Hey everyone,

Steve and I wanted to set out one of the concepts we are keen to adopt during our term if elected, and would very much welcome your thoughts and suggestions on it. One of the challenges of the club’s government structure is that it is based on a cabinet, with each director, board lead and fleet commander responsible for their part of the club. There is little in the way of ensuring cross department cooperation, other than where department/fleet leads agree to work together.

However, there are problems, topics or areas of interest where a cross government approach to the problem is needed. We’ve actually had an example in the last few days, where Amdirgol has done some fantastic work on how we recognise awards/commendations for members, and has pulled in TECH to support. However, there could be more challenging issues that require activity from a broader range of departments as part of a ‘project’; for example, how we, as a club, communicate to the membership. This example would involve multiple parts of government, including the Fleets, the CMMB, TECH, the Prez/VP, etc, in terms of setting out how we communicate and developing the methods to do so. Other examples include helping with the Library migration, and investigating how we reduce the amount of time volunteers spend on administrative tasks.

What Steve and I propose to do is set up a ‘Task Force’ for each project, with representation from the different teams that would work collectively on it. More importantly, it would include any other members who want to contribute directly to the Task Force, and we would be looking for a member to lead each Task Force. The scope and plan for what is needed to be done would be agreed in Command, and regular updates would be provided. Once completed, the Task Force would disband with any residual work being conducted by the relevant government teams.

There would need to be prioritisation on what projects are the priority, to ensure that we are being realistic with what the club can achieve within resources. We would first build a list of projects that we felt needed to be done, in consultation with FComms and Departments, and then discuss in Command which ones we felt were the most important. We would also welcome ideas in Command, and would look to keep a list of ‘upcoming’ projects that people can express interest in helping out.

By doing this, we hope that we can corral the enthusiasm and energy of volunteers against key challenges we have as a club, focusing our collective efforts as a cohesive team. We hope it will enable more people to get involved in bite-sized chunks of volunteer work, rather than feeling like they have to commit for an entire term, as well as develop members for leadership roles in the club.

As we said at the start, we would really value your input in whether you thinking this idea will work, and how it could be improved.

Jack & Steve

Together, Shaping STF’s Future.