CAW Report

							ATTENDANCE AT CHAPTER ADMINISTRATOR’S WORKSHOP
LONDON - Sunday, 29 February 2004 to Wednesday, 3 March 2004


Dear YPO Cape Town Chapter Members

I have just returned from attending the International Chapter Administrator’s Workshop in London
and would like to sincerely thank the Chapter for giving me the opportunity to attend the workshop.
I learnt lots, picked up many tips, made a point of meeting all the staff who were there from YPO
International and networked with many Administrators from our region and other parts of the world.
For your interest and information, I thought I would share with you (as briefly as possible) an
outline of my experience.

 Highlights of take-home value
  Made contact with YPO International staff enabling me to work more efficiently with them and
    to possibly source resources into the future
  Made contact with regional administrators to work together to obtain resources for TRPs
  Gained insight into new developments on the MyYPO website to assist Cape Town members
    in realising its full potential
  Obtained clarification on membership recertification and dues renewal procedures

I arrived in London a day before the workshop started so had a day and a half at leisure. I shared
a room with Tanya Whitehead, who represented Africa Gateway’s Chapter, and she and I spent
Saturday seeing the sights, we went to a show and early on Sunday morning we braved the
freezing cold to watch the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

The workshop started on Sunday afternoon with optional attendance at “A Taste of Forum”. Our
session was run by Neil Kirkman, Director Membership Networking. Neil ran the session in the
style of a forum meeting and I enjoyed learning about the dynamics of forum.

We attended a welcome opening ceremony and dinner on Sunday evening when the networking
began! On arrival we had to draw our table seating out of a hat. 89 out of the 170 chapters were
represented. We were introduced to staff from YPO International and shown excerpts of the
opening and closing ceremonies from the Global Leadership Conference.

The workshop opened on Monday morning with a series of ice-breakers. I was fascinated to learn
that more than half the girls at the workshop have another job besides working for YPO. It was a
clever initiative to seat us throughout the workshop in groups according to the size of the Chapter
for whom we work, ie. I was in a group whose Chapters were between 40 and 50 people. This
made all discussions relevant to your situation as opposed to entering into discussions with
Chapters that for instance have 80+ members.

Our first workshop session on Monday morning was a presentation by Cliff Baden, Chief Education
Officer. I learnt about the travelling resource program, world-wide alliances and the education
officers dashboard on the MyYPO website. It was interesting to note how many Chapters, like
ourselves, do not pay for resources – “hospitality is our currency”. I need to spend more time
surfing the MyYPO resources site as there is lots of information to share about successful events
held by other Chapters, etc. Amongst other things, discussion was held around marketing
education events, striving for better attendance at events, limiting attendance at some events,
profiling members at events, evaluations, user pay events and fees charged for non-attendance.
This was probably the most informative and useful session of the workshop for me.
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Our second session on Monday was a presentation by Michael Shann, Executive Producer Events
and David Cook, Executive Director Events. They shared with us statistics of attendance at
universities, conferences and seminars and the need for Administrators to market events to their
Chapter with the use of flyers and material provided on MyYPO.

After lunch Alice Hill, Chief Information Officer and Chad Lane, Online Operations Manager spoke
about online Marketing and Communication. From this session I realised the importance of
ensuring all members of our Chapter update their MyYPO profiles. If profiles are up-to-date,
members will only receive emails from YPOI relevant to their situations and the amount of spam
mail will drastically reduce. They will also benefit international business networking, which
currently isn’t happening for a majority of members as they have not updated their business
profiles. An interesting topic covered in this session was email etiquette and how to cut down on
spam mail.

Poor Les Ward, Chief Admin Officer and CFO, got the graveyard session after tea and gave us a
presentation on Risk Management and Chapter Incorporation. He emphasised the need for our
Chapter to form as its own legal entity and provided useful information with regard to Chapter
insurance.

Our last session on Monday afternoon was a round-robin where we had short presentations in
smaller groups on topics such as chapter rosters, operating tools, access to the MyYPO toolkit
(brandbook) and were provided with information on solving queries of any kind.

We closed Monday’s workshop with a quiz game based on the TV show “The Weakest Link” where
we were in groups and had to guess the correct answer to questions on MyYPO. Mark Forward,
Executive Director Global Operations dressed the part as Anne Robinson in an orange wig and
leather outfit. In typical “The Weakest Link” sporting/cheating fashion our team formed an alliance
with the team next to us and succeeded in voting out all other (stronger) teams, but our plan failed
at the final question, which we answered incorrectly!

