Mark Newton wrote:
Don't agree, Robert. The goals are already known; Extensive consultation with the members is going to deliver the same outcome we're already talking about here, namely that the sport needs to be grown.
First of all, that is only a part of the business plan. I grant you it's important, but there's a great deal more that the GFA needs to be doing. Some other examples are 1) Safety systems - we have killed three people this year. That suggests quite strongly that all is not well and attention is needed. 2) Air worthiness - is there a better way to handle inbound ADs (there is evidence that there needs to be). 3) Organisational structure - what do the members actually want (as opposed to being told they are going to get) and there are many others if you read the business plan - a business plan is hugely more than just new members!
The particular ways in which it is grown aren't (or shouldn't be) important to the current members.
I disagree. If we set about trying to grow the organisation in a way that is unacceptable to the existing membership in large enough numbers, we stand a good chance of killing the organisation.
We all happen to fit in to a culture that says lots of time and not much money is an ok way to learn how to fly, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
That is not true of all members.
So our ideas about the way to go about this, as shaped by our personalities and experiences are automatically incompatible with the potential customer base we're talking about here.
You are assuming that the membership is incapable of thinking outside their own box. That is a view that is very pessimistic and not valid based on my experience talking with GFA members.
In short, if GFA engaged in detailed consultation with the members, and the members recommended the particular direction to take, then the members would effectively sabotage the process by recommending a direction which was familiar and (for their demographic) "tried and true." The safe option is the one we already have, because (for us) it has worked.
There would, I suggest, not be any single direction - and that is the aim of a consultative process in any planning exercise - to uncover as many ideas as possible. Business/corporate planning consultations (as opposed to decision making) must not focused on 'a' solution. They must be structured in a way to ensure that as many ideas as possible are thrown up. It is only after the consultative process that things are focused down towards 'the' solution(s).
Forget it. Just pay someone who really knows what they're doing, instead of relying on volunteers who *say* they know what they're doing.
Consultants must really love you - carte blanche and blank cheque time! Then when the glossy report and exec summary doesn't work they shrug and walk away. Do you really expect some external consultant to come in cold and, for a reasonable fee, pull our butts out of the fire? Which particular cloud cuckoo land are you resident in? The reality of hiring outside expertise is that it must be given a very clear set of data and options to work with to produce anything worthwhile.
Yeah, great, if we want the whole process to get bogged down in bureaucracy for five years while half the membership argues about whether they've been consulted enough and the other have bitches about the fact that their responses to consultation have been ignored, then that might be a good idea.
Consultation is about finding out what people think. That process does not guarantee that individual ideas are going to make it into the plan (and members need to be told this at the beginning - amongst other things). Run well, even in an organisation as dispersed as the GFA, a consultative process would take at most three months.
There are too many prima-donnas in the gliding movement who will be only too happy to vociferously oppose anything that they, personally, don't feel happy about. When you have enough people like that with opposing views, it's always easier to blow them all off and just get on with the job. Who cares if there are a handful of seriously pissed off people who think they're being ignored if hundreds of new pilots are joining the sport every year? That's an acceptable price to pay, in my opinion. We don't *need* the entire existing membership to be happy if there are plenty of new members coming in to replace the ones who are upset enough to leave.
It's even better if we don't piss anybody off (difficult - but this needs to be an aim even if we accept that a few may well be). By being inclusive, we can achieve the end we all want, but without risking our existing membership and the organisation.
-- Robert Hart [EMAIL PROTECTED] +61 (0)438 385 533 Brisbane, Australia http://www.hart.wattle.id.au _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
