Cburkhardt

Southern Region Downsizes Staff. Retirements of the Region Director and 4 of the 8 Area Directors were announced today. The remaining 4 Area Directors will now serve 2 Areas each.

What a day, and what a couple of years it is going to be as we go through this. By the way, thanks everyone for contributing to my recent postings. Hope we came up with some good initiatives and tactics to use as we go forward. Tort lawyers in the US are among the best advocates in the world. The people arrayed against the BSA are very good and their obligation is to take the BSA down and take every penny, including selling the very last basketry merit badge stool kit in the warehouse. The technique to do this is to first take a run at killing the BSA outright. This would be attempted

Why did I make these postings over the last month? I'm a long-time volunteer who spent about 30+ years in council and national roles up until a few years back. I knew that the BSA would file a Chapter 11 because it had to -- once the statutes of limitations were eliminated -- allowing a flood of lawsuits and now the bankruptcy claims. I dearly love what the BSA achieves and hope that when we come out of Ch. 11 we will be able to thrive. My insistence on positivity in the posts I focus is because I can see what we will face over the next couple of years -- a potentially-toxic stew

The Financial Restructuring Bankruptcy (Ch. 11) was just filed. We will not be discussing the filing itself on this posting. Only the positive things we will encourage during that process.

The Financial Reorganization Bankruptcy (Chapter 11) was just filed. We will not be addressing that filing on this posting. Only positive things we can attempt to implement during that process.

Eagle1993: I am not a bankruptcy expert, but I agree that councils are in a threatened circumstance as we approach reorganization. The councils have formed a bankruptcy committee to participate in the court process. This is being arranged by attorneys affiliated with councils and will councils as a group a means to participate directly in the proceeding (meaning they do not have to go through national). The plantiffs lawyers will try hard to get assets from the councils. Their service to their clients is to obtain as much money as possible and they will do their job well. I am told there

Dkurtenbach: The troop described in your posting pretty much describes what my Troop and experience is like. Of course I am a long-time volunteer and know those things and have the time to share the knowledge and spread my time. However, this really does not happen by itself. I'm not certain we require the structure we currently have to raise-up Scouters who will do the tings you suggest should be natural, but some organization that has some of the same looks and functions of our current districts is probably what can cause those things to happen. Someone, somewhere has to make those thin

dkurtenbach: Great detail and support for your ideas. Now relate them to the financially downsizing period coming up for us. Will your suggestions streamline any costs? Will they impact the priority of the districts? Ideas that make excellent program sense and which simultaneously respond to our organization’s challenges will get maximum traction.

MattR: If the fundamental metrics of a council are not going well, the conversations these days between council and area/region/national volunteers are not “affirming”. In fact, having been both an area and council President not that long ago, I can confirm that those talks can get pretty unpleasant. I came in as a council President after my predecessors, their boards and the SEs had all been “thanked for their past services”. Maybe there are smiles in public in your council’s situation, but if your council is mismanaged the national structure is being very direct with them. That function

Barry: Interesting thoughts, none of which I believe are negative talking. It is easy for these type of discussions to become overly “complaining”, which explains my requests for constructive thinking. Are you generally in favor of councils being required to offer national programs and follow national standards more strictly or would you generally encourage national-council flexibility? Perhaps youngest-age Cub Scouting would be a good example for you to offer an opinion. I ask about the council-national relationship, because it really is the key operational relationship for national.

EagleDad: What I was getting at is that the current nature of the national-council relationship is that when the national structure rolls-out a program or emphasis, the Councils are expected to go along with everything (there have been a few exceptions, but not many). The issue is whether councils should be able to pick and choose what to implement locally. If they pick something I believe they should follow the national template. Not every McDonalds serves the McRib sandwich, but if they do it will taste the same. Should every council be expected to serve the entire menu of program optio

Great observations, ParkMan. The consulting concept is interesting. In the 1970-1980's there were in-house professional Scouter consultants stationed in the regions called "national field representatives" for the major programs. The national field representative for Exploring would travel the region consulting and assisting the implementation of that program -- but this was really just implementing the standard template. These were discontinued long ago.

Malraux: Do you think the national structure should have the authority to mandate that every aspect of Cub Scouts be implemented in every Council? For example, should councils have the option to choose whether it will offer program to the youngest age-tier?

