Inclusion and the Importance of It

Before I begin, I would like to reiterate something I said in my last opinion blog post about the 2004 restructure.  I know there are those who say that we need to put the past behind us and move forward.  I agree to a certain extent.  However, putting the past behind you doesn’t mean you should forget or disregard it, because if you do this, you run the risk of repeating or not fixing your mistakes and continuing down the wrong path.  C.S. Lewis speaks to this in the following quote from Mere Christianity:

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be and if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. We have all seen this when we do arithmetic. When I have started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start over again, the faster I shall get on.

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Recently I read Frances Hesselbein’s autobiography My Life in Leadership, and one thing in particular jumped out at me.  Hesselbein guided a massive overhaul of Girl Scouting when she took over GSUSA as executive director in 1976.  She is a well-respected authority on leadership and founded an influential foundation for non-profits in addition to being a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  You can read more about her here.  Throughout the book, she discusses the keys on how to successfully lead and guide an organization through the process of change.  Inclusion is one of the most important keys.

What is inclusion?  Hesselbein defines and stresses how important it is on pg. 75 in her book:  “One of the most important parts of transforming a large and complex organization is inclusion:  engaging all of the people every step of the way.  You can’t develop a great plan, ‘give’ it to ‘the people,’ and expect them to feel that it’s theirs.  So every Girl Scout planning group and every working group had people from the councils, volunteers, staff, board members involved – so that decisions were everybody’s business.  When you include representatives of all of your people, you’ve opened a door, making people feel welcome.”

From my perspective as a Girl Scout volunteer, I believe the lack of volunteer inclusion in GSUSA’s original restructuring blueprint is the center of most of the issues, fallout, divisiveness, and other difficulties that have plagued GS since this plan originally launched.  There’s been discussion after discussion about the specifics, but when looking at the big picture, I feel this overhaul was built on a weak foundation that did not take inclusion of volunteers into account.  This in turn led to a negative cascading effect on the rollout.  Lip service may have been paid, but the evidence of volunteer inclusion is not there in my opinion.  Volunteers are the ones who best know the girls, interact directly with them, and know what works and what doesn’t.   Their opinions, suggestions, and viewpoints should be sought out and taken seriously.  While mission statements are extremely important, volunteers’ work with the girls and what the girls gain from their experiences are ultimately what runs the Movement.  This key piece of the puzzle was lost.

Hesselbein continues on pg. 82:  “When you share a vision of the future that everyone helps develop, it becomes theirs and it’s real.  Nothing was developed behind closed doors and then presented as a bright idea to our people… This kind of inclusion builds morale, confidence, enthusiasm, trust, and support.”

So what happened beginning in 2004?  I don’t think anyone can argue that morale, confidence, enthusiasm, trust, and support were built.  They were torn down.

All the right words about inclusion are said by Kathy Cloninger in her 2012 book Tough Cookies.  Cloninger served as the GSUSA CEO during this transformation.  I’ve written about some of the presented reasons for this overhaul in previous blog posts.  To kick things off, strategy and gap teams were created to review and make decisions about what should be done to modify the federated system of GSUSA in place at the time.  She explains on pg. 81 that these teams were made up of “top volunteers and staff from GSUSA headquarters and from Girl Scout councils.”  The article Upgrading a Network from the Stanford Social Innovation Review website breaks out the composition of these groups:  “Cloninger and her colleagues created a strategy group that consisted of 26 executives from the GSUSA network and charged the group with exploring how the organization could ensure that scouting remained a compelling experience for girls.”  Additionally, “The [gap] teams drew members from all parts of the country and from the ranks of GSUSA volunteers, staff members, council CEOs, and board members.”  There is one glaring omission – the volunteers at the council level.  The gap teams supposedly had “GSUSA volunteers,” but I’m guessing that they were not volunteers as we define them – the ones who are in the field, if you will.  It can be argued that there is no need for volunteers at this level and that they are represented via council leaders, and I can understand this point – but I have to question whether the thought process of these teams truly kept the motive of how to best keep alive the mission of Girl Scouting for girls at the forefront throughout their decision making, or was it more about business strategies?  Perhaps it was just the execution that was poor?

