Improvements to the Best Practices Paper
The article on Can These Best Practices
Make the Club Effective Once Again? has been more of
a cooperative effort than anything else. Below are the major
improvements to the document. More will be added as time
goes by. If I've left anyone out, please let me know:
2006-4-2 - A meeting with Jack, George Turner, Wilma Turner,
and Rick Krause was held to improve the paper and plan the
startup messages in the forum. Wording that used American colloquialisms
was replaced with wording that was more international. Other
small change were made. A medium size change was made to the
presentation of the System Improvement Process, which was felt
to be hard to understand and had problems with what "a
solution" and Solution Convergence met. Fixing this added
about a page to the paper.
2006-3-25 - Pete Harich suggested that the term "best
practices" needed defining. This was done, along with
a good sized endnote with more info.
2006-3-16 - Joerg Geier wrote that "It would be perfect
- and in the interest of the authors of the strategy paper
- if your reflections would further stir the discussion and,
perhaps, help the US Association start its own discussion
on how to go about their problems that are related - and
may be similar to the overall set of problems of the family
of CoR Associations/the CoR (such as: too few new younger
members; too few incentives for decision makers and promising
scientists to join the respective National Association; missing
added value to join the CoR and/or chapter; etc.)."
This is excellent strategy, and is extendible to all National
Associations and even tt30. But how to implement it had me
puzzled for days. After several false starts I took the approach
of adding the section on The Five Steps of the Business
Improvement Process. This fits very well with the analysis
and gives everyone a clear direction to go in to turn the concepts
in the paper into a practical way to get started on applying
them. It also fits in well with the idea of the forum, because
we can all work together as we discuss how to take these five
steps, or whatever looks appropriate.
2006-3-13 - Martha Harich, after reading an early draft and
listening to me rave about The Nature Conversancy, suggested
that instead of just mentioning them I should put them in a
rating column and write them up, because there is so much to
learn from them.
2006-3-9 - Joerg Geier provided me with the four main source
documents for the article. This allowed me to toss out an earlier
version titled "Time to Reboot" and take a much better
overall approach to the task.
