M n M meeting-- Ideas to improve CCW operations
Maggie will complete this document by noon Thursday
Directors who serve and show a poor record of attendance should not be re-appointed. Secretary can facilitate by totalling people's attendance record for us.
There should be less of a backward looking "how we did it in the past" because it became weakened. Rather, there should be a "give new people a chance if they self-nominated" approach. Past presidents don't always come to our meetings or have a sense of where things can be going for FORWARD movement.
Director positions and VP positions are opportunities to be SHARED, not kept by one person interminably. (Maggie has specific case to discuss.)
Adopt an aggressive "pipeline strategy" that actually shuffles new VPs around positions so that people from Comm Service, for example, get knowlege about Membership, etc.
Shift attitude: There has long been a feeling that we are all "lucky" to have ANYONE we could give a directorship too. We changed the field this year by having interest meetings and self-nominations. A multi-month Board Nominations process should be time-lined and institutiionalized in order for our Board to be an opportunity to more folks outside of our old boy network. The attitude should be more about getting people with energy, insights and WORK TO GET THINGS DONE rather than, perhaps, these people are "connected" to Washington Elite through consulting or lawyering. Those people often show up meeting after meeting not having done any tasks that advance the club.
Make a specific plan to review the by-laws and audit for where we fall down. Report the results of the audit to the new board and formulate / document an action plan to address. Who will be in charge of this effort?
Review and document this year's Nomination and Elections actions and timelines since they failed to adhere to by-laws for elections. Come up with a work plan to address it better next year., assigning specific people to the task force. Report this plan out no later than January, 2027. Start in February and aim for vote to conclude June 3 latest.
Make a specific plan to enhance and grow our leadership pipeline by recording our new efforts this season, getting names of fresh blood out assigning mentors ("big sisters and brothers") on our Board for inviting more engagement, mentoring, and generating a plan of additional tasks / communications. Place a VP or director in charge of the effort and report out quarterly at board meetings.
Schedule no later than March 30 each year to use the summertime months for a "retreat" and strategic planning, that draws together the EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE at a minimum, suggests "new officer hand-off" steps to include access to Wild Apricot and VP emails, and produces minutes others can consult for direction. Assign the retreat design to the President, Comms VP and involve webmaster since she'll have a tech timeline and materials for instruction.
Have a specific plan to generate all the comms and address logistics of an annual meeting. I suggest it be business-y as the last meeting of the year (after May election) and 2nd Tuesday of June. Annual report can be collaboratively written such that each committee reports on the success of their measurable goals-- 1 paragraph. IMHO, it should not be an exhausting social event where we try to do a big picnic. Just low key get the BUSINESS done, read the annual report and approve it, install the new officers, go out afterward.
What is the unique purpose of the first meeting of the year? Meeting of the Minds: What is our club for? Is it for our members or for Cornell/Ithaca? Can we assess, feel free to resist, or reject "orders" from Ithaca that divert our time and resources from CCW initiated activities? Ithaca should not be able to gobble up our spare volunteer energies and hours.
Present a mission statement or approve this one: By developing volunteer opportunities, scholarships, leadership functions and fun social events, CCW connects Cornellians in the DMV to enhance their Cornell Experience. We do it by generating a sense of belonging, interaction, exploration, high standards for achievement and fun.
With approval of a mission statement, annually set out club-wide goals and PRIORITIZE them. This "approval" should be officially established at October meeting. Make sure this is a motion that is approved. The goals should be collaboratively discussed and generated (and not just arise from one person's perspective and priorities. ) The discussion generates ownership. A vote to APPROVE the goals /strategy steps will consolidate buy-in and result in checking for progress on a quarterly basis. Committee goals and work should be alligned to support the PRIORITIES of the club.
After considering all summer, Set a late October deadline for each VP to write up their committee's goals and members to be published to replace last year's HERE. Present to all by e-mail and confirm at Nov. meeting.
