[shark]

www.thebmc.co.uk/bmc-organisational-review-group-newsletter-january-2018

BMC Organisational Review Group Newsletter: January 2018
Posted by Ray Wigglesworth on 25/01/2018
 
The January newsletter from the independent BMC Organisational Review Group proposes a revised timeline for consideration and adoption of the group’s recommendations.

Since the launch of the Organisational Review Group (ORG) report in Autumn last year at the Kendal Mountain Festival, the ORG has continued to work, together with the membership, in an ongoing debate on the pros and cons of the recommendations contained within the report.

We have attended area meetings in all ten BMC areas, organised a further members’ survey, and held focus group meetings and discussions with National Council, in order to obtain feedback on our proposals for change to the organisational structure and governance of the BMC. In the main, the groundswell of opinion from the members is in favour of our recommendations.

We have received some constructive criticism, and taking this into account, we are going to change some of the detail and produce an addendum to the report which will be available at the beginning of March.

We are also conscious of the fact that some members were concerned about the timescale and so we are proposing adjourning the AGM and moving the date back from April 2018 to June 2018. At the AGM in June there would be a simple resolution to vote for some of the general principles contained in the ORG Report. If this resolution is approved then a new set of Articles of Association for the BMC could be drafted and form the basis of a Special Resolution to be placed before a second General Meeting of the BMC in November 2018.

PROPOSED EXTENDED TIMELINE
January / February Area meetings
17 February National Council meeting
2 March Addendum to ORG report published
April Area meetings
28 April National Council meeting
May / June Area meetings

• 15 June National Council meeting
  16 June AGM to vote on general principles
  June / August Preparation of new Articles 
  August / September Area meetings
  15 September National Council meeting
  October / November Area meetings
  9 November National Council meeting
  10 November General Meeting to vote on new Articles

The extension of the timetable gives you, the members, more time to consider the proposed ORG recommendations, with a period of almost five months prior to the AGM, when a vote will be required on the general principles, and then a further period of reflection of five months, prior to the vote on the new Articles of Association in November 2018.

After we have published our addendum to the report, in March 2018, the ORG will begin to take a back seat in the debate, handing over the job of implementation to the president, the Executive and National Council.

It is now of the utmost importance that the membership and National Council get behind the president and the Executive, in support of the general principles set out in the ORG report recommendations. The old Articles of Association are out of date, contain conflicting provisions and are not fit for purpose for the BMC in the 21st Century.

The ORG has prepared a briefing paper to support discussions at the January / February round of area meetings.
DOWNLOAD: January 2018 BMC ORG Local Areas Briefing Paper  

[shark]

The extension of the timetable gives you, the members, more time to consider the proposed ORG recommendations, with a period of almost five months prior to the AGM, when a vote will be required on the general principles, and then a further period of reflection of five months, prior to the vote on the new Articles of Association in November 2018.

 

 

[Oldmanmatt]

... when there will be a meeting to discuss the possibility of arranging a meeting , to review the previous meeting and debate the pros and cons of preparing a report on the viability of the conclusions of the previous report and establish a format for a meeting, where the membership can review the review and...

[petejh]

Clearly Simon's just impatient to have his bonus signed off for luring in Cotswold and that a.n.other outdoor brand whose name I've already forgotten to 'commercially partner' with him; before Wrigglesworth notices it was all an elaborate white collar scam to fund a huge purchase of 5.10 Blancos for the next 10 years of Oak attempts. 

[shark]

A website has been set up by Crag Jones which hosts a few letters and articles relating to the ORG review with a view to inviting further letters and opinion pieces and discussion.

It includes a couple of more recent letters from Bob Pettigrew and an opinion piece from Phil Bartlett who previously wrote a similar polemic for Grough .

How partisan this turns out to be remains to be seen but gives an insight into the sort of lobbying going on behind the scenes. A piece of me died reading the letters.

https://sites.google.com/view/bmc-rr/introduction







 

[Oldmanmatt]

Honestly, I did not find Phil’s piece to be on the same wavelength as “the letter”.

