CityVP Manjit

7 years ago · 3 min. reading time · 0 ·

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The Club Innovation Edge

The Club Innovation Edge

As Toastmasters club members build up their education, those clubs who have members complete the full educational program gained members with distinguished status.  The percentage of members who complete their program is very low, some cite completion rates at 1%.  Of those 1% who complete the educational requirements, a lot of them start from the beginning to earn it a second time.  The whole program is based on continuous improvement and some very long serving members who have spent a lifetime in Toastmasters have completed these programs more than three times, because they know the value is the practice and not the designation.  These clubs with experienced members have an experience edge.

Unless there is faculty or returning alumni, college clubs will find it difficult to build that experience edge.  It is possible if alumni see the value in lifetime learning and network much deeper into the Toastmasters community, but colleges tend to see clubs form and once the experience edge has left the club, the chances of a club retaining its charter become that much more diminished and campus clubs do fold.  Some clubs have disappeared only for someone else organizing a charter to start a club, which then might fail.  In one of our clubs at another campus, this is the third time a Toastmasters club has been chartered at that particular campus.  Our campus club has retained its club founder and he has kept our club viable for the last three years.  He is the primary source of our experience edge so long as remains with us.

Under a Toastmasters charter the long-term objective is build the experience edge of the club.  What differentiates a campus club from a community club is that college toastmasters that are chartered as a student club, also follow the remits of the student club charter.  The opportunity in this student club charter is developing what I call an innovation edge .

An innovation edge is possible because there is scope within a student club charter to create a hub and spoke relationship with the ecosystem of the college.  This way the club is no longer pushing out marketing and unique selling propositions of membership, the club begins pulling from the ecosystem, both in terms of referrals and much more importantly potential for innovating the way club members engage with the college and the college engages with the club.  This is not about differentiating the club from other student clubs, but creating unique learning relationships with areas of the college that would otherwise escape notice.

The amount of innovation that goes on in a well run college can be quite extensive and these innovative projects are closed loops in that only the people who directly know about these initiatives are involved with them.  Examples of initiatives that I have logged are just some of the kind of activities that occur in the college eco-system.

CURIOUSITIES 

OVATIONS Magazine - Alumni Magazine 

SHERIDAN JOURNEY

Scholarly Output, Undergraduate Research and Creative Excellence 

CENTRE FOR ELDER RESEARCH 

2014-2015 STUDENTS UNION REPORT 

PRESIDENTS REPORT - 2013 to 2014

THE CREATIVE CAMPUS - 2010 Document 

THE SHERIDAN SUN 

CODE IN THE CITY 

 These are just a sample of initiatives that form nodes in the college eco-system and these do not even count future developments such as the opening of the new North Campus later this year, which will accommodate a Centre for Creative Thinking and other new programs.  Our campus also includes its own School of Business which was launched in the last couple of years - so the opportunities to think about how we can develop an innovation edge, in a college where initiatives and innovative thinking dot the landscape of the ecosystem, are possible.

I would hazard to guess that when other colleges look at their particular eco-systems, they will find these pockets of energy and effort that operate in their respective siloes. 

Other student clubs do form a part of this learning ecosystem but there is so much happening beyond other student clubs that there is plenty there for the imagination, never mind the existence of programs to help students that already have very basic tie in's with the club.

In the best of both worlds there would be development of both the experience edge and the innovation edge.  If the club develops its thinking and execution around developing an innovation edge, that should lead to new types of engagement that may then help make meaning within the club that becomes a catalyst for longer term alumni relationships.  With the rise of those longer term alumni relationships the opportunities to nurture the experience edge grow correspondingly.


All of this is still upto the choice of respective executive teams but I am here to explore the possibilities and what I think here is the opinion of n=1.  That is what Toastmasters learning is based on, what it is we do as members to accelerate our own learning and this is why Toastmasters has become a part of my personal offline extension to my learning journey.  It is also why my present club is my fifth club and why I hope it is my fifth and last club.  In the pursuit of my learning journey, if it requires I move to a sixth or even seventh club, so be it.  I own this learning journey, it is singularly for my own learning and development, but if in the course of my learning journey, the club itself actually does develop an innovation edge - then I consider that a humbling experience, because it means that others value my learning journey.




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