Two types of meetings, rotating every other month: A) much like this year and HYBRID style (Sept, Nov, December then Jan, March, June) Just like this year Goal 1.5 hour meetings. Agenda has included the wording of any MOTIONS that will be brought to the floor. HOWEVER, Committees can be encouraged to come 45 min early for their work sessions, thus getting into seats commitee members who can stay on and learn from the Board Meetings. B) alternating months and not hybrid, (October, Feb, April) begin with a rapid collective meeting of about 20 minutes (urgent communications), then break out into training and/or committee meetings for task completion through our work plans. For both kinds of meetings, encourage new blood to attend. Meetings should always be held where there is wifi and people should be encouraged to bring their laptops and not empty-handed or just their phones to efficiently conduct their committee work. Anyone idle should be co-planning with a co-host one of the Happy Hours, or supporting officers like the pres, treas, secretary with specific tasks.
Tech equipment at meetings should allow for the projection onto a screen of what someone has on their laptop. This may not be easy on hybrid months. This is essential to familiarize more of our Board with tech platforms and efficiencies.
No longer will we build our agendas onto the prior month's emailing by clicking "reply to all" just because we need the address list. Each month starts afresh and we will consider the value of blind copying. (People's email boxes have many different versions of addresses in them and long email trails drown new messages in threads long past being "up high" in email boxes.) On a monthly basis, we can update in Wild Apricot our Board's preferred email addresses.
Can Miriam's role in communications be supported to reduce sending messages to people who have already answered them?
Creating each month's Agenda: what is the purpose of the meeting? how can directors and VPs provide the president items for the agenda labeling each item Motion, Discussion, or Report? I would like to see COMMITTEE REPORTS minimized unless it is a specific call for discussion/decision, sign-ups or PR. Programming need not read off events that one can click through the calendar to review, for example. Can we orient people toward making MOTIONS, then discuss, then vote to have more efficient right ordered action come from our meetings? I am mindful that people accede to others' good ideas without the club assessing and meting out the RESOURCES, ESPECIALLY VOLUNTEERS who will see an event through.
Make transparent to all how to get a motion on the floor for a VOTE before we engage in time-consuming event planning. Note that Gala involvement came about without such. No one but me read the room and said, this will exhaust the few people involved and BURN OUT AND TURN OFF anyone actually pulled into the activity. Note that the Hunter Rawlings event was met with near crickets. (Any new initiative that is going to be a biggie should not be presented to the Board for voting to approve unless an interest meeting and committee has already been formed??? This is how schools get it all done.)
Minutes: how can someone access minutes from the meeting that they JUST MISSED? Can the secretary develop them on one Google Doc for each year as a rough draft, and then finalize in a word doc? Can they be uploated to Wild Apricot once approved without delay? Can Comms Committee assign that upload to someone to take it off Secretary's plate?
Can we dedicate MONTHLY MEETING TIME at least every other month to new kind of agenda that is oriented towards brealom out into committee work sessions and include sessions that cross train tech skills and getting committee assignments done?
PUT ENERGY into distributing tech know-how across our Executive Council in their executive counsel monthl meeting... with a work plan, specific objectives and dates. Running CCW cannot be done without broader cross-training and use of our tech platforms directly by our VPs and Presidents. SP has both complained about and hoarded the tech knowlege. I've been working strategically to learn what he knows, but my info has not been shared with anyone else yet.
President can "order" the VP Programming to edit every Board Meeting announcement to include location and links for those Board Meetings and it should be done 2 weeks advance of each meeting at latest. Steve won't let others do these edits, in my experience; he's territorial about it or else I'd just do it.
Address foul communication and threats by SP and tell him that people have quit because of his behavior. It is intolerable but we have tried to work with him. Do this with Gil, Mike F and Mark (possibly inviting Karen J who has futher insight and is will soon depart leadership, so she can be the fall guy. Address him in a powerful sit-down that specifically cites:
2;00, 3 AM hostile emails to valued Board Members (was there drinking or mismanaged stress at their root?)
ignoring requests for meetings made by email, phone messages when those requests could have avoided escalating tensions and work loads for other valued Board Members
failure to engage others to develop an events committee
threat to crash the whole system (TH has story)
reason for a Comms Director to resign
other?
See this page as overview of CCW's many tech tools and accounts. It's not complete but across the past 2 years,I've taken a lot of notes to capture and record SP tech insights. Using it as a framework, someone could work with Steve to develop such a training tool more fully. He demonstrates no interest in working with me on such a project.