My writing style goes like this: * Set up the context for the disquisition * Describe the thing I'm actually trying to talk about * Outline the next step(s) * Wrap it up with something positive So that's what we're going to do here. Just as a heads-up, there are like half a dozen things that I want to talk about, and that's just *today*, but I'm gonna limit it to one per email and I'm going to try to limit these emails to one a day. Ideally, it would be less frequent, since if I actually liked writing essays I would not have become a programmer and musician. Today's letter is about band member engagement. In the Before Times, there were only a few people in the band and everyone knew what needed to happen and the jobs got apportioned out somehow. This was before I was ever in the band, so I don't know how that process went, but I assume it was something like, "Hey, I see this is a thing that needs to get done and I am a grown up so I am going to do it." This is not, as anyone who works in the context of a large organization can tell you, a scalable or sustainable way to operate. However, it's important to understand how we got to where we are so we can tell if a process is on purpose for a good reason, or if it's just an accident of history (what historians might call 'contingency'). Anyhow, the way it is now, all the tasks that need to get performed in order for the band to operate are either being done by a relatively small handful of people or are not being done at all. In the recent past (say, since 2018) we've been asking for volunteers to step up and take on a few jobs, and had mixed results. This is probably due to a combination of factors, such as: the jobs seem really daunting and nobody's getting paid for this, the jobs are not well-defined, the jobs seem to involve creating a process rather than simply performing an existing workflow. The board met on August 14th and one of the things we talked about was this problem. We decided that the thing to do is to break down the jobs into tasks and then distribute these tasks out to the entire membership. Everyone should have something they're supposed to do, and the thing should not be overwhelming or highly taxing. This will give everyone a real ownership stake in the organization, and it should help to ensure that things actually get done. We are all busy, and we all have lives outside the band, so let's share the work out and that way nobody has to do everything. I hope that another effect of this will be to increase everyone's visibility into what we're doing and why. And let's face it, we're all smart humans -- having everyone engaged in the work means we're more likely to come up with improvements. We are going to have our annual band meeting on October 16th, at Edith Morley Park, and we'll be talking about this then. In the time before then, however, I'd love it if we could actually put together a list of all the things that have to happen for the band to operate. The board has started a spreadsheet to list all these, but obviously those tasks that make it onto the list will be whatever's at the top of our minds. We also need to call out the things that aren't getting done -- which are probably being overlooked because they're not top of mind, and therefore won't even make it onto our list. So please send me items you can think of, so that everything gets captured! Okay, that's me on individual member engagement. There's another important aspect to that, but that's another email. In the meantime, keep on playing your instrument and think about what needs to be done. Hey, did you know that we store the meeting minutes for our board meetings on Box? Sure enough! Silicon Valley Pipe Band/Band Documents/Meeting Minutes - Stephen