What actions will increase member trust in the wisdom and objectivity of our decision-making process?
What actions will result in members feeling like they are more clued-in to the process of how decisions are made?
What is the best way to correct widely spread incorrect/slanted "information" about the lawsuit, AML's finances, the legality of RVC replacements, hearings, etc?
What can I do to promote a collegial atmosphere that is welcoming to unique perspectives or decrease barriers to effective work and decision systems and increase the numbers of members willing to serve in elected and appointed positions, improve leader effectiveness and confidence, or attract younger members to leadership roles?
2 comments:
How do you "correct widely spread incorrect/slanted 'information'" of the type you cite? Hopefully part of that process will include the AMC acknowledging that much of that incorrect/slanted information originated from the AMC itself. But to go to the specifics...
"Correct" info about hearings: After the fact of any hearing, it's almost impossible to do so unless there was an independent, neutral observer taking down thorough notes who then publishes them. Absent that, the only other way is to change the relevant ASIE and allow the audio recording and/or verbatim transcript of the proceedings be available upon request. (Granted, both of these only address the issue of the in-person hearing, but don't address an issues that may have existed leading up to it.)
"Correct" legality of RVC replacements: Acknowledge that those who were quoting to the relevant NYS NFP law were referencing the right law (or, point out how it actually wasn't, and what the relevant law is) and join that with Interpretive Counsel's published statement -- that the "special election" option was completely within the law, and that the "LocSec" option could not be given that same "endorsement." (can't quite come up with a more appropriate word there)
"Correct" info on AML's finances and about the lawsuit: A large part of that would have been, in advance, to actually BUDGET (on paper, not just intellectually know) for the expenses related to the lawsuit, so that the membership could see what was possibly coming down the pike; and once the expenses were incurred, not hide them under "Special Project" which was a line item not present in the budget.
As long as the actions of the AMC (or representatives thereof) give the impression that that body, as a whole, will continue to obfuscate information and some/many members of the AMC will belittle those raising objections, blanketly calling them whiners, and/or state that any who disagree with AMC decisions MUST themselves be wrong and ill-informed, there will be decreasing trust from the membership in the AMC.
I don't agree that your examples are illustrative of falsehoods the AMC needs to correct, but rather examples of things that you wish were decided differently or topics you wish you had even more information or clarification on.
I don't off-hand have any issues with your suggestion about hearings. I suppose it's a question of which is better for Mensa as a whole: dealing with our toxic members behind closed doors or airing it in public? I see pluses and minuses for both approaches.
Regarding RVC replacements, we tried to get it fixed in a way that would satisfy both the law and Mensa's expediency needs. We failed. We'll try again.
The budget comprises income and expenses. The lawsuit was anticipated to be funded from both the normal budget and savings. Use of savings is not part of the budget. Should it be? Um, perhaps. I'm not an accountant, so I don't know what best practices have to say about that. Once the savings were spent, we had to list it under expenses, despite where the money originated from.
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