Creating Your Rescue Plan: The Two-Week Kickstart

1. Introduction

Sometimes the hardest part of starting a club rescue is not knowing where to start. In this lesson, you'll get a day-by-day plan for getting started with evaluating your club's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, begin developing your action plans, and start working on solving your issues. If you're ready to get started, read on.

2. Your Two-Week Startup Plan

The two-week plan is split into two separate chapters. Some important bullet points to keep in mind:

• The two-week plan is very dense with action steps, so don't stress about not getting everything done in exactly two weeks. If you get the steps done in a month, you'll often find you've taken more action than other clubs do.
• Do not attempt doing all of the steps by yourself. This is meant to be a program implemented by the officers and their committees to distribute the load.
• Don't feel boxed in by the plan. It's meant to be a template for club rescue. There may be steps that don't apply to your situation; this is fine, just adjust as necessary.

2.1. Week 1

Day 1

Get the officers of the club to agree that a club rescue or club maintenance is needed. Get a bearing on the levels of motivation currently present. If there's zero energy to undertake any sort of action, your club may not be repairable. Schedule a session for day 2 with all officers and interested members. Have the club officers study this program.

Day 2

Perform any steps from First Aid necessary for your club.

Day 3

Begin performing SWOT analyses (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) on each office, starting with SAA. Keep in mind the responsibilities of that office, goals of the officer, as well as Moments of Truth related to that office to capture relevant data. You may want to do this one on one with the officer, or do it as a group (keep in mind the experience level as well as receptivity to feedback). Make sure to capture this data. 

For weaknesses, make sure you work on what the expected outcome should be, and the benefits of closing the gap. For example, if the SAA is not setting out ballots before the meeting start, review what having them handing out prior to the meeting start helps the meeting flow better. For deeper topics, dig into the motivations; the deeper you dig into the motivations, the more potential for lasting change. You can use the "so you/we can" method to delve deeper into your motivations; for example, if you came up with "we want more members" as a benefit, ask "we'll get more members so we can...". Apply that technique for a few layers to uncover deeper benefits, and make sure you record them.

Prioritize the issues you're having; for each action item you'll want to have "who will do what by when": The who is who is accountable, the what is the action, and the when is the target date. Don't overload the officer with issues; prioritize only 2-3 at a time.

You'll want to refer back to your motivations documents if your energy wanes, to remind yourself why you're working to revitalize your club.

Also perform this for the Treasurer for this day. You can tackle the remaining officers on subsequent days, or have one longer meeting.

Day 4

Perform the above SWOT review with the Secretary and VP of PR.

Day 5

Continue the process with the VP of Membership and VP of Education.

Day 6

Complete the SWOT review with the President and a catch-all session for the club in general. The latter can let you compare notes if the other sessions were done one-on-one.

Day 7

You should now have an idea of not only the club's SWOT characteristics, but your officers as well. Start laying out projects and to dos on your month-by-month plan. 

2.2. Week 2

Day 8

Perform a Moments of Truth review in your officer group for items you have not covered in the SWOT reviews.

Review the other Club Rehab steps and add actions to be taken to the month-by-month plan.

Day 10

Begin an online audit, starting with your Toastmasters.org listing.

Continue the online audit by reviewing your marketing site (FreeToastHost in this program).

Continue the online audit by reviewing your member site (Easy Speak in this program).

Day 13

Continue the online audit by reviewing your district's site (if they list clubs) and any other sites.

Day 14

Finalize your month-by-month plan. As an officer group, review motivations and get to making changes.