Delivering the Basics

The core part of any learning group is the foundations, because if that group is not delivering on the basics, no matter how great or grand one's own vision or purpose is, it is building an idea on weak foundations.  This warning is time immemorial and even finds itself in a Bible verse in Matthew 7:24 :

 

I don't see any smart value in being really smart about designs that are not built to last - and that is why every hand in a club team is vital - because when smart people fail to see the long-term implications, they have already headed for new pastures where they can entertain their talent or skills, leaving others to struggle or at least devoid of the opportunity that was possible.   That is the flaw in thinking we are smart when we are smart - we are smart when we do smart things and it is smart to attend to the basics.

Engaging the mundane may bore someone who feels their time should be spent in matters of higher purpose, and the flaw here is viewing the mundane as mundane and not as a critical success factor for the long-term.   When we talk about "leadership" such talk is no guarantee that we are actually covering the basics, and at the same time only covering the basics is a limited and highly constrained view of leadership.

If someone is better than me at laying the foundations then they are the leaders of the foundation and I pay my regard and respect to that kind of leading.  The good thing about my particular club is that the club founder Ruben laid those foundations over the three successive years the club has been in operation, but being a student club, the transition last year was to an entirely new cohort of student leaders. 

The information the club needs has already been made by prior executives but if there is no oversight on basics, that information does not get accessed and therefore not used.  There is absolutely no reason to keep reinventing the wheel.  One simple basic method is the checklist.  A checklist does not necessarily need to be about saving lives, but the video on medical errors and the use of checklists underlines the power of using them.

With a statutory holiday meaning there is no club meeting this week, the work of the club begins in earnest next week, at which time the club is holding elections for the next executive who will begin their term on 1st July 2016.  In between that the present executive needs to plan a transition, but even before that, there is the basics of organizing a club election.  For the lack of a checklist, we can assume that the basics are taken care of but even in life and death situations, case studies show that this is an incorrect assumption.

I am more apt to think about innovation and something like "jobs to be done" and this is great but the resulting checklist of foundation items to know the basics is covered is surprisingly the easiest thing to overlook, and what we overlook then is overlooked.

The key to jobs to be done needs also to be fixed with the existing structure that is pre-set.  In a college toastmasters club, that comprises of positions which are common across all clubs, but also leeway to create groups/committee's as a part of leadership credits or student club initiatives.   For this week I am not going to look at the most basic foundational elements, but because the club elections are the immediate concern to focus on that - and after that I can start looking at the foundations and members of the club contribute to those foundations - and not just what foundations have been neglected due to a break between the new cohort and the executive that have left college and in so doing also left the club.

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