Parkman: I did not specifically discuss that the commissioner staff goes up every level to national. Much of the servicing aspects of what you raise is in their area of responsibility. Generally, the national structure commissioner organization is thought to have greatly upgraded itself since a national commissioner service staff was established about 10 years ago.

ParkMan: The Journey to Excellence program tracks and reports some (but not all) of the metrics you are suggesting. And, the identical JTE metrics are tabulated and used to evaluate at every level of Scouting. Every volunteer and professional has the identical dashboard configuration that aggregates the same data at whatever locale and level is applicable. Unit size is probably tracked but is not included in the current reports. Unit quality is pretty subjective, and is probably reflected only in the JTE reporting on things like advancement, retention, number of commissioner contacts with

I do not have organization charts or similar documents, and do not encourage circulation of official BSA documents as part of this posting.

ParkMan: This is, absolutely, how it works at the current time based on personal experience. I've been an observer and participant in the national structure since 1976, when I was elected a regional youth officer in the previous East Central Region. Since then I've been variously involved in the national program development, membership, fund raising, event, base management and council merger functions. There are many very good people involved in the professionally and volunteer ranks of the national structure. I encourage anyone considering a post to this entry to consider biting off

DuctTape: I encourage you and everyone else to think "big-picture" on this positing. Rather than discussing the content of individual training programs, I urge you to address the centrality of training generally, the current role the national organization plays in it and how that role might evolve in a positive way over the next couple of years. Your mentioning of the on-line versus live-presentation is a good example of a significant issue.

With a national Financial Restructuring Ch. 11 Bankruptcy filing likely in our future, this posting will focus on program changes that would be good for the national BSA organization. This includes national events, high adventure bases, program committees, specialized committees (like OA, Venturing, Sea Scouts), advancement, awards, uniforms, supply division and anything that really touches on what a youth member would experience. If you want to engage in discussion of structural issues, please engage in the companion National Structural Changes posting, which is now active. We will not dis

With a national Financial Restructuring Ch. 11 Bankruptcy filing likely in our future, this posting will focus on structural changes that might be good for the national BSA organization. This posting will focus on corporate, governance, professional staffing, volunteer involvement (area, region and national committees and appointees), council oversight, public relations, insurance, financing and fundraising functions. If you want to discuss a program issue, please engage in the companion National Program Changes posting, which is now active. I ask that Supply Division and High Adventure Bas

Good Council Executive Boards result from finding good people and recruiting them, not changing election or voting systems. Financial restructuring will provide an opportunity to recast ineffective boards. Start now to recruit and promote outstanding candidates. We have a representative republican for of government whereby we select people to represent us and repose in them the ability to make decisions and govern. It is an imperfect system but seems to work for our society. Having regular society-wide votes on policy matters would have an occasional advantage -- but for the most part

Current District Guidelines are Good. I don't see many suggestions for District structural reforms but do see an emphasis on recruiting District volunteers and program/service implementation. That is good, because I believe simply following our current District operations guidelines is a great way to go. My belief is that District positions are hard to fill and retain because work at the District level is … work … hard work. People who accept a District responsibility and do not perform are immediately apparent to District colleagues. District expectations are clear, the responsibilities

There is a separate District posting -- but it just has been silent as crickets. I have a hard time believing that there aren't a lot of great ideas about how to improve the districts that can be instituted during the time of change.

“All Hat and No Cattle”. There must be a large contingent of commenters on this blog that enjoy reading and talking about the “big council stuff” but not District Scouting closer at the more meaningful, granular level. Over 3,700 views and 140 great replies in 5 days on how to improve things at the Council level during the bankruptcy. But, not a single posting on how to upgrade things at the District level. As a Scoutmaster of a new 30-Scout Troop that receives solid support from our District, I wonder why there is such a difference. Maybe it has been too long since you helped form a unit

“All Hat and No Cattle”. There must be a large contingent of commenters on this blog that enjoy reading and talking about the “big council stuff” but not District Scouting closer at the more meaningful, granular level. Over 3,700 views and 140 great replies in 5 days on how to improve things at the Council level during the bankruptcy. But, not a single posting on how to upgrade things at the District level. As a Scoutmaster of a new 30-Scout Troop that receives solid support from our District, I wonder why there is such a difference. Maybe it has been too long since you helped form a unit