Shaping Club Culture

1. What Do You Mean, Culture?

This course has covered a lot of "mechanics" involved in making your club better. These are essential fundamentals, but behind them is your club's "culture" - the sum of attitudes regarding your club, your club's "norms" (things that are considered "normal" for the club; for example, if your club usually starts late, that becomes a norm), and values. It's very possible to have good mechanics yet have a bad culture; for example: the "core" members may be experienced and running the show, picking up the slack for the rest of the club. However, what happens when these core members drop out (for whatever reasons)? Does anyone slide into the vacuum that's created? Likely not, because the norm was that if you weren't part of the "core", the administrative tasks weren't for you. Even if some of the "outsiders" do make it in, they don't get the benefit of being mentored by the experienced members, as those members have taken their knowledge with them.

This is just one example of how club culture can affect the quality of your club. This lesson will touch on some more examples as well as give you some factors to look for, so you can be aware of both your club's positive and negative qualities.

2. Hard Truths

During the holidays at 2018, I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself to buy a suite of music production software, even though I have about zero musical talent. For days I kept trying to convince myself that the expenditure was worth it, even if I only made a few little tunes. I went back and forth between sites, trying to figure out who had the best price for the most items in the bundle, because I figure if I'm going to get into something I might as well go for the most complete edition. Eventually I buckled and bought it...and after spending fifteen minutes here and thirty minutes there, I've barely opened it again (even though I keep installing it in the hopes I'll at least open it to fool around with it). Maybe someday...

Have you done this with courses, programs, diets, etc. on your own? If so, you know that self-improvement projects can often have a lot of energy at the outset, but once the reality sets in that you have to work at things, the glamor rapidly evaporates. Sometimes that's expected; the program/course/etc. just wasn't for us, we weren't as willing to spend the effort, time, or resources as we thought, and so on. 

Many people come into Toastmasters knowing they need to improve in some way, usually in that they need the ability to give presentations. How many follow through with this though? The answer depends on how effectively your club engages with new people. On their own, a considerable percentage of people will not engage and will drop out in short order, just like many other self-improvement projects. 

If I had to give (purely subjective, in my experience) estimates of Toastmasters who join and complete certain milestones, I'd have to say:

• Show up for another meeting: 95-99% (yes, there are people that sign up and never show again)
• Sign up for a role and perform it: 90-95%
• Complete their first speech project: 75-85% 
• Stay longer than six months from join date: 65-75%
• Stay longer than one year from join date: 50-65%
• Stay longer than two years from join date: 15-25%
• Serve as an officer: 7-12%
• Connect with a mentor: 5-10% (this is often a reflection on the strength of your mentor program, not their initiative)
• Complete half of a Competent Communicator or Level 1: 15-25%
• Complete CC or Level 2: 5-10%
• Complete ACB or Levels 3/4: 1-5%
• Complete ACS or Level 5: 1-3%
• Serve in the district (area director or otherwise): Less than 0.5%
• Complete DTM: Less than 0.25%

This isn't to say these milestones are what everyone should accomplish, but they should indicate the priorities for most people that do join. The strength of the club and how well each member is engaged will alter those numbers, of course.

Some hard truths that come from this:

• Many of your new members won't be around in a year; this goes double if your club fails to get them involved and engaged.
• A lot of members won't even complete the most basic Pathways tasks.
• Many new members will not take initiative to make their goals concrete (i.e. with measurable outcomes set with time frames).
• While Toastmasters is "self-paced", without getting new members involved (having them take roles and deliver speeches) they will quickly drift away.
• Very few members will really take the time to work on the club; many will offer suggestions and "wouldn't it be nice if", but exceptionally few will actually do the work to make the club successful (even some that are ostensibly officers!). 
• Simply put, people don't come into Toastmasters to be a great Toastmaster; they come to make themselves better. You'll need to show how being a great Toastmaster makes them a better person in their day-to-day lives. 

The third course in this series will review how to get your new members to be more involved and likely to stay members, but for now, concentrate on making sure your new member orientation gets your new members up to speed and they get a mentor or accountability buddy.

3. RISE & SHINE (i)

One of the tasks a good new member orientation should perform is reviewing the Toastmaster's Promise. In it, there are a set of four values that can be arranged into the initialism "RISE": Respect, Integrity, Service, and Excellence. 

