Visioning Project, February 20, 2011
Attendance = 18
Our facilitators were from the Houghton Rotary Club: Bill Mussleman, Eldon Johnson and Bob Sharkey. Our own Rich Schaefer coordinated the event.
We were asked a question: What is Rotary? Our answers included Service, Fun, Fellowship, and “What ever you want it to be”. This was followed by explaining our Club was to think 5 yrs ahead. We use the process to define goals that will be built by consensus.
Rotary International expects each Club to improve it’s Continuity of Leadership by providing long term goals for each Club Pres to work towards, improve our consistency of programming and to build by solidarity in purpose. We were asked to be bold, suspend our practical side, think outside the box, dream big, and leave our individual baggage outside the room.
A description of our Club Board committees could include Administration, Public Relations, Membership, Service Projects and Foundation.
The visioning process started with each Rotarian transporting themselves to the year 2016. Our instructions were to write a description of the CLK Club’s activities and membership; as if our club was receiving a prestigious international award. We had 10 categories to complete and 30 minutes to write our ideas.
Each of the 10 items was discussed and ideas collected from the group and written on flip-charts. Ideas came from every one!
Each Rotarian was given 29 Blue dots. Once all the ideas were documented on the flip charts, we placed the blue dots by the ideas each felt were the best in that category. When the first round was completed, our facilitators kept the top 3 ideas for each category and deleted the rest. We voted a second time with red dots. Once that round was completed, the surviving ideas became our goals. I did not have time or opportunity to write them down so they will be reported at a future date.
At this point, we appointed a Club Vision Coordinator whose task is to compile the charts and prepare to present to the Club. That person is Rich Schaefer. We also appointed a committee of 3 to prepare a vision statement or “elevator speech” for our Club based upon the information gathered tonight.
Our next steps are to have a meeting to present the information to the club (within 6 weeks or sooner). President Tim needs to assemble a President’s Development committee (consisting of several Past Presidents and the current President) to meet and coordinate the Planning. We also need to identify a club Visioning Champion.
All the above steps are designed to continue the Visioning process and use the data to further develop our Club.
I thought the event was well done. Eldon, Bob and Bill did a good job keeping us on track. The ideas and thoughts were good. Comments were supportive and creative. And..we had fun.
February 23 Regular Meeting:
Attendance: 15 members, no guests.
Tim Baroni presided over happy dollars and announcements, including the Reverend Peter’s announcement that his son and daughter-in-law have given birth to a son, presumably a future champion cyclist and cross country skier.
Tim then conducted some business including thanking all those who participated in the Visioning exercise last week and the announcement that the Visioning process will move into the analysis and organization phase with results to be brought to the Club for consideration.
In addition Tim discussed the upcoming spaghetti dinner (March 11), announcing that all club members will be responsible for (and will be billed for) 8 tickets. Tickets were distributed for member sale. The spaghetti dinner fund-raiser will be at Irish Times from 4pm to 8pm. All members are expected to be there to help and to also contribute a dessert to the meal.
The program was by Kevin Store who talked about The “Perfect Storm” of physician recruitment. He noted that recruitment of medical professionals into the area has a bit effect on the quality of our medical institutions and the local economy. He also described the health care professionals as in short supply due to training bottlenecks – specifically residency programs.
The Perfect Storm is caused by 3 items: Retiring physicians, the residency bottleneck and an increasing patient load, leading
to a shortage of professionals. Current needs at Portage Health are in the areas of Orthopedic surgery, OB/GYN, Family Medicine and Internal Medicine. It did not appear that Kevin was successful in recruiting any of the attendees into any of these areas.(Kevin making a salient point during his presentation of the Perfect Storm.)
