Section leadership,
The time is here: 2016 marks our movement into the first full year of the new century, and you all have the opportunity to be an integral part. That opportunity starts with the 2015 National Planning Meeting, where we will begin to undertake exciting redesigns of our time-tested conventions:
- The 2016 program of emphasis—NEXT: A New Century—will take shape using some of the most innovative techniques and fresh ways of thinking that we, as an Order, have ever employed. The event itself is intended to model new methods for future programs of emphasis, as well as inspire lodges to share and implement new ideas and best practices.
- The Developing Youth Leaders Seminar, a new training program that seeks to bring to the Order’s adult leadership those skills that ensure success in our youth, will be beta tested among section and region adult leadership.
- And lastly, the methods by which we achieve the central purpose of a section—to support the lodges—will be examined.
In fact, the third of these bullet points is well underway. Those of you who attended your region’s Section Officers’ Seminar this year took part in a discussion that posed a very important question: what will the second century section look like? During this discussion, we saw that, in the past, depending on the Lodge Assistance Program (LAP) and the minimum standards in the Field Operations Guide as our chief means of supporting our lodges didn’t go all the way. We realized that, currently, the best identifier of lodge problem areas lie in the extensive Journey to Excellence (JTE) data at our disposal. We understood that, moving forward, the national, regional and sectional levels will have to work together to achieve our most important objectives.
With all of this in mind, together we devised a new model of lodge support, employed annually, which involves three parts:
- The unit, chapter, lodge support subcommittee of the National Order of the Arrow Committee would examine JTE data year-by-year, and identify two or three “focus areas”—that is, key areas in which Order of the Arrow lodges, in aggregate, are struggling—and direct resources towards reversing these downward trends.
- These resources would be devised by the training subcommittee, who would oversee the writing of training curriculum aimed at providing lodges with the tools they need to mitigate their most pressing JTE concerns. Conversation with high-performing lodges would be an essential piece of this step.
- From there, the region and section operations subcommittee would oversee the introduction of this curriculum at the four region SOSs, where you, the section leadership, will be empowered to deliver these trainings to your lodge leadership. During this introduction of the training content, time and focus would be directed not only to teaching you the content itself, but also on discussing how you can best deliver this content to your lodges. By exposing section leadership to new skills in consultation and relationship management, this piece of the program would ensure that your lodge leadership not only receives the tools that you provide, but also put them into practice with your help.
The ultimate goal of this new lodge support model is to reverse those trends most detrimental to the continued realization of our mission and purpose on the lodge level, with our lodge leaders at the helm of the effort.
This is certainly a huge undertaking—one that will not be possible without your ideas and criticisms added into the mix. For this reason, the program described above, which largely took shape as the four discussions at the region SOSs progressed, will once again be subjected to your examination. Time at the 2015 National Planning Meeting will be spent among section advisers to further articulate this program, according to your thoughts. We ask that section advisers come prepared to share their constructive criticism of these plans in a special session that will take place in the afternoon of December 28th.
In just a few weeks, each of us will begin answering the Order’s biggest questions. Each of us will contribute our strokes to the ever-unfolding picture of the Order’s future. Each of us will help the Order succeed. Between now and then, enjoy your holiday, and get ready! We can’t wait to begin.
With eyes down the trail,
The 2015 National Officers