BOF CEO

[bewildered]

It has crossed my mind.

[bewildered]

But I have missed this year's deadline - maybe next year.

[Red Adder]

Mike was appointed on the basis of his strong past experience as a sport administrator - largely to front up to bodies like Sport England (or whatever they are called this week), not because he was an orienteer. We employ him for these specialist skills whilst the chairperson who MUST IMHO be an active orienteer is the person I would expect to see at events etc.

Other BOF roles require specialist skills that again don't require the person to be an orienteer though in general I think the closer your role is to the athletic side of running the sport the more important it is to either be an existing participant or at least very willing to become involved in the sport.

I suspect that many in the sport are worried though that the balance of orienteer / non-orienteer in BOF HQ has slipped to far towards the latter, hence the mumbles, rumbles & grumbles.

[Oldman]

I fear bewildered has little understanding of how a modern National Governing Body operates. Of course the CEO must understand what happens when the sport runs its events, but like SeanC, I'd be concerned if the CEO spent much time at O events, whether in his own time (which is surely a matter for him alone?) or when acting as CEO.

If you have criticisms, voice them directly with the Chair or one of the Directors, and don't use indirect (and IMHO rather daft) measures of a CEO's performance.

[SeanC]

Just to clarify, I wouldn't be concerned if Mike Hamilton turned into an orienteering obsessive and started spending all is spare time at orienteering events, so long as he was doing a good job. Just a light hearted comment that if I spent my week doing his job I doubt whether I'd want to be doing orienteering at the weekend.*

Plus and minus points to having an orienteer as a CEO I suspect. So long as he/she is doing a good job it shouldn't matter.

*perhaps in disguise

[bewildered]

What measures of a CEO's performance would you use?

Is it "daft" for a CEO to have an understanding of the "business" he is supposed to run? Or how the staff (including volunteers) are doing their jobs, whether they are happy and productive, communicating well with others etc?

Maybe we should look at the SE funded schemes from over the past few years? How many new participants have come into our sport because of them? RunChallenge, although in my view a pretty good idea, has been a complete flop. XPlorer has been a bit better. What about Community Nights? Did they bring vast new swathes of members? Why isn't he concerned about increasing membership? SE is looking at participation, but he is CEO of a membership organisation and at least some funding comes from the members.

Should he have a first hand understanding of why JROS are putting on more camps and why the Performance Department seems to dislike these so much? He could just listen to the BO Staff, but they aren't the only "workers" in the "business".

What about other coaching issues? In my view, the lack of progress around coaching over the last year has been down to the CEO (although the Board didn't really seem to mind when nothing was progressed).

Communication between BO and us - the members - is very poor, in my and many others opinions. Who takes responsibility for that?

I have met Mike a number of times and found him quite astute at some of the things he has had to say. But I feel he has let the sport down over the last 2 or 3 years, as have the board.

I have contacted the Board about this, but got virtually no response.

[SeanC]

I can't comment on the JROS/coaching issues you describe. Reading between the lines it seems like that is your main beef?

I have slightly more knowledge of the development issues, though there's plenty of information in old Focuses and on club websites.

For our own aims, better development programmes could have been constructed. But SportEngland seems to be the only source of serious cash available. They have their own priorities that don't necessarily correlate with ours, eg getting more couch potatoes and non sporty types into sport. We just want more people so would probably target the easier to reach groups. SportEngland's return on investment window is too short in my opinion. Something like RunChallenge needs to be developed slowly over a few years until the formula is right, funding demands results too quickly for us. From our viewpoint RunChallenge would have been better with less events, more publicity, and run in partnership with clubs, possibly as part of mainstream orienteering events. That's something that's obvious now, but less so when it was just a piece of paper.

eXplorer has been a success according to the reports.

Club nights. On balance the outcomes are positive. A minority of clubs have carried on with them and are introducing a few new members, but offering weekly coaching and opportunities to meet up and socialise for experienced members. The latter might be an unintended outcome, but positive none the less. Even for those clubs that have dropped the club nights, it has got clubs to think about the importance of offering something local and weekly which many did not. There are other models that can be adopted which might work better for some clubs - weekly runs, mid week night leagues like the Kent Night Cup etc.

Mike and the board should be praised for being brave and taking on these initiatives. Some successes and some failures. Isn't that true for everything in life?

A better outcome might have been our own long term funded project, funded by us, and with our aims specifically in mind. If the board had asked us for the serious money needed to even moderately fund a development program would we have accepted it? I suspect 50-100k per year is the minimum needed. Only £5-£10 each per orienteer but more for the regulars. Even now we could do that.

The main problem with BOF and development IMHO is our unrealistic expectations. If there's a BOF development program the danger is that some clubs expect that to sort out all their development issues, where in reality much of the change is needed in (some) clubs and regions, which can be done for free but can be difficult to do as we all have different views.

[andypat]

Surely the key measurement of success for the CEO is agasint the markers set down in the job description? A quick search on BOF website is fruitless. There does seem to be a general feeling that BOF has become remote from its members - all the more so in Scotland I suppose. But presumably the board judge the CEO on his performance in the defined role he has? Maybe the role needs redefining? Anyone seen/got a copy of the job description?

