As former Techo Club president, our club was made up of over 200 high school students, or at least that’s what one could say when looking at the number of members that we had on our Facebook page last year. But if you asked me how many of those 200 students were truly committed to the club, I would have to say that the number did not exceed 20 or 30. Whenever I, or another club member would post a reminder for a meeting, or a sign up sheet for an upcoming event, the post would not get any more than 20 likes. Now I know that the number of likes one gets on a Facebook post isn’t necessarily the best indicator of commitment, but when only 20 out of 200 club members show up to a scheduled meeting, it’s clear that commitment is lacking. For those members who are involved, it often feels like planning an event is more of a drag than a genuine excitement because the hardest part of planning is the part which should be easiest, and that is making sure that those who claim to be a part of the group are truly involved and pulling through with what they’ve said they are going to do.
So I’m not quite sure what the solution to this is, but what I do know is that a lot of this boils down to the importance of INITIATIVE and COMMITMENT. In Blendz, we were initially struggling with having people take initiative, but after changing our businesses structure, and assigning specific positions for specific people, I’ve noticed how we’ve all started to take more initiative because we feel a greater sense of responsibility.
Take Hines, our director of events. In just two days she managed to organize everything that we needed for the conference sale last Tuesday, as well as everything that we will need for the Christmas Bazaar that is still two week away. Or take DD, our Director of Media, for the past week and a half she’s been focusing solemnly on the creation of a promotional kickstart video to help us raise funds for the business. Assigning people specific roles has not simply allowed everyone to know what they have to get done, but its led them towards taking the necessary steps to make sure those things get done without being told to do so.
Thus, I think it’s fair to say that although initiative is a complicated thing, the recent changes that we’ve made with the structure of Blendz have proven that it’s something that can be worked on; initiative is something that can be learned.