Journey to Excellence Webinars for Commissioners

[NeilLup]

There are now several webinars (about 1 hour or less) scheduled for Commissioners who will have the responsibility of implementing and guiding much of the Journey to excellence program.

 

The link to sign up for the Journey to Excellence Commissioner Webinars is:

 

http://journey-to-excellence.kintera.org/commissioners

 

Scheduled Webinars:

 

Thursday 12/2 1pm Central All comrs.

 

Wednesday 12/8 2pm Central All comrs.

 

Wednesday 12/8 7pm Central All comrs.

 

Friday 12/10 9am Central All comrs.

 

Friday 12/10 2pm Central All comrs.

 

Saturday 12/11 1pm Central All comrs.

 

Tuesday 12/14 10am Central All comrs.

 

I would hope that all Commissioners might consider participating in one of these webinars.

 

[John-in-KC]

Neill,

 

What idiot put five of the seven sessions during hours of business? Many of us have day jobs.

 

The easy way to do this is build several segments and load them to youtube, or downloadable quicktimes.

 

Oh, well. Forrest Gump seems to be alive and well everywhere.

[NeilLup]

Hello John,

 

That idiot would be me

 

We held the first round of webinars:

 

1) during the work day

2) in the evening of the work week

3) on the weekend.

 

The webinars during the work day had far and away the best attendance. Evenings during the work were second and weekends were very sparse. You will forgive this idiot for noting the people voting with their feet and scheduling the second round in line with attendance on the first round.

 

All the webinars except Commissioners were recorded and are available on the National website:

 

www.scouting.org >> volunteers >> Journey to Excellence

 

The plan is to record the Commissioners webinar and put that up too.

 

Idiotically yours,

 

Neil

[UCEagle72]

Neil --

 

Having already been through the earlier District & Council webinars, is there any insight to be gained from sitting through the Commish brand?

 

I do process improvement for a living, so I understand leading indicators and KPI (in fact, I have helped to dispel quite a few misunderstandings about the program here locally) - I just want to get a feel for the content to see if there is anything "new" in it for me.

 

Thanks!

[NeilLup]

Hello UCEagle,

 

If you've participated in one of the other webinars, it probably isn't worth it to participate in the Commissioner webinar unless you would be presenting that webinar to other Commissioners. This one is specifically tailored to Commissioners but probably isn't so different that you'l learn that much particularly if you're familiar with KPI and a Balanced Scorecard.

 

Neil

[BrotherhoodWWW]

Neil, a bit of feedback in case you missed it the first time around. I'm with John in expressing displeasure at the choice of times. Living within the Pacific Time Zone and working a job from 7am to 5 pm m-f your times simply did not work for me. 8PM Central would have been much better.

[Oak Tree]

I think I'm going to have to side with Neil on this one. Any good customer-serving business will try to provide services when they are most valuable. Since Neil has observed when people mostly attend meetings, it seems entirely reasonable to schedule the meetings when the most people do attend.

 

(As an aside - government agencies aren't focused on customer-serving - it just amazes me at how unresponsive they are to consumer demands.)

[NeilLup]

Hello Brotherhood,

 

In the previous round of webinars, we did have one at 8PM Central and attendance was exceedingly sparse. Participation was the least of any webinar we held. We perhaps could have had one that late this round but we hoped the one at 7PM Central would be acceptable.

 

Oak Tree, concerning customer service for government organizations, I have a Scouting friend who was a reasonably high level official for the IRS. He spoke once about the problem of providing customer service for the IRS and the problem is the difference between what the IRS has to consider good customer service and what the taxpayer considers good customer service

 

For the IRS, it is promptly and courteously giving exactly correct information on the tax laws and regulations

 

But for the taxpayer, it is being told that they don't have to pay tax

 

So a customer service agent can tell a taxpayer the exactly correct information and get dinged because the taxpayer doesn't like the answer while they can thrill the taxpayer by giving them a "get out of jail free" card but then the information might be totally wrong.

 

The government doesn't have the option that banks do of giving "courtesy waivers" to make customers happy.

 

He described it as a very tough conundrum.

[Oak Tree]

Neil,

 

Right. I can appreciate that there are some individuals in government offices who have a customer focus, and I'm sure that a number of agencies have conflicting goals (e.g., keep taxpayers happy but collect all the taxes).

 

However, the thing about government that bothers me most is the lack of competition that drives any change in behavior. I'd like to see the government open two DMV offices, one run by private enterprise and one by the government. Maybe even use the same examiners. I'd like to see the private one offer longer hours, guaranteed time slot reservation (for a fee, even), and whatever other service innovations they could come up with. Give them both the same base funding, and let the private one charge more for things if they want. I bet they could draw most people away from the government DMV.

 

Same thing with the post office. Let FedEx and UPS deliver mail and use the mailbox.

 

Because they can't lose customers very easily, most agencies just have no incentive to improve all these little things. So the employees don't either. I've had government people look at me strangely when I asked them if they ever worked more than 40 hours per week. And yet people in private businesses do it all the time.

 

Our state parks lock their gates at 6pm now (in the winter). That's dang frustrating. Can I pay extra to get a key? To arrive late? Any way I can get into the park after 6:00pm? Well, maybe, if I ask the ranger nicely, and he's a nice guy, but he has no real incentive from a career perspective to do so.

 

So I accept it might be a challenge to politely uphold standards - but the lack of incentive to be more efficient and more responsive can be maddening.