[snip]

The main reason I have heard for nobody wanting to be CMM it is that the role has a lot of things to do associated with it, and nobody wants to do all of those things right now. Specifically that doing all of that is simply too much work. To me, that sounds like is problem of prioritization, but it also could be something where we need to redefine the role slightly also or make it clear that CMM is not necessarily limited to being a single person who must do every single thing. But I myself do not know because… well, if I’m completely honest, I don’t feel that I know everything that CMM has done previously and how much work that is. I could just wave a magic wand as the President and change a bunch of stuff with it, but I feel like I’d be doing so kinda blind. That’s why I’m opening it up for a discussion for everybody. So that we can all kinda figure out what isn’t working with the CMM role and then maybe the way to fix it could become more apparent.

Thoughts?

– Joe

It is absolutely clear the CMM is not limited to a single person doing every single thing. There is one point person, but that point person can have as many helpers as they can find.

Does anyone not see it that way?

Adam W.

From the Bill:
“The Community & Marketing Manager shall be responsible for the following”

It then goes on to list a fair number of things, including coordination of the STF Awards, among other things. Having played a relatively small role in even one of those things, I can say I understand how that list can be intimidating.

I agree with Adam that it’s not a one-person job, but the key phrase in his response is “as many helpers as they can find.” It can be amazingly difficult to find people to help out sometimes.

I just think it’s a fairly intimidating list, especially since none of the listed responsibilities have anything resembling a guide (not necessary for all, but definitely helpful for many). That leads to whoever steps up needing to find the right questions to ask the right people before they can even think about doing their job, and even then I can imagine some hoops being jumped through to get the proper site permissions.

I don’t have a great solution for this - but I do think distilling down some of the more important responsibilities (like advertising and the awards) would make the job much more approachable. Even the name “Community Marketing Manager” is a tad intimidating - sounds very corporate.

~ Gavin B

I think the list can very likely be pared back. Espeically now because we’ve had nobody doing any of the things on the list at all for a year, with nobody really complaining much about that. The list in the bylaw is a stated preference; our reaction to nobody doing it is a revealed preference.

This was one of the reasons why I decided to leave my role as MAC back in 2017, though it didn’t include the Ten Forward board oversight at the time. There was a lot to do, but not enough hands which leads to burnout.

-Ray

Ray, could you elaborate on this? The role only got larger since you left it. What did you have to do specifically and what was hardest to do?

Based on what I’ve heard from the last team, I could only imagine. Specifically, I would hold team-building opportunities on the Facebook STF group, such as polls, the ship of the week, and welcoming new members. I also reposted vacancies, links to new edits or news, and promotions. I also used some RPG sites to post free links, though people would have to vote on the post to increase the ranking. Looking back, I think the hardest thing was not seeing that much interaction. I mean you can only do so much as 1 person. I do remember being the assistant MAC before taking on the role, so we knew it required more than 1 person.

After holding the position and then my real-life experience overseeing a a team of recruiters, and then employee relations, I’d say this could be turned into a department with set responsibilities, resources, and a team to handle the marketing/advertising, and retention aspects.

I would suggest we not focus too much on what the current bylaw reads (or how it is interpretered) with respect to one person or more than one person, as we can always amend the bylaw if we need to (or replace it with something better if we come up with that). The bylaw is useful, though, in identifying the responsibilities that need to be addressed by the CMM (however that CMM looks in the future).

At the start of my last term as prez, I had wanted to replace the CMM with something more akin to a department, rather than just one person it all rests on and hope that person could find sufficient volunteers like how it currently reads. I think there were at least two problems to my approach: (1) arguably it’s just re-naming / redefining the position without solving the underlying problem that it was just too much for some volunteers to do, and (2) we still couldn’t really get sufficient interested volunteers.

I think it may be useful to consider how MAC turned into CMM. MAC was originally primarily focused on the external aspect of STF - marketing, social media, RPG awards, relationships with other RP clubs, etc. Some MACs unofficially also looked at some of internal events, but it wasn’t official or consistent, then some of us thought of creating a new position to deal with internal events and social aspects, then we decided as experiment to officially expand MAC’s responsibilities to include that, and then feeling it was successful we pretty much made it official by replacing MAC with the CMM.

Arguably, maybe we went to far, and I’m wondering if there’s some benefit to breaking the position down into more manageable areas of responsibilities - they would coordinate with each other, but ultimately the position holders would have a clearer and small area of responsibility that is manageable.

