the importance of verbal intent in the volunteer organization
This week I learned something, or rather, I first became cognizant of something I learned long ago. At one point in time, I established for myself a habit of dealing with people and situations. In my opinion, this habit is something everyone in a volunteer organization should adopt. This habit of mine is to fall back on verbal statements of intent, in absence of written statements of intent, when making important decisions. Let me explain the circumstances of this personal discovery of mine…
At the recent council of chiefs meeting, we were able to tour our new conclave site. This site, at the time, was not officially ours because paperwork was still in process. We did, however, have verbal statements of intent from the school administration that said unless something drastic were to come out of the woodwork, we had the school as our site, and that the paperwork was all we needed to make it official. With this knowledge, we moved forward and scheduled a tour. We had the verbal statement of intent from the school, and so we made a visit to the site after the council of chiefs meeting and began planning how we would use the site. We discussed where we would hold events, what limitations the site had, and other such topics. We toured the site and all agreed that we were quite happy with the new facility. Had it not been for the verbal statement of intent from the school, this useful and important site tour would not have happened.
At the site, the shows committee toured the theater. They found it to be an awesome prospect for conclave shows. The facilities committee members were hesitant to have them plan on using the theater for various reasons, but I think mainly because they didn’t want to jeopardize the still in-process facilities use agreement by asking for too much, too fast. For that reason, they requested the shows committee provide a detailed list of needs, including information on each piece of equipment needed. The shows committee, in addition to the request for the detailed list, stated verbally what they needed in general terms. Things like a projector, sound system, screen, access to curtains and backstage rooms, and lighting were mentioned.
Flash-forward by one week. The facility use paperwork is finalized, it is now time to make an official request for all the individual things we want to use, including the theater and its equipment. A short and to the point email was sent out to everyone on the council of chiefs requesting a final facilities request list. Two days after the deadline, the shows adviser contacted the facilities adviser asking for an update on the status of the theater.
Things got sticky. The facilities adviser said that they had requested the use of the theater but not the individual equipment because a formal written request was not provided. For whatever reason, the shows committee missed the email and failed to provide the list on time. Shows committee go upset, they felt that their verbal statements were enough, and in expressing their upset feelings, succeeded in upsetting the facilities people too. Now, both were upset. On one side I had the facilities people saying “don’t be mad at us, you failed to send in your formal request” while on the other side I had the shows people saying “but you knew the jist of what we wanted, why didn’t you just ask for it for us?”
Who’s right? Who’s wrong?
In seeing this argument play out, and ultimately find a peaceful resolution, I evaluated the situation while trying to stay out of the arguement. Since most of the trouble was between advisers, I let my adviser handle the conflict resolution while I, from a distance, tried to decide how I would have handled it from the perspective of the shows and facilities committee advisers. When I analyzed the situation, I realized that the best choice that could have been made was missed by the facilities committee. Knowing that shows wanted something, but for some reason failed to provide a formal request, they should have gone forward with the request on the basis of what they already knew. They knew, because the shows people verbally expressed their desires prior to their failure to also provide a written statement, what the shows people wanted, but decided not to ask for is. It was not like, that by the shows committee’s failure to provide paperwork, that they were quietly saying they didn’t want the theater anymore… all they did was miss a deadline. I feel that to an extent, while parties are definately at fault, that facilities committee could have done a better job by falling back on verbal intent.
By relying on the school’s verbal statement of intent, nothing was set in stone but we were still able to move forward and make progress in preparing conclave. Not more than a week later, this school became officially ours. Had we waited for final paperwork, the COC would never have seen the site prior to Conclave, but because of our reliance on the verbal statement of intent, we had a one week leg-up on the soon-to-be Conclave site. Not more than two weeks later, an argument and potential detrimental action by the facilities committee occurred because the verbal statement of intent was ignored, and paperwork was unnecessarily required. We can learn from this: when in doubt, fall back on verbal statements of intent. You may not always achieve perfection, but you will put yourself further ahead than if you waited for something in writing, especially when you don’t have time to wait.