Monday night was “at leisure” and Kate Aird, our Regional Director, took the Chapter
Administrators from the Africa Region out for a pub dinner. It was a great opportunity to network
further with the Administrators from our region who were at the workshop – Africa’s Gateway,
Harare, Lagos and Nairobi.

On Tuesday morning our first session was about membership renewal. This session was run by
Endre Buxton, Director Global Service Centre and Gracie Gaytan, Manager Global Membership
Services. I found this session hugely informative and beneficial. Issues that were discussed
included the waiver process, recertification (Cape Town will get this process 100% right this year!),
grace periods and new member vouchers.

This was followed by a presentation by Buddy Teaster, Chief Networking Officer who was hugely
energetic and enthusiastic sharing with us details of the M2M exchange, global youth exchange,
etc. It was incredible to hear that over 1000 members internationally participate in the global
conference calls and how the “meetings in meetings” concept is growing.

After tea a panel of staff from YPO International opened the floor for questions on any topic, which
any Administrator wanted to ask. Again this was a useful forum to pick up tips, which I have noted.

This was followed by a presentation on Chapter Health, which stressed the importance of Chapter
Administrators sending event evaluation summaries and questionnaire responses to YPOI
timeously in order for our Chapter’s health to be properly monitored.

During Tuesday afternoon’s session we were able to attend a number of break-away “best
practice” discussions. The topics I selected were “how to be a part-time CA with a full-time
workload” and “how to manage a demanding executive committee”. The first session I attended
merely to grasp information from other CAs on how they cope with the workload. I learnt that in a
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number of Chapters the CA does not do the bookkeeping, the membership chairman’s PA
manages new members, other Exco members’ PAs handle much of their admin and a great deal of
the event preparation is sub-contracted. I personally don’t agree with the CA not doing any of
these roles as I think they are all key to the smoothing running and “intimacy” of the Chapter. My
answers may be in learning to delegate a little (at which I am useless) and the use of the PAs of
Exco members, where appropriate, and if possible. Throughout this discussion I kept reminding
our group that committee members are all voluntary and I think it is part of the job as a CA to
understand that many of them only have time for you at inconvenient hours. I suppose it is a case
of managing expectations and ensuring that work after regular hours does not become excessive.

I did not attend the second discussion because I think our Exco is “demanding” per se, I merely
wanted to learn how I could better manage expectations. The bottom line is a need to remind
committee members that I work for 6 or so portfolios and therefore need to share my time amongst
them and need to set goals with Exco for managing my time. A good suggestion was to prepare a
report to Exco on what I felt worked for me and what didn’t work, combined with proposals on how I
feel I could operate better. This should be based on short-time demands, setting goals with the
various officers and communicating with Exco on work demands. In addition, adding a due date
for tasks arising out of action lists from Exco meetings will help manage deadlines.

In closing, we were asked to write ourselves a postcard setting ourselves tasks for the next month,
which postcard will be mailed to us in a month’s time. The targets I set myself are:
     To ensure all members update their MyYPO profiles
     To share a report with the Chapter on my CAW experience
     To share a report with Exco on what worked and what didn’t work in my working
        relationship with them this last year
     To set goals with Exco on working as a team and the best use of my time/resources.

Throughout the workshop there were displays from many Chapters of folders of samples of their
letterheads, nametags, invitations and newsletters. Some Chapters who have huge budgets
spend a lot of money on invitations and hand-outs. Compared to other Chapters in similar
situations to ourselves, our samples were of a high standard. Many Chapter newsletters are short,
printed in colour and simply bound. Many American Chapters have impressive glossy membership
booklets with useful contact details, an idea I would like to crib in a simpler, cheaper version.

Our workshop closed with a cocktail party and closing speeches followed by an evening of kareoke
(for some). My attendance at this workshop ended on a further high when I won a lucky-draw of a
week’s safari and beach holiday for two in the Selous Game Reserve in Southern Tanzania and on
the island of Zanzibar. What a wonderful surprise!

Overall it was a truly worthwhile experience, for which I thank you.

Linda Reich
Chapter Administrator
Cape Town
12 March 2004