He seemed to clearly grasp that the Pettigrews are just the expressing of a personal preference and conflating it with a deep (almost spiritual) orthodoxy; that (in truth) never existed.
He points out that (like many “Traditional national dress costumes” and even “national traditions”) the ethos they cling to is merely the passing fashion of their formative years.

He even recognised those things in his own attitudes.

“Death of British Mountaineering”?

To use the modern idiom:
WTF?
(Was That Facetious?)

I wrote this on Gaz P’s thread discussing Shauna’s success (excuse me as I quote myself 😝):

“Look, I’m a mountaineer/exped leader etc etc. (Pretty much retired now, so “was”). I love the mountains. I have “been” all the different types of climber you can be (except dry tooling (wtf!)).
How do you realistically expect Mountaineering to attract public funding in the modern world? Is it cutting edge exploration? (No, hardly a peak that hasn’t had hundreds stood atop it). Is it record breakingly heroic stuff of epic daring do? (Well, in a way, yes. But frankly “we’re going to climb the same mountain we did last year, but 20 mtrs to the right of last years route, because it’s a bit harder, and we’ll be wearing clown shoes” does not excite the populace).
People understand “Sport”. They can get behind a competition and it’s competitors, even if they have only the vaguest notion of what’s actually going on.
And this is “people’s “ money, not “climbers” or “mountain lovers” or (even) the BMC’s.
If you think this money would be better spent on conservation and access issues, then you are barking up the wrong budget tree.
And, if that’s what you think, you should be arguing to de-fund the entire Olympic/UK Sport effort and redirect the lot to your chosen cause. Why should competitive climbing not be funded if Gymnastics is?”

So slightly to the right of the topic, but relevant.

I’ll pinch another comment from that thread, in summation:

“It’s not you Phil, it’s the argument. It has some merit, but I find it flawed. A quick reckoning over lunch (before I go back to painting my new “Top out” boulder), I’ve been listening to this same line of reasoning for ~40 years...
And yet, the crowds at Stanage are still the same few Uni clubs as 30 years ago (in fact, I think there are less of them than in the late80s and 90s). Bosigran is not a bolted sport climbing Mecca and the sods on the catwalk are still better than me.
And Simon still hasn’t climbed the Oak. All quiet on the Western front and normality reigns...”

[tomtom]

Anyway - as far as I understand the situation - it’s going to take 18-24 months to act on the review that’s taken place (think local authority/bbc style buerocracy operating at snails pace).

Which is fine - all should be done right etc. Blah blah. But in the meantime the BMC will not get half a million £££’a year...

[shark]

ORG Final report now out

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/organisational-review-final-report

The final report from the BMC Organisational Review Group (ORG*) was published this morning and has now been formally handed over to the BMC to determine the next steps.

Over the last nine months the ORG has put enormous time, effort and thought – literally 1,000s of voluntary hours – into the range of recommendations it suggests are necessary to modernise and improve the operation of the BMC for the future.

The recommendations will now go to the BMC National Council and Area Meetings to work out how to proceed from here. The BMC AGM originally planned for 28 April will now take place on 16 June (Castle Green Hotel, Kendal) to enable discussion at the April Area meetings.

The final report includes some significant amendments compared to the original document, including:

Greater recognition for the role of clubs within the BMC;

• A revised board structure with improved member representation;
  More member representation on the Nominations Committee;
  Greater clarity on organisational structure (ref: structure chart, p 17);
  Clarification on the promotion of growth and participation in climbing & hill walking; and
  A firm recommendation to set up a subsidiary for competition climbing and the GB Team.

DOWNLOAD: ORG Amended Recommendations Report

An ‘independent’ discussion site has been set up by former BMC vice president Crag Jones to enable interested members to share their views on the ORG recommendations.

The immediate next steps are that an additional National Council meeting is being held on 10 March to discuss the revised recommendations and begin working out the specific proposals to be put to the April Area meetings. An ORG Implementation Working Group was set up at the 17 February National Council meeting and this group is now taking the lead on the issue.

[Offwidth]

Anyway - as far as I understand the situation - it’s going to take 18-24 months to act on the review that’s taken place (think local authority/bbc style buerocracy operating at snails pace).

Which is fine - all should be