[Oldman]

I have contacted the Board about this, but got virtually no response.

What does "virtually no response" mean?
Did you speak with one of them or seek a meeting at an event with one of them? Or did you e-mail one or more of them? If e-mail, why not publish here what you said and the reply you got?

My (very) limited understanding of JROS is that BOF wanted them to be part of a consistent and national talent development programme, but the JROSs were unwilling to accept that. I think that means JROS doing their "own thing" so BOF has no control over or responsibility for them. I'm sure the Nopesport readership will put me right if what I've said is incorrect.

[bewildered]

Virtually no response means what it says - I tried to contact every member of the Board and got a single reply, and not from the Chair.

[Spookster]

Virtually no response means what it says - I tried to contact every member of the Board and got a single reply, and not from the Chair.

You've raised a number of issues in the thread, but I think the issue you refer to here is about the final report of the CNWG, on which you (assuming you are who I think you are) sent an email to me on 6 Jan, and an email to the whole board on 16 Jan. I replied on 20 Jan., having been on holiday at the time you sent me the original email (which I explained to you).

It would be better to talk though. BOF has previously had a tent at major events, manned by directors and staff, in order to help facilitate discussion between members and the board. Unfortunately, we didn't get many customers. Presumably people would rather focus on their run, than come and discuss issues with the board. Fair enough.

So, what positive steps are required in order to achieve better communication between the membership, the Board, and it's committees?

[PhilJ]

BO buy Nopesport with MH as the new Pyrat, they will have access to thousands of people passionate about the sport as current members of nope. I do not think it is such a daft idea as people think, why shouldn't BO buy Nope as long as they accept it is an open forum? What better way for BO to interact with its members?
Currently there is a BO Facebook page and twitter page. The Facebook page only every posts - closing date for xyz approaching, and the twitter page are just re- tweets from other o'ers who have posted stuff, nothing original.
So I think BO have attempted to dip their toe into social media but presumably found it is to time consuming, and all it has done is tick the "we are down with kids on twitter" box for sport England or similar.
The focus magazine gets read when it arrives, but a lot of what is in it has already happened so none of it is current, and within 1 week it is in the recycling.
Why does BO create the magazine, another tick box exercise?

[bewildered]

It would be better to talk though.

I sent you my phone number in one of my emails.

[SeanC]

BO buy Nopesport with MH as the new Pyrat, they will have access to thousands of people passionate about the sport as current members of nope. I do not think it is such a daft idea as people think

Quite a few companies in the IT industry have forums and employ people to answer queries and respond to issues.

However a BOF Nopesport would surely have to be a very different place. I think it could be good if BOF opened its own forum just for BOF questions and answers, and discussions about BOF issues. The immediacy of the communication, as PhilJ says, is what is powerful. It could also help BOF to test public opinion on changes before making detailed proposals. It would help some of us understand the constraints that BOF are under, and visa versa. It would help generate ideas - I know you can always send an email, but a forum can turn a half baked idea that would be ignored in an email into an excellent one.

Nopesport should stay independent for all kinds of other discussions that a governing body might not want to be associated with. Ie the ones that are more fun.

But a BOF forum has many challenges. Who speaks on behalf of BOF? I bet we're not going to pay for someone (who will need to be quite skilled). 3 (?) of our directors post on here and can be very enlightening, but many people elected as directors won't want to do it. Finally BOF is also committees of volunteers, and these people may think it's hard enough getting agreement on changes with just the people on committees without involving dozens more via forums.

But overall, worth a try. More discussions, more ideas, more people involved, must be positive.

[awk]

The main problem with BOF and development IMHO is our unrealistic expectations. If there's a BOF development program the danger is that some clubs expect that to sort out all their development issues, where in reality much of the change is needed in (some) clubs and regions, which can be done for free but can be difficult to do as we all have different views.

I don't think anybody has 'unrealistic expectations'. Indeed, I've yet to come across anybody who has any expectations whatsoever. However, there has been a problem in the past that, when discussing development programmes, the offer from BO has been the standard package, or nothing at all, whilst development is very much horses for courses, depending on the different clubs' contexts. So, some clubs have picked up on BO offerings, to find that, inevitably, they have been merely a distraction from doing something that would have been more useful, but that's what the resourcing was made available for.

What i would find interesting, is quite what the success rate of the various projects is. I'm not talking about the anecdotal puffs included in Focus, I'm talking specific measures of membership, volunteer and participation recruitment, Now that would make Focus interesting.

As for the JROS issue and the 'consistent and national talent programme' raised by Oldman, I've just been on the BO website to look this up, to find that the relevant page says that "From 2010 the World Class Programme is adopting" a new approach, which includes Club Talent Groups and Regional O-21 and U-21 Talent Groups. Aside from the fact that it's now 2014, I have to admit I've not heard of any of these groups functioning. Do they exist? I do know of the work of JROS and the regional squads, which seem to be doing some excellent, indeed both consistent and national, work in ensuring that a broad range of potential talent gets the training/coaching it needs without any support from British Orienteering. However, I'm sure I've missed something, and would appreciate direction!