Supposedly volunteer and staff feedback were solicited before decisions were made – but that doesn’t seem to be the case according to a few passages from Tough Cookies on pg. 81:  “So as 2004 dawned and GSUSA’s board of directors and I opened the door to major transformation, we knew we’d need support from our one million volunteers, and, of course, from America’s girls… [The strategy team’s] first task was to make a case for change: to present, to everyone in Girl Scouting, a reality check that could motivate innovative thinking to bust through roadblocks.”

As I interpret this, the decision to change was already made by people who were about as far removed from the girls as you can get, and in turn, they then wanted to convince everyone why they were going to do this.  Having to “convince” people of a plan doesn’t sound like it incorporates inclusion to me.  I go back to Hesselbein’s previous quote:  “When you share a vision of the future that everyone helps develop, it becomes theirs and it’s real. Nothing was developed behind closed doors and then presented as a bright idea to our people.”

This sentence from the Stanford Review article sums it up:  “GSUSA leaders had concluded that the biggest barrier to transforming their movement was the sprawling, fragmented nature of their organization.”  Not girls, not volunteers, and not even councils helped to decide what would transform the movement.  GSUSA leaders did – in other words, a handful of people.

It was determined that council mergers were necessary to tame the organization.  Another critical mistake regarding inclusion has to do with the planning of these mergers.  Professional demographers were hired by GSUSA in 2005 in order to put forth recommendations for this plan.  From the Stanford article:  “The first step was to design an ‘ideal council’ – a template GSUSA could use to guide decisions on the number, size, and location of councils… Using data on factors such as population distribution and the size of local media markets, the demographers worked with GSUSA to establish a basic formula….”

Cloninger states on pg. 106 of her book that staff and volunteers were welcome to send opinions while the demographers put together their plan.  Here’s the problem with that – was it realistic to believe that volunteers would know what they need to have an opinion about before the plan was even released?  How can you give an opinion on something when you have no idea what it’s going to be based on or the scope of it?  How was it presented to volunteers and councils?  The decision to create a template based on a formula was already made by GSUSA, so how much consideration was given to councils’ and volunteers’ needs?  Was any research done on whether or not population sizes and media markets have anything to do with setting up the best foundation possible to support volunteers and the girls?  But the maps were drawn and a plan was developed, and according to the Stanford article, “In response to comments by council executives, the GSUSA team made adjustments to the initial merger plan. But the merger process that began in 2006 largely followed the maps that Cloninger and her colleagues presented at that meeting.”  So it sounds as if GSUSA executives got what they wanted without much change.  The cynic in me wonders if there wasn’t much council resistance because a large majority of people were about to lose their jobs, and they didn’t want to make waves for fear of retribution.  It happens everywhere, so why not in this case?

Unfortunately, there have been many issues caused by large councils.  Volunteers now have to travel long distances to programming.  Service units in rural areas feel cut off, isolated, and neglected.  There have been some creative solutions, but by and large, this is an issue that councils with expansive borders continue to struggle with.  These difficulties could have very well been avoided if enough research had been done during the planning process.  For inclusion to really happen, you have to go TO that group or level.  You do not just passively ASK for their opinions or suggestions about this large of a concept and then claim that you’ve gotten their input.  Between the resulting negative consequences of council mergers and from what I’ve read about this process, I don’t see where GSUSA did their homework.

Compounding this complete and utter shakeup was the departure of long-time and experienced personnel who knew and understood their council’s volunteers and what challenges they dealt with.  Retirement packages were offered, and therefore, experience and knowledge went out the door.  So at that point, we had brand new and massive councils headed up by new staff, who for the most part, do not know their volunteers and what their needs are.  It takes a lot of work and time to get to know your base, so this had to have been an overwhelming job for anyone.

Let’s play devil’s advocate.  Perhaps many of these changes were necessary regardless of whether they were wanted or not.  Although Hesselbein treats it as a different point, another aspect of inclusion is stated in her book on pg. 103:  “Some people may oppose an initiative.  As a leader, you need to respect their opinions and positions, but cannot be deterred by this.  Later, many will change their minds and join you, but not if you acted in a punitive way that diminishes them. They will never come back.  And this is a key principle in managing change, in mobilizing your people around change:  give them time to adjust, and respect their opinions.”

Was there time to adjust?  I don’t know what the magic number of years should have been, but coupled with brand new councils, staff, property sales, plus a new badge program and journey programming, I liken it to the magician who attempts to yank the tablecloth off the table while leaving the china and silverware in place.  But instead, he pulls not just the china and silverware off, but knocks the table over too in the process.

