event. As a result the single parent hosting the event didn’t have a second adult to host as required by policy, so the overnight part couldn’t happen.
They finally met the day of the event, the 15 charter members along with a remarkable 12 prospectives! Unfortunately, by the time they went through the list of who had filled out which necessary forms they discovered that not a single charter member (and of course none of the prospectives) had filled out all of the necessary forms correctly. They also discovered that they had been so busy getting forms filled out, they hadn’t actually planned any programming. So the event had to be canceled.
But don’t worry, even though the chapter no longer exists (all the members and prospectives just headed over to the USY event happening nearby), all 15 of the charter members and 6 of the prospectives are now showing up as engaged on B-Linked! So all’s well that ends well. BBYO is happy. The teens are happy. Even USY is happy! Nicely done, Thomas Carlyle AZA (RIP).
Sidenote
Thomas Carlyle was an 18th century Scottish essayist who protested excessive regulation and rigid conformity to bureaucratic rules and red tape. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_tape
by Beber's Ghost | Oct 12, 2007 | Members
Recently Anna posted a comment about changing regional traditions. One of her statements struck me as particularly interesting. She said “I also see our regional staff trying to make our very unique region act like all the other regions”.
She’s not the first person that I’ve heard this particular comment from. I suspect she won’t be the last.
BBYO has historically always had a balance: on one hand, BBYO has been a single organization. On the other hand, regions were quite autonomous, often having their own traditions, policies and local administration. These regional differences offered advantages and disadvantages. On the negative side, the standards and quality of BBYO’s program varied considerably. The standards and quality of staff varied as well (I’ve worked with regional directors who were amazing, and others who were… not). On the positive side, regions were allowed to develop traditions that worked well with the local community and develop policies that were influenced by community standards.
Today, the message coming out of the international organization is that of “One BBYO”. Sounds good in principle, but as you’re finding out, it has problems in practice. (more…)