4. The Lame Excuse Club

Created in the mid- to late-90s, the website WebPagesThatSuck.com has had a simple tagline: "Learn good web design by looking at bad web design." If you survived the Geocities and MySpace eras, you know of many head-desk inducing techniques cataloged there. In a similar vein, it's time to look at some lame excuses so you can identify and correct bad attitudes. To do that, here's the story of the worst VPM ever (we'll call him Bob) and his president, Jackie.

For background, Jackie has asked for the following from the Membership team:

• Create new guest folders to hand out to potential members who come to the club for the first time
• Manage the ex-members and guest lists on the club's marketing site
• Mail out meeting reminders to ex-members and guests
• Contact members who have not shown up to three consecutive meetings without notifying the club
• Hold committee meetings once a month

Jackie has a one-on-one meeting with Bob to discuss progress with these to dos. Because she wants to share her screen, she mails Bob a how-to on using Google Hangouts, tells him to send a test message and let her know if he has any questions, and calls Bob.

"Hi Bob, it's time for our one-on-one. I'm ready to start the Google Hangout. Are you set?"

"Oh Jackie, I don't know how to do those things. They're just too hard. I'm bad at computers."

Already Bob is trying to snow Jackie under with excuses. The trick here is to balance empathy with accountability, or this attitude is going to continue.

"Bob, I know new things can be hard sometimes, which is why I sent you a how-to document, and asked you a week ago if you had any questions. When did you plan to find out what you needed to do to be prepared for this?"

Bob mumbles some more lame excuses, but Jackie cuts him off. "Please open the how-to I sent you and get connected. It's important that I be able to show some figures to you."

Once he's connected, they begin to go over the tasks Jackie has assigned his team with, starting with the new guest packets.

"Bob, as you know, our club gives new guest packets to first time guests. However, we're running very low. Stan has been making a few to keep us going, but this is a task your team needs to take on, and it's well overdue. What do we need to do to get this done?"

Bob begins complaining that the packet has too many things to print, too much work, and that no budget has been given to him for this, though Jackie knows otherwise. She needs to get Bob to engage with his work or she's going to have to take over his tasks - a swift route to burnout.

"Bob, you have a team that should have the resources to print the materials, and the club can have some time after a meeting to help put the packets together. These packets really help turn new guests into new members. I've included the attachments that we want in them. Have you met with your team about this?"

Bob starts up with another litany of excuses. At this point, Jackie should see a pattern and attack it at the root.

"Bob, we're just into one item into the agenda here and I feel like you're very defensive. When we started the year I was excited to have you on my team because I knew you had a lot of Toastmasters experience, but now I'm not sure anything has been done. I need to know if you're committed to building and maintaining our membership. If there's something I'm not seeing or don't know about, I'd like to know."

Bob & Jackie's conversation can continue from there, but let's go over some of the common excuses and how to counter them:

• "I don't know how" - The context here is that a task was given and when you check in to see what progress has been made, they claim they don't know how to do it. Ask "what have you done to get an answer?" If the person says "I don't know how yet" and proceeds to explain a limiting factor, then this might be okay. If there's a constant pattern of "I don't know how" followed by inaction, make it clear that the expectation is to ask sooner rather than later, not to sit on their hands.
  
• "I don't know where X is" - Make accessing your team's resources as painless as possible. Make it clear however, that they should know where their tools are (and how to use them). 
  
• "I don't see why that's important" - A slightly more tactful version of "I don't care". If you've explained why the task matters already, this is a diversion. Otherwise, make sure you include reasons for tasks.
• "I'm busy" - A universal and very lame excuse that translates to "I don't care enough about it". Renegotiate the time frame the task needs to be done in, or see what help others can give.
• "It's too hard" - Runs in a similar vein to "I don't know how". See if the task can be simplified, or broken into component steps.

5. More Notes on Culture Change

• Improving culture (like marketing) isn't a "one and done" thing. Your club will have to keep working at it. 
• If you have little or no vision of what your club could and should be, you'll be flailing more than anything.
• A new officer crew coming out strong at the beginning of a term can do a lot to improve the club's norms and values. Use that momentum whenever possible.
• At the same time, don't try to change too much all at once - as Craig Valentine says, "Change small and change often". Build and work your month-by-month plan.
• Improving mechanics will improve your culture, but only to a degree. 
• Starting improvements and change is often the hardest period. Make sure everyone clearly understands the why behind the change and the hows for achieving it.
• When it comes to tasks: Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up.