Membership Management

This page discusses a type of "management" that is closer to that of a corporate personnel department — decisions based on considerations regarding people's personality types, rather than regarding skills and tasks. The other type of management is covered here.

Moving a Man to a New Team

or, "Bringing the Power of our Division's Core Attributes
to the Truth about Membership Structure Decisions"

Prerequisites: Enfranchise Each Level and the governmental principle of Checks and Balances.

(Insert background about a 3-level hierarchical organization and the situation of deciding where to put a member when reorganizing the structure)

(Insert background on "checks and balances", giving example from constitutional law, and propose it as a solution to the situation in question)

Why is a system of checks and balances the right way to deal with this situation? Because, all three levels have power on the other two. Each of the levels exerts its power by either giving or withholding its support.

I have seen countless examples of individuals not supporting their team or their division or both, of teams failing to support individual men, of teams not supporting the division, of divisions failing to support their individual men, and even of divisions not supporting the well-being of their teams.

When things work, each does support the other two, and the commitments to giving such support are part of the culture of our standards and agreements. The man takes an oath to "step forward" for his team and for his division — and if he fails to do so he can be inspected, and in some cases even encouraged to take a leave of absence. The captain agrees to further the success of his men, and the Division as a whole — if he fails, he is inspected and brought into line or replaced. The Division leadership sees to the well-being of the teams as well as of the individual men — and in case of failure, they too are inspected or replaced.

By supporting or withholding, each level exerts power over each of the others. Using a system of checks and balances simply acknowledges that power, and respects the fact that the decision affects all three. In order to stave off the downside, a system of checks and balances ensures that the affected parties give their mutual consent up-front.

The decision of what team to move a man to, affects the man, the team, and the division as a whole. It is common to expect just one man (a core team member, such as the MM or DC) to make such a decision. Even if that man is "nearly perfect" in being honorable in motive and diligent in weighing the issues, he will make a poorer decision when acting alone than he would if soliciting the consent of the other two affected parties.

What about our core values?¹

A system of checks and balances has Strength (by involving three men, who are collectively stronger than any of them individually), Fortitude (by seeing to the long-term health of the man, the team and the division), Connection (keeping the three levels connected to each other by involving all three in the decision process), and Balance (by balancing the power between the levels, or more accurately, by following a policy that implements balanced power in order to acknowledge that in fact, power actually does exist in all three levels).

Here are some things not to do, because they are ways in which the system of checks and balances can be "sold out":

- Giving the man complete control — for example, by going along with him after he says "Team X is the only team I will consider being a part of".

- Giving the man no control — by, for example, putting him on team X after he has said "I'll consent to any team but team X". Sadly, this is common: we tell men "If you don't want X, then X must be where your barriers are — and that is where we are going to put you, so that you will need to overcome your barriers. It is for your own good!" The story of Brer Rabbit is relevant here. It is a story about a dishonorable antagonist, and an underdog who realizes this and takes advantage of it. Not honoring the man's heartfelt expression is tyrannical behavior, a dishonorable shadow of the King.

- Allowing the captain of the new team to have full control. This would happen if the issue were brought to the captains core team meeting by asking "Who wants Smith?" and giving Smith to whichever captain speaks up first.

- Giving no control to the captain. This would happen if the captain is not consulted at all until the decision is made, and any objections squelched.

- Allowing a Division leader, such as DC or MM, to have full control (sadly, this has usually been the case).

- A Division leader having no control at all — such as in the example cited above, if the DC and MM raise the issue at the core team meeting, and then they both sit by, letting the captains and/or affected man decide it without providing any input.

Pragmatics: My recommendation on how to actually implement the decision process, while addressing all six of the "sell out" issues that I just listed:

step 1. The DC or MM decides that a given man needs to be put on a new team.

step 2. The DS1 puts out a call to the captains and the affected man, to attend a core team meeting.

step 3. All needed men are present at the core team meeting.

step 4. The man to be moved steps out of the room for a while (or he has been told not to arrive until the second hour of the meeting) — during this time the DC or MM receives candid answers from the captains as to whether or not each captain would like that man on his team, and if not, challenged as to "why not?". This stage reveals much truth about the teams and/or their captains and thus falls solidly under the MM's area of interest.

step 5. The affected man is brought in and told he is going to be put on another team. He is told he can ask any questions he wants to the captains, after which he needs to give a list of teams he would agree to be on.

step 6. The man asks questions (like "What is your team like?" or "When and where do you usually meet?") and gets answers. He tells the assembled leaders what his preferences are — 1st choice, 2nd, etc. or conversely, which team he does not want to be on. During this stage he can be challenged as to "Why?" or "Why not?". This stage reveals much truth about the man and again is in the MM's area of interest — it is a valuable use of time, particularly at this critical stage in the man's division career.

step 7. The DC or MM renders a decision — either on the spot or after some deliberation — and then announces it to all affected men either directly or through the DS1.

step 8. Within a stipulated period of time, (e.g. two weeks) the affected man begins meeting with the new team, and "completes" (stops meeting) with his old team, not necessarily in that order.

Notice that this process still leaves a lot of power in the traditional place, the DC or MM — they are the only man who can initiate the process, and they make the ultimate decision. The only way their power has been limited is by reducing their choices through the involvement of the captains and the affected man.

Footnotes

1 : The person originally asking this question was in an organization that had four core values: Strength — Fortitude — Connection — Balance.

Google+

mrob27

@mrob_27

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License. Details here s.13