Posted by Joe P in Question for the Candidates

Posted by Joe P in Question for the Candidates

Posted by Steve Johnson in Question for the Candidates
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻
These questions are for Steve Johnson.

Steve, the club is in unambiguously awful shape at the moment. Membership as of November 1 was 83, which is an all-time low. In addition, it seems as though lots of people just aren’t having fun because the people who are supposed to be handling administrative issues to facilitate the rest of us having fun are simply allowed to be absent indefinitely. In particular, the President is currently AWOL, three Fleet Commanders are AWOL, and Assistant Fleet Commanders are often absent as well. Several other people went on LOA but have expected end dates for their LOAs in September, e.g. more than 30 days ago, and therefore would be subject to removal exactly as if they were AWOL if things were operating normally.

You are the current Vice President of the club, and therefore are partially responsible for the current state of affairs. With that in mind, I would like to know:

1. Why has this situation been tolerated?
2. Do you plan to continue tolerating this sort of thing if you are elected President? If yes, why? If not, why not and what will you do differently?

Thanks,
Joe

Hi Joe,
Thank you for your questions. I am currently on the road for work this week. I will respond to your questions soon, I just want to make sure I give them the time the deserve in my response.

Thank you,
Steve

Steve,

I appreciate the acknowledgement. Take all the time you need to answer.

Joe

I’m just bumping this because you indicated in Discord that you still intended to answer this and any other questions despite the uncontested election.

Joe

Hi Joe, thank you for your question and your patience in waiting for my response.

I do understand your concerns. I believe each President has the right to govern this organization in their own way, and I don’t believe that this is the right forum for me to comment on our current President. What I can do is tell you what I plan to do when I’m President, to address both this type of situation, and ensure it doesn’t occur again.

Real life does come up, just like how I wasn’t able to respond to your questions right away. Both Sarah and I understand this very well, and this is where our previous experience comes into play. We talk very regularly, at least daily, and are not afraid to balance the power and responsibilities of running this club between us. We both know the responsibilities of being President, and how we can support each other to get things done. We’ve had plenty of practice working together, both before Sarah’s break from STF, and after. Together we can work with each other to keep things from sliding through the cracks, as well as keeping each other in check. Because we have a responsibility as leaders of this club to set an example for everyone else. It is hard to hold other people accountable when you aren’t holding yourself to those same standards.

The first part of our plan is to have open lines of communication. We don’t want to be talking to our cabinet only when there is an issue, we want to have regular conversations and check-ins. We rely on the FComm’s to watch over their fleets, to make sure we are not seeing excessive AWOL’s or overextended LOA’s. But if those FComm’s are not around, we need to make sure someone else is available to fill in while they are away. Additionally, these regular check-ins will hopefully help us to better understand why we are seeing fatigue in our existing cabinet members. Hopefully this will give us some ideas on how to get them reenergized and wanting to help us even more.

The second part of our plan involves digging deeper into why we are having so many extended LOA’s and AWOL’s. Why are people disappearing on us? Yes, we do need to clean up the rosters more regularly, but is these people disappearing a sign of a bigger problem. We want to work with the FComm’s and PDept to maybe try to understand better what is happening, and what we can do better to get people interested in posting again. We are also going to look at other ways to measure ship performance, so we can get a better metric on which are the problematic ships, that need more direct attention.

I hope this answers your questions. Please let us know if you have any others.

Steve Johnson