Daniel
I am inclined to agree. I think if it was broken down into a couple smaller positions, it would be more likely that people would apply to do it. I think the department idea is also good in theory, if it’s implemented well. I’m not sure quite what that would look like, but it’s a start.
Amdirgol

We’d need to agree on what the most important of the smaller positions would be, if we went down this road. I think it would also be helpful if we had people willing to do the smaller things once they are defined.

Should add that I’m not 100% behind my own suggestion.

I think the problem with CMM is a combination of two problems: (1) the position has become too broad and is too much for an individual volunteer to supervise, and (2) not enough available, interested and capable volunteers that person can find and delegate to.

Breaking it up into smaller manageable parts for different individuals may solve the first problem. But, we still need to dig into that very limited volunteer pool to fill those roles. Maybe - and I stress maybe - by demonstrably breaking the role down into manageable parts, the positions become more attractive to the available volunteers in STF. But, well, I’m not confident about that.

-Daniel

I think there’s a third problem with CMM that has largely been unstated, which that the conception of the role was very heavily centered around one specific person doing it. Whether it was deliberately intended that way or not, that’s kind of how it worked out, and I think that’s where the grand scope of the thing came from.

So I’d have to insist that however we reform the thing (which it seems like we should if everyone finds it insurmountable), that we define it very clearly with limited scope, so that anyone could take a stab at it, kind of like how nearly anyone can take a stab at nearly any other job in the club once they’ve been here a while.

Joe

I’ve given this a certain amount of thought, and finally have some comments in order. maybe I missed it, but not listed in the bill but definitely somewhere among the CMM’s responsibilities is keeping tabs on the newsletter. With that in mind, I agree with the above, it needs to be reorganized into a department. One with a more refined structure than others. Instead of a Director with appointed Assistants whose jobs are nebulous at best, there’s the Manager, with others appointed to do specific things. One person for social media, one for the newsletter, etc. the number of positions and people to be defined by the number of jobs that need doing. Once people have stopped volunteering, whether it’s 2 or 10, any remaining jobs can be divided up among the Community Dept (working title) staff.

-Sage

I do not understand what makes the department format better than the executive assistant format. The only functional difference is with the executive assistant there is greater potential for continuity from term to term. The structure doesn’t really matter if no what wants to do most of this stuff.

Adam W.

To be fair, TECH is a department that has that continuity between terms, sort of existing outside but alongside the main government body. A similar structure could be applied to the Community Dept.

TECH is not a department. Executive Departments are defined in GO and TECH is not one, which is why it can have that continuity between terms. The bylaw calls it a board.

The other thing is that people have volunteered to do odd jobs. Lindsay picked up some social media stuff. Rob and Gavin tried to put together awards. If the jobs seem smaller and more accessible, more volunteers may appear.

From where I am, restructuring the CMM to be a department is doing something. and whether it works or not it has a better shot than hoping a volunteer comes along for the job as is.

-Sage

What I’m getting out of your suggestion is that CMM would be exactly what it is now only with a different name. If I’m right about that, I don’t consider that doing something.

But I think you’re making a good point about making the jobs seem smaller and more accessible. Maybe that’s where to focus first and change the structure later once we have a better idea what structure we need.

Adam W.

So I had wanted to chime in on this sooner, but life and work kept me too busy. So speaking as the past term prez where I spent alot of time through the term where I could trying to go to different people who I felt could do things for CMM I kept getting the same thing mentioned above ‘i dont have time’ ‘its too much work alone’ ‘even if i could get someone else to help me i dont got the skills to do it i think’ etc etc

Sage’s mention about reforming it into a department (or the like) is similar too (though not quite the same) as the old Marketing department we had ages ago, which in itself was disbanded in part due to lack of 2-3 people finding anything worth while that made a difference to getting club membership so as i saw it (having been in the marketing department around that time alone) it was ‘down sized’ to the CMM role.

One thought i did have last term and discussed with my VP James was making a hybrid role of sorts with the CMM’s duties and term to term assignment (aka they keep the duty as long as the person/people want to do it or the prez decides otherwise), but in the marketing dept format of sorts like what Sage says. I also think that before that really happens getting some kind of ‘how to’ written up giving examples of how do say advertise the club in places could be useful as breaking down the ‘unknown’ for newer members to the role.

One of the things Gavin and I got pretty far along in doing last term regarding setting up the STF Awards we were trying to do was writing up a detailed ‘how to’ for future people to setup the awards on the back end, complete with pretty pictures and suggestions. I think something like this would help here too with CMM.

Thoughts?

Robert Archer