Thursday night was the first of 3 officer trainings in Austin. It was well attended and turned out pretty well (pending the evaluation results).
In reviewing how it went, there’d been a last minute panic moment with a concern that maybe we hadn’t promoted the event well enough. That was based on the fact that a couple people who were club officers hadn’t heard about the training through any of the lines of communication they would have expected. Someone suggested sending out an email reminder. We did that. Or rather, we asked our LGET to do that.
Taking another look at that process, we realized that I ought to reemphasize how important all our district supporting communication is. The way this particular communication was supposed to have worked was that the Austin division governors communicated with our area governors (AGs). Then the AGs communicated with their club presidents who then communicated with the club presidents.
As much as we’d like to think people read mass emails from the top, the truth is that we get much better results when it’s from the person one step up. As a club president, I pay extra attention to any email that comes from my AG or one of my club officers. Something generic sent out to the entire district is a much lower priority. For example, I’d heard about the $10 CL promotion as a district officer but hadn’t remembered to mention it to my club. Our AG visited and was able to remind me and even make the announcement herself.
If we have individual club officers who aren’t hearing about things like training, they need to go back up the chain to figure out where the message got lost. It’s vitally important for each person to make sure their folks stay informed. Otherwise they don’t know about training or whatever else and they miss out. When we go back and look at the DCP reports after the fact, it’s too late.
The takeaway here is that if you’re part of this system of communication, make sure your people are covered. If you know they’re busy and only halfway reading emails, make sure you get confirmation or send multiple reminders. If you’re an AG, make sure your club Presidents know that their club officers may not know about things if they don’t tell them. That’s an important part of their role.