What happens when you don’t respect opinions?  Things such as the Manitou Council taking GSUSA to court happen.  I’m guessing that if a council went to this extreme course of action, they didn’t feel their opinions and positions were being respected.

Additionally, there are many stories of volunteers and staff members being pushed out when these changes occurred.  I’ve read and heard many an anecdotal story about volunteers being bullied and shown the door if they expressed disagreement with decisions whether they be GSUSA or council ones.  There are too many of these stories to dismiss them.  You don’t really hear of it anymore because those people are gone.  Sound familiar?

Addendum 10/13/16:  One thing I don’t quite understand is why there is/was so much of a belligerent attitude from GSUSA and council leaders when this was rolling out, and it makes me question why it was so important to stamp out any criticism about ramming this square peg into a round hole.  I’m a little hesitant to say this, but you can’t help but be a little suspicious about the motive due to the ferocity on display.  Or, could it be that the council leadership was just mimicking the GSUSA leadership’s attitude at the time?  Attitudes trickle down from the top.

Then there are the Journey books and badge program.  Yes, I know, dead horse.  I’ve written about them before.  But I bring them up again as obvious evidence.  Here’s a quote about Journeys from Tough Cookies on pgs. 129-130:  “We realized we needed programs that could build on girls’ past scouting experiences, resonate with diverse populations, incorporate service and citizenship and community action, and produce consistent experiences and outcomes.  These guidelines led us to design and introduce leadership ‘journeys’ – books of activities, lessons, and games – for girls of different ages.”  Who is “us?”  Was there any kind of intensive focus group research done or even hands-on field testing using girls and volunteers?  The bitter pushback against Journeys that continues to this day is evidence to the contrary and yet another inclusion fail.

So after the dust somewhat settled down and a new National CEO came on board in 2011, the next stage of this revamp began which eventually included the online Volunteer Toolkit.  Great idea!  But what kind of extensive research was done?  How long did piloting last, and did they make sure they included all sorts of troops – big and small, single and multi-level, Daisies to Ambassadors?  Did volunteers have much of a voice in creating this application, and once launched, are they able to customize it?  Troops do not have a one-size-fits-all kind of organization.  Is flexibility a key component?  Running troops is all about flexibility.  Ironically, I was actually part of a very small focus group in my council that previewed VTK a few years ago.   All I have to say is that I sure hope there was more testing and research done because all we saw was a brief presentation.  I’m going to assume there was.  Now granted, our council has not rolled out VTK as of yet (supposedly in 2017), so I may be speaking out of turn, but just the fact that it launched without multi-level troops being able to use it is beyond me.  As a former IT person who rolled out a few applications, I can’t imagine doing so when a good portion of the user base wouldn’t be able to use it.  That tells me that the deadline was more important than the end user, and that is unacceptable.  Deadlines are ultra-important in the IT world and job security is dependent on them, but it doesn’t matter if you hit that deadline if the application isn’t effective.  Even if you plan on rolling out functionality in phases, it needs to be done in a short period of time (not years), otherwise, it’s going to be hard to get the people who were turned off originally back to using it.  I’ve heard and read other complaints via the grapevine, but since I can’t speak personally to them other than what I’ve seen on YouTube training videos, I won’t use them as evidence.

All that said, can I say for sure that everything has been a mistake?  No, but obviously some things have.  And you have to go back to figure out where and when it happened and not just sweep it under the rug.  Is GSUSA starting to see the light when it comes to inclusion?  Possibly – from what I have seen with their asking for feedback regarding the National CEO search and with some other changes that are supposedly coming down the pike.  I certainly hope it’s not lip service as has been done in the past.  Results are what will be ultimately measured.

Again, I don’t say all of this just to pick at old wounds, but I think we need to seriously reassess what foundation we laid some time ago and get back to a point where inclusion is part of that foundation.

This will probably be my last post on this subject unless something else occurs to me.  I don’t want to rehash things over and over because I feel that would be counterproductive.  My aim with this series of posts was not to beat GSUSA over the head but hopefully provide a different kind of insight from the point of view of someone who was lucky enough to have been a part of the full girl experience and who also started as a volunteer after the rollout of these changes.  I hope it has been helpful.

Thanks for reading, and now back to lighter subjects!