Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Apr 01, 2009 11:23 am
Wed Apr 01, 2009 12:16 pm
A Pocket Guide for Leaders
Let's put a visioning document in the shirt pocket of every Tuesday Night Hero.
As an organization Scouts Canada is just as guilty of making its materials "unreadable" as WOSM, albeit for different reasons.* If someone is unlikely to read a nice document with interesting content like Scouting: An Educational System then I'll venture that they're at least as unlikely to read the BP&P. Let's solve this problem and start giving our leaders a common culture that they can draw on: put a visioning/leadership resource in the shirt pocket of every trained leader.
What would this be? A collection of inspirational facts/figures/stories alongside the ABSOLUTELY need to know parts of the BP&P. Things that are unlikely to change but that matter a lot, like the "Duty of Care" and the "Screening Chart", would go in there. Even better would be an explanation of WHY they are what they are so that when events not covered by our policies happen in the field (as they frequently do) then the leaders will have a resource to guide them to make a decision. It would be the size of the old BP&P. We would give it to every trained leader. Best of all would be a collection of important Scouting stories, facts and figures to inspire and motivate.
* Most of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) documents are commonly agreed to be a little long. I think this is a function of being precise. The downside is that while it is certainly clear and easy to read, it appears daunting to many. This is unfortunately the downfall of almost every single document in the WOSM library; while all excellent resources most are long, text heavy, and written in a slightly academic/formal tone and I think that most potential readers find this combination slightly off-putting. I think this is true even of the leaders of National Scout Organizations for whom the majority of the WOSM documents are meant (at least it seems to have been in the past for ours, anyway).
As an organization Scouts Canada is just as guilty of making its materials "unreadable" as WOSM, albeit for different reasons.* If someone is unlikely to read a nice document with interesting content like Scouting: An Educational System then I'll venture that they're at least as unlikely to read the BP&P. Let's solve this problem and start giving our leaders a common culture that they can draw on: put a visioning/leadership resource in the shirt pocket of every trained leader.
What would this be? A collection of inspirational facts/figures/stories alongside the ABSOLUTELY need to know parts of the BP&P. Things that are unlikely to change but that matter a lot, like the "Duty of Care" and the "Screening Chart", would go in there. Even better would be an explanation of WHY they are what they are so that when events not covered by our policies happen in the field (as they frequently do) then the leaders will have a resource to guide them to make a decision. It would be the size of the old BP&P. We would give it to every trained leader. Best of all would be a collection of important Scouting stories, facts and figures to inspire and motivate.
* Most of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) documents are commonly agreed to be a little long. I think this is a function of being precise. The downside is that while it is certainly clear and easy to read, it appears daunting to many. This is unfortunately the downfall of almost every single document in the WOSM library; while all excellent resources most are long, text heavy, and written in a slightly academic/formal tone and I think that most potential readers find this combination slightly off-putting. I think this is true even of the leaders of National Scout Organizations for whom the majority of the WOSM documents are meant (at least it seems to have been in the past for ours, anyway).
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." ~Aristotle
