Guest Speaker, introduced by Lori McLeod was our own Peter Lawrie. He presented a very interesting discussion entitled, “ Journey Through Chaos”.

He advised that normally in a crisis, management and ownership act unilaterally and brutally. He wants the workers (and union) to get involved in the crisis and work collaboratively to help the organization through change. He said that the starting point was to make it public to the organization to declare a big game. “Big promises are often exceeded, small promises are not met”. (People generally do not want to waste time on things that do not matter.) Invite and enrol all members of the organization to help through a medium size project of one to three months. He went on to explain a number of organizational myths, some of which are as follows:

a. that you need a crisis to make change;
b. it takes a long time to make a significant change; (Pete added that if you say it will take a long time it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.)
c. that you must get all the issues and relationships fixed before you can make change; (Pete advised that if you get to the end result you actually change those things that stood in your way.)
d. Pete advised that the saddest of all myths was that if you need to beat the budget, it will turn out.

Pete went on to advise that a bold future is the essence of change. A bold future is really planning backwards. The example used was a topical Rotary example of eliminating polio. Two ways to look at this project are that there will be a significant reduction in polio over 35 years versus the bold statement of eliminating polio by 2012. Going on with specific goals to get to this overall goal what is necessary to do in each year leading up to that - the idea being to set the goal and work backwards.

Pete was thanked roundly by Ross McLaughlin for his speech, which was very inspiring.

PROGRAMS and DUTY ROSTER FOR MEETINGS 2008