My theme this week may be “teamwork” – how do we encourage it, support it, reward it, take advantage of it?

A prompt is the fact that the Organizational Structure and Governance Task Force, three months after its announcement, still has not gelled or produced any concrete recommendations. There’s hope, of course, but given conference calls where a few people dominate and there’s no real focus other than walking through an agenda, gives me pause. Another is a “conversation” on the AAUW CA Online list about streamlining the AAUW CA board where someone raised a concern as to whether the smaller board would have enough folks to do the work. Our common practice of “working boards” with less support for “off board contributors,” does, I think, need to change.
One seminar that might provide food for thought: Increasing Interactivity in Webinars, 1pm ET, April 22, sponsored by the STC Instructional Design and Learning SIG. I’m unlikely to attend, but let me know if you do. Registration and more info. While the topic may seem narrow, how to engage those at a distance is a key issue for us moving forward.

One of the bylaws changes is to have members be able to vote on issues between conventions. This would lead to “one member, one vote” with folks returning USMail ballots or voting electronically without regard to their branch membership or any “delegate” status.

This is the norm for many other national associations.

I’ve heard that this is the point where the leadership expects to see the most opposition to the changes. While it’s needed for flexibility, folks seem to be having heartburn with the idea of passing such decisions off to the membership as a whole without the chance to have floor debate, hallway discussions, onsite campaigning and such that has been an important part of conventions. I, for one, who was part of the small group that pushed the change in the degree requirement at the 2005 convention, certainly understand the benefit of this campaining — it was MUCH easier to change the minds of the folks who were at Convention and were made aware that many members cared passionately about this issue (THANK YOU Frieda Schurch; may you rest in peace Cindy Hebert). On the other hand, the VAST majority of our members just DO NOT CARE about the details of governance.

So, I think we’re struggling with

1. How do we strengthen the board so it can make more decisions without going to the membership for approval
2. How do we make the membership comfortable with that strengthened board.

In the words of Good to Great, I think we need to address the “get the right people on the bus” at the time the board is selected. And our current process just will not continue to work as fewer and fewer members want to spend any time dealing with the picky details of the organization.