BOf Committee and Group members gagged?

[awk]

But the motion was put forward with, as the proposer, the chairman of the group who was responsible for a significant part of the implementation.

No it wasn't, although Barry did second the proposal.

PKJ: I for one am not replacing time I spend on other (more important) orienteering matters when I'm here - I just carve out time from elsewhere!

I agree though, that there have been some pretty OTT comments, particularly in terms of resignations. And it is interesting that most people who voted for a 4-tier scheme, really didn't know what they were voting for, as has become increasingly obvious t he more i talk to people post-AGM.

I just don't see how this will work. They are trying to impose, to use Clive's phrase, cabinet style responsibility on the system, but below the Board we are not a corporate body in practice, and don't have loyalties or responsibilities to the Board. Indeed, even at Board level, the directors have a far greather responsibility to those who elected them.

Frankly, I don't fee any need to go anonymous, and will continue expressing my views as i see it.

[Mrs H]

[
PKJ: I for one am not replacing time I spend on other (more important) orienteering matters when I'm here - I just carve out time from elsewhere!
.

It's okay Andy - Mr Bossy Boots said "should" not "shall" I carve out time from housework

[seabird]

Been busy and have come to this thread a bit late.

Absolutely agree that all BOF members, whatever their role in the sport, should be able to express their views openly, and canvas for them openly.

But I was intrigued by the "common knowledge" revelation that the chair of the group implementing the 3 level plan was opposed to it.

No wonder the implementation was such a balls up.

Surely if you find yourself implementing a policy with which you disagree you should resign, from that role.

I can only hope that whoever is implementing the 4 level proposal (whatever it mey really mean) are all whole-heartedly behind it. I can't bear the thought of trying to, as a Club Fixtures Secretary, wade through the impact of another cock up - or expending time here or elsewhere expounding on how to make it work.

I just want to get on with running, officiating at events and mapping - the core elements of the sport.

[Scott]

Given that the original letter has been so widely commented on, I think it's only reasonable that everyone should get to read the follow-up that was emailed around this morning.

To all Chairs and members of Groups and Committees

8 June 2010

Committee/Group Governance

It has become evident from emails and comments that we have received, that the previous letter sent to Committees and Groups regarding the governance structure was open to misinterpretation. It was never our intention to cause offence and if we have done so, we apologise. Perhaps explaining the background more fully will reassure members that the letter was not intended to stifle legitimate debate. Indeed, open debate is to be encouraged.

Firstly, Board members greatly value the work of the volunteers who make up our Committees and Groups and wish to encourage full and open discussion prior to decisions being made and in the reviewing of these decisions at appropriate times.

The Board was however disappointed that two serving members of Rules Group, one the Chairman, proposed and seconded Proposal 10 at the 2010 AGM and which opposed agreed Board policy, and that they actively canvassed support for that Proposal. As individual members they are fully entitled to do this, but there is no doubt that the positions that they held within British Orienteering's Committee/Group structure influenced the views of some of the membership.

As the letter set out, the correct procedure for a Group member to challenge agreed policy or a decision taken is to raise concerns through their Group Chair and if not satisfied, then to raise the matter formally through the Governance structure to the Board. Where a member is representing the views of an Association, the Chair of the Association may also wish to raise the issue in this way. In the above case, the Chair of Rules Group could argue that he had raised concerns with the 3 tier structure at Events Committee. However if he was not satisfied with the response, he could and should have approached the Board direct, which he did not. If he was still not satisfied with the response, he could still have seconded Proposal 10 but after resigning his position as Chairman of Rules Group.

The Board therefore felt that it was timely to remind Committee & Group members of their responsibilities within the Governance Structure. Full and frank discussions are to be expected within meetings and it is expected that committee and group members will seek discussion/consultation with their clubs/associations prior to decisions being reached, however once a decision is reached, all members must accept the corporate responsibility of that decision. Committees and Groups are frequently charged with implementation of agreed Board strategy and it would cause untold problems if decisions, once taken, were not implemented whilst further discussions took place. Members of committees and groups must be understanding of decisions taken by higher governance bodies and work towards implementation. Failure to follow these principles leads to confusion and mixed messages being given to the membership as a whole. This certainly was the case during the process of implementation of the 3-tier structure.

We hope this clarifies the situation.

Signed by:


Neil Cameron Lyn West

Chairman, British Orienteering 2009-2010 Chairman, British O

[Big Jon]

Sounds like sour grapes to me - we lost the argument about 3 or 4 tier event structure and are now taking out our annoyance on a few individuals who were very successful in leading the membership to agree to a change of event structure. My comment to Lyn and Neil is "accept that the membership didn't like the 3 tier structure and get on with implementing a 4 tier structure that reflects the wishes of the membership".

[RJ]

We got to where we were because the original 3 tier proposal was not properly discussed in the wider membership. It was imposed.... and we did not like it. The lesson to be learnt is... NOT to point fingers at Group/Committee members who should have been better behaved (ie Gagged!!).... BUT to implement a sensible structure for debate in the wider membership. BOF - Groups - Associations - Clubs system for dialogue is TOO cumbersome and slow. The 4 tier structure (return to, I might add!) was discussed in detail on here.... lesson learnt!!!!

