First let me apologize for possible thread jacking... just don't want this to get lost __________________________________
Behalf Of Niels Voll * "the executive as government". This model implies, that the executive is expected to "rule", and make decisions they feel are the correct one's. In this type of "rulership" model, the executive decides when to seek input, from whom to seek input, and what part of the input to accept and reject. ________________________________ Being a Society that is regulated and governed by the Province of Alberta and being beholden to the Bylaws that were approved by a majority of the Group means that the 'board' is an executive model of government. It is thought that Executive members of the Board are elected or 'let stand' to be representative of the people at large. To allow the entire group to decide on every decision that needs to be made to allow for the club to run would result in not only a chaotic situation but it would take enormous amounts of time to get anything done. I have existed both professionally and in a volunteer capacity on a number of boards and government committees. I feel that this board has attempted to poll the members at large on a fairly regular basis to see what could/should be done differently. The concern of every board is to ensure that decisions made reflect the wishes of the silent majority not the verbal minority. Prior to the rest of the group's awareness of the concern over presentations, the board had already had conversations regarding the lack of social time at the end and/or the concern about quality of presentations. Aaron's concerns that were spoken to Jarrod in a private meeting were shared with the rest of the board and then it was decided that we wanted to bring it forward to the rest of the group for general discussion. Everyone who attended the November meeting was able to hear what Aaron and others present had to say about the subjects bandied about. However the board did not hear a general consensus in that room at that meeting. It appeared rather to be a starting point for further discussions in other forums. When the subject was brought up on the mailing list (which has well over 100 subscribers) it appeared that it would be a good venue to continue the discussion. However as time went on it appeared that although only a handful of people had submitted their comments, discussions and planning ensued on how to possibly make one particular plan a reality. As has already been stated by my colleagues, this seemed premature. Again we need to ensure that the silent majority be involved in making decisions of this nature and the Board did not feel that they had been heard from yet. It appeared that we had not heard from even 10 percent of our members. ________________________________________ each significant decision is referred to the population via a plebiscite, referendum.or whatever you want to call it. _________________________________________ I think that Neils has brought up a good point, should we take this particular matter to a plebiscite? HOWEVER we must ask ourselves... What matter would we be bringing forward? What is the actual question being asked? Jarrod had posted an email early on Friday stating that the Executive was in the background having discussions and we would be letting the group know what the decision was. This first message was to let everyone know that the board was not ignoring the situation. Please let no one misconstrue that a discussion and decision made by the board would be unilateral or dictatorial. Our discussions for that day ranged from whether we should attempt to secure another room at DeVry - to how best to find out the wishes of the silent majority - to how to try out a bunch of different suggestions that had come forward in the meeting and on the list. NOT what we were going to decided and you (the group) were going to HAVE to live with. Our biggest concern was that things appeared to be moving forward too fast without all the players being invited or given time to participate. Although I speak only for myself, I believe that YOUR Executive wants only to act on the wishes of the majority of the group. My personal suggestion would be that some kind of brainstorming session be planned to allow for a variety of ideas to be put forward. I would also suggest that we 'try on" various suggestions at future meetings and then by the time the Annual General Meeting rolls around - the voting members of the group could, perhaps, decide what they want for the future of their group including but not limited to their Executive Board. Kari _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
