Two Weeks on the PASS Board

The one absolute promise I made about serving on the PASS Board is that I would let you know what I was doing there. Well, we’re two weeks in and I figured now was a good time for a report.

Next week is my first board meeting (and I will report back on how that goes). I’ll be presenting the goals I’ve worked up for the Chapters and see how many of them we can get approved and then how many of them we can deliver.

In the time I’ve had on the board so far, a big part of what I’ve been doing is learning about what has gone before. What kind of goals did we have for last year. Which of them were delivered. Which weren’t. Why. What’s our budget. That sort of thing. It’s been very interesting and enlightening. I’ll say this right here, send Wendy Pastrick (b|t) a note thanking her for her hard work for the PASS Chapters. She’s done some good stuff.

Another thing I’ve been doing is getting hooked into all the communications with the Chapter Leaders and the Regional Mentors. So far, most of that has just been along the lines of welcoming new Chapter Leaders, “Welcome to your new job, sucker, uh, I mean valued volunteer…” Kidding. I ran a chapter for four years. It’s tough, but rewarding. We’re setting up calls with the Chapter Leaders and with the Regional Mentors so that I can talk to them directly to get a good sense of what the heck PASS is doing for them or needs to do for them.

I’ve also been getting connected with my cohorts at the management company. I won’t betray who they are because they haven’t said I could (although, pretty sure a certain “Wonder Woman” is going to be upset that I didn’t drop her name, you figure it out). These are the people that are doing most of the work managing the relationships between PASS and the Chapters and the Regional Mentors. I wouldn’t say I’m just a figurehead, but I don’t get paid to do what they get paid to do. We’ve had several calls in order to keep things going on the goals already set and to get going on the new goals. I even got to approve a thing. WHOOP!

I’ll post again after the board meeting, especially once I see which of the goals I’m trying to get going I manage to get into the plan.

Anyone not seeing anything you expected to see in these updates or you have any other comments, suggestions, etc., post here or send me an email.

And no, I still haven’t changed everything.

10 thoughts on “Two Weeks on the PASS Board

  • Grant, agree with Allen, glad to see you doing this. You asked about stuff we expected to see – I’d love to see that idea list you have. I imagine you’re shared it with the chapter leaders, but I’m not (and a lot of us are not) on that list. We might have feedback that would help you refine that list. I know that might be noisy, but if you post what you end up with after the meeting, then it’s mostly too late to change your goals. I’d also be really interested in hearing your analysis of the state of the Chapters and supporting ecology.

    Thanks again for writing, and for volunteering.

    Andy

  • Hey Andy,

    Thanks. And, let’s put this down as my first screw up. I had to have the list together by today. I already turned it in. Next time, I’ll be much more open about gathering feedback and ideas more publicly. Sorry about that.

    Just so you know, I put together my list based on a very large number of conversations with Chapter Leaders while I was at the Summit. I kept asking one question of everyone, “What can PASS do for you as a Chapter Leader.” That’s how I arrived at my ideas.

    I agree your approach would have been better. Yet another lesson learned. Thanks.

    I will try to put together an analysis as you suggest. That’s a good idea.

    All good stuff, and this is exactly the kind of feedback that I hope to get from these posts. Feel free to get in touch with anything. I’m all ears.

  • Grant, its far from a screwup – you were smart enough to write and ask for feedbacks and if you get something usable from that, that was the point!

    I’ve got a few old posts and some notes, I’ll gather them up today or tomorrow and post for you, maybe something in there you can use or that will trigger an idea.

  • Robert French

    Thank you for choosing to share what’s going on. Personally l think being the leader looks great if you are not leading 🙂 Its not easy to step up to the mark thank you for doing so.

  • Martin Cairney

    Hi Grant

    Hopefully you haven’t forgotten our ‘unique’ issues in Australia and the UK. I’ve been meaning to ping you since Summit, but SQL Saturday planning and holidays have got in the way. Hopefully we can get some level of traction on it.

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