[graeme]

We got to where we were because the original 3 tier proposal was not properly discussed in the wider membership. The 4 tier structure was discussed in detail on here.... lesson learnt!!!!

Maybe you missed the 15 pages of discussion here, starting 18 months before implementation, based around a full draft set of guidelines

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8335&p=91078&hilit=+event+structure+review#p91078

or maybe you're just making stuff up to support your point of view? Again.

[frog]

I find Scott's follow up letter from BOF unnecessarily dictatorial. If our club committee took a decision and someone on the committee didn't like it but were outvoted by the rest of the committee then I would think it fair enough if they then went to the wider club membership at the AGM and tried to get the decision changed. If the rest of the committee couldn't persuade the AGM and club members that our decision was best and the other guy got more votes then fine, the committee is there to serve the interests of the club after all.
If the disgruntled committee member went to the local press and moaned about us I wouldn't be happy about that, but getting your own way through democracy is fine.
I do think local clubs weren't involved enough with the BOF change in structure, having said that I was happy enough with 3 tiers once I'd got the hang of it.

[Mr Chips]

I still suspect that many people who voted for the 4-tier structure were voting for the re-introduction of district events and not for the actual motion - the re-introduction of national events.

I've been puzzling over this for a while. I was fairly clear in my mind that (a) the old National Event - the layer between Championship and Badge events - had gone (regretted by few) under any proposed scheme and that (b) the dichotomy between the 4-level and 3-level schemes was how to classify events at the levels below Championship.
I note that Neil's comment was echoed by a few others and I wonder if someone could expand on it.
(NB - I comment as one who voted against the '4-levels' motion at the AGM purely on the grounds that I felt that orienteering needed a break from this issue!)

[graeme]

What they're saying is that if you can't agree with the committee policy, you should resign rather than bugger up the implementation of it. They also say that once you have resigned, persuading the membership the committee got the policy wrong is fair game.

Though like BigJon I detect a whiff of vinegar. However "once a decision is reached, all members must accept the corporate responsibility of that decision." so presumably they are now committed to the 4-level structure.

[RJ]

We got to where we were because the original 3 tier proposal was not properly discussed in the wider membership. The 4 tier structure was discussed in detail on here.... lesson learnt!!!!

Maybe you missed the 15 pages of discussion here, starting 18 months before implementation, based around a full draft set of guidelines.......

I didn't say that there wasn't a discussion! I said we need a system in place that allows for the opinion of the membership to be sounded and for amendments to be made to any proposal that take account of those concerns highlighted.

From that earlier discussion I noted.....

.... Just be clear graeme that you have a cast iron case for change........

You obviously didn't!! If you had listened to other people you might have proposed something different.

[Neil M40]

The membership not wanting change is not the same thing as there not being a case for it.

[graeme]

Yes, that's a rather crucial point Neil. Demographics tell us that we stopped increasing our numbers at the last restructure (15 or so years ago), since when we've retained who we had, and recruited almost no adults. (Yes, I did write and tell them that's what would happen). Hence the lack of M21,35, now 40 etc. We have to take account of potential members as well as existing ones.

Regarding the Working Party I was on.
1/ What we proposed was never implemented. Although I wrote and published all the draft guidelines on which the secondary consultation was based, after our final report, the group implementing the new structure never once spoke to me about it. You can see from previous threads what I thought of the structure implemented.

2/ My draft L1/L2 and L2/L3 borders map very closely to what was proposed for L1/2 and L3/4 at the AGM. Most of us on the group (me included) proposed four-levels. But we spoke to enough people to know there's no agreement on where an additional border should be. The four-level system will collapse under this ambiguity, probably after absorbing vast amounts of time and creating huge amounts of pointless argument.

[SeanC]

It makes entertaining reading, but I'm not sure if you can assign the cause of demographic change/membership decline entirely to the last restructuring. Correlation, causation blah blah - though I was not orienteering at the time of this restructuring so can't speculate on its effect.

A pity people are now distracted by more restructuring when it could be spent identifying a strategy to grow our numbers throughout the country... not just in small pockets of success.

[SJC]

The letter above may have more to do with job preservation than explaining anything to the membership.

It's contents are almost identical to at least one e-mail sent in response to a question asking for some background to the board's governance letter. However in justifying the original letter the e-mail contained the statement: "In this instance, the Chair of Rules Group could have formally raised concerns with the 3 tier structure at Event Committee, which he did not." which, as the then chairman of events committee, Lyn West would have known not to be true.

The watered down statement in the latest letter looks to be an attempt to get away with this, whilst still laying the blame for the complete failure of the three tier structure on two individuals rather than accept that the whole sorry state of affairs was brought about by the board imposing something on the membership for which it had no popular mandate, and then the complete failure of events committee to implement it properly.