Stuck in Committee

This past weekend was a great time to catch up on my filing, go through the twelve piles of stuff on my dining room table (each pile is for a different thing/some piles have more than one subpile) to make sure my to do list is up to date and assess just how far behind I am or am not.  Of course, the devil is in the details.

I also got the mighty Database of Standing Committees up and running, for the next great task in the process.  Now that most other things are in process, or stalled because I am waiting for others to get back to me, (which I confess can be just a tad frustrating when the next domino is dependent on the last domino and the last domino needs to be pushed over by someone else) the next great TASK is to get the committee members all lined up.

This has turned out to be something of a three part task because we have three different kinds of committees, Standing, Special and GCW (Grand Chapter Week).  Going backwards on them, the GCW committees are in some sense the easiest because most of those people know what they are doing or can learn what to do by the person doing it this year.  The work on some of those committees is all year long, but for many of them, it is only busy for a couple of months before the session and/or at the session.  Those people get e-mails asking them to serve because those jobs are pretty well defined and do not really change much from year to year.  And in many cases, the people doing the jobs don't change much from year to year.  We have some committees that I think the same person has been doing the job for decades.  If anything, the problem there is getting some new blood involved and getting new people trained up in how to do these things so that there are options.  I have a list now and just need to sit down and get the e-mails out.  I may be able to do that next week, while we are on the road (fingers crossed).

Then there are the special committees.  These are committees that are specific to the Worthy Grand Matron and work on particular stuff that she would like done.  There is no "list" as such for these, although sometimes it seems like you look at the ones for last year and then fill the same slots.  But each year, you usually have a project chairman and that changes each year, and some other special things change too.  I also noticed that we have some slots where I cannot for the life of me figure out what this person does and until someone tells me what the job is, I can't imagine asking anyone to do it:

Me:  I have this great job, I'd like you to do, Liaison to Neverland.

Member:  What does the Liaison to Neverland do?

Me:  Darned if I know.  Maybe you just go out into space forever and when you get to the second star on the right, they will tell you.
Member:  I don't know, that could take a lot of time.  I am not sure I can take on that job.
Me:  Well, maybe it won't take any time at all because there won't be anything to do, but you will be able to stand up when we introduce all the committee members and that's cool, isn't it?
Member:  Well, okay, I will do it because getting to stand up and be recognized is pretty cool, but I'm not actually going to do anything.  Is that okay?
Me:  Got it.  Thanks for the clarification.

So that list needs some work to pare it down to jobs with actual jobs attached.

Then there are the Standing Committees.  In some ways those are easiest and in other ways, they are hardest.  They are easy in the sense that our Constitution says exactly how many people are on it and the length of their terms of service and some of their duties.  But they are hard in that sometimes the number of people doesn't make any sense and you have to fill all the slots anyway and sometimes the duties in the Constitution are really vague and so you have to figure out what you really want these people to do and write it up so that they know what is expected of them when you ask them to serve.

Another wrinkle for me is that I will be sending letters to the members who were appointed in earlier years to make sure that they still want to serve, knowing the expectations for next year.  I figure that I would rather tell them what is expected and give them a chance to bow out than to have them get stunned when the committee first meets and say, "But I didn't sign on to do THAT" and have them resign after their name has been published.  But it does mean yet more letters, renewals rather than new letters.  At least I have the names and addresses for those.

This coming weekend starts a week long (really eight days) run of OVs and events.  I will not be attending Friday's event because I cannot miss part of my work day Friday when I will be out the entire following week, but I will be at everything else for Star, Bakersfield, Porterville, Beckwourth, Marysville, Mt. Shasta, Red Bluff and Eureka.  I will not be at the York Rite dinner.