[Businessmtg] Jerry's Thoughts on Beverly's Ideas

[Jerry H.]

Biz-Pals,


First off, you'll note that I'm using my personal email address. A number of ASP officers are unable to send emails from ASP's email platform - the glitch is (hopefully) being worked on by our server provider.

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Okay, regarding distribution of administrative duties...


I may not have made it clear that the LA duties are not that bad. Neither are the Secretary duties. It's when the LA becomes responsible for both that the problems multiply significantly. The easiest fix is to have an elected Secretary.


ASP has required duties for each service position. Changing any - shuffling them around - would require group consciences to reassign the duties to the different positions.

Many of the changes I've seen suggested would not lighten the load, or do so minimally, only substituting who the LA has to interact with, but not removing the work. So this is a more complicated thing than it first appears. I've tried to include this in my comments to Beverly's email comments below:


Responding to Beverly's latest email:
[My comments in Brackets following Beverly's points]


On 2019-09-08 13:31, Sandie Parkker wrote:

> Hi friends.  I would like to know what others of the SC, particularly Anne
> K. about the webpage idea and Jerry have to say about the three suggestions
> on the floor right now.


[ We are in an open discussion period. There are no "suggestions on the floor" in the Robert's Rules sense. Just trying to be clear. Our discussions are not to be limited to these four suggestions.]
>
> Kim’s suggestion about the daily chair putting out the BM announcement.


    [There are a number of things to ponder on this:...
    [~ First off, it is the assigned job of the Secretary to post the BM announcement along with the SC's agenda for the BM 7 days before the BM begins. That needs done by the Secretary by long-standing group conscience.] 

    [~ Additionally, I believe we would have to have a BM group conscience agreement to make this change to the daily meeting formats.]

    [~ ASP topic meetings are not supposed to include ASP business.]

    [~ Removing these Secretary's duties transfers assigned elected officer duties to unelected, appointed topic chairs.] 
    [~ While this would get info into the topic meetings presumably 7 times in addition to the Secretary's announcement, I wonder about this interfering with the topic meetings. I see BM questions then being posed by members in the recovery meeting when business issues are not, repeat not, to be discussed there. I don't see how this could be avoided.]
    [~ The simplest fix is usually the best fix - and that's to get a Secretary elected to do the required job(s).]     
>
> My suggestion about the webmaster putting out the BM announcement w/agenda
> topics and creating a webpage for the agenda items.


    [~ Again, this is a job specifically assigned to the Secretary, the chair of the BM. I don't think moving duties around within the officer positions is the right way to address this. If it were to be done this way it would require a group conscience decision to reconfigure the officer duties / service structure. Because the LA is responsible for communicating agendas to the secretary, and the LA is the backup to the secretary as far as chairing the BM is concerned when the secretary is unavailable (or is vacant), having to interact with the webmaster actually increases the work of both the LA and webmaster, not reducing the work. (Current process: SC -LA chairing- creates the BM agenda > LA gives the agenda to the Secretary > Secretary posts the call to service including the agenda. I should note that this process is not currently a problem for me as LA when filling this part of the secretary's duties; it's the actual chairing of the BM that is problematic. I have my daily LA/SC duties paired with wrangling the BM which together create more work that my noggin wants to handle, AND keeps me from using ASP as the recovery resource I need it to be - I'm constantly distracted by business when having to do both jobs and I don't get to the daily topics. Being LA AND Acting as secretary makes BM months a bit of a horror show for me.)]
    [~ Creating a web page for the agenda is a good idea. I believe the SC could do this administratively without requiring a BM group conscience. The LA would send the agenda items directly to the webmaster for posting (or the webmaster simply picks it up from the BM announcement), likewise for the suggested BM topics that aren't yet on an agenda.]
>
> And Steve R. about changing the BM to quarterly.


    [~ There is a problem with this. As it stands we are able to address one, rarely two, topics in a BM; fewer when we have motions or elections. I am aware of the dissatisfaction of some members who make BM topic suggestions and expect their topic to come up on an agenda in fairly short order. Quarterly BM's would make it more difficult than it is now to get to suggestions the SC has determined not to be high priority. If ASP were to become the well-oiled machine it could be with all service positions filled perhaps quarterly meetings would work. We went years without any real need for constant BM's. For now we're in an era where there are significant priority items which fill the agenda. It could well cycle back to less need for BM's in the not so distant future.]
>
> All of these suggestions deal with distribution of work load/Service.


    [~ I refer to my statement above regarding the requirement of group consciences to change the officer's service duties/service structure and whether this distribution idea actually reduces workloads when the Secretary position is vacant.]


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Petronious Arbiter (Sp?) - an old Greek guy - once said something along these lines: 'Change for the sake of change gives only the appearance of progress while providing none.' We need to be cautious that we don't create more work while attempting to make less. 


All I've got for now.

Jerry H., ASP LA and acting Secretary (now that's a mouthful!!!)
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