Plea to the CS Directors

[Andy Howie]

I would suggest the following:

- all emails are acknowledged within 4 days with a timescale of when a detailed reply will be given
- questions raised to directors on the forum are answered within a week
- minutes of meetings are issued within 2-3 weeks so that everyone is aware of their action points
- delegate! Form sub-committees if you are too busy to do something. You don't need to be on them. Just have them report through to you. Even just ask someone else to form it if you are too busy yourselves.

Please remember that everything improves through communication.

Good evening Derek,

The following is not an attack on anyone nor should it be taken that way. I like a lot of the suggestions that are being made here.

Emails are not always the best form to communicate with, they can easily be misunderstood through the lack of emotion or body language, missed or are not delivered. I received a mail today via a third party asking why I had not responded to a mail, checking back over my mails (I have all my mails for at least the last 10 years, sad I know!) I had not received it. I can list a multitude of reasons why that happens. I would suggest that if someone has a burning issue, then pick up the phone to the person, speak to them at the next congress etc etc.

Not all directors are on the Forum, whilst I am happy to answer questions that I can, I don't think we can force directors to come on here. One of my predecessors was a big advocate of Directors not posting. Personally I think it is a good thing and it is good to see that Directors are happy in general to answer on here.

Minutes I agree, when the AGM is over they will be up quickly, I have a draft of the first part and will have the completed minutes up within three weeks of the meeting (barring an act of God)

Delegation is a wonderful tool, for delegation to work efficiently you need volunteers to delegate to. Here is an example from just this year. I delegated a task. It was a fairly important task (and I refuse to go into specifics as that is unfair on the people involved), but it was not completed. There are ramifications for us because of that. Alex McFarlane has long suggested that each director has a team under them. I would love to see this but we are painfully short of volunteers (see arbiter list for a good example) and to be fair to them, looking at the way people who give their time to, for a want of a better word, chess admin, often become targets of people who don't agree with the way things are done but won't contribute themselves, do you blame them? (This may come across wrongly but I hope you get what I mean!).

In the last 2-3 weeks I have received so many mails from people across the chess spectrum in Scotland tired of what is going on, it is really incredible.

What really has to happen is for the infighting to stop. I will take a specific example here, we need people like Mike Hanley leading Chess in Schools. Why would I say this? Look at what he has done in South Lanarkshire! Imagine that being replicated throughout Scotland. That is something worth "fighting" for. It doesn't matter what you think of Mike, good or bad, look at the results.

How do we stop the infighting? Let me put it another way, What would it take to stop the infighting? The entire directorate to resign? That is not really a desirable goal for anyone. The problem is each "faction" is so entrenched and unwilling to work with the other "factions" every mistake is over analysed, every comment has its motive questioned. We need to work smarter, not harder. We need to be working on moving chess forward in Scotland, not constantly looking backwards and dragging up the past.

2014 is fast approaching, we have 14 days left and that is the end of one of the most turbulent years I can remember in Chess Scotland. 2014 is going to be a big year and I appeal to all members and non-members to make a special effort to heal this rift and bring the national organisation back to where is was. 1 year from now if we are still where we are at the moment (or God forbid even worse), then there is no future for Chess Scotland. If we can't resolve our differences and move on then we don't deserve to have a national organisation.

Derek, there are a lot of frustrated members, non-members and directors out there. The biggest source of the frustration at the moment is the constant fighting. Solve that and everything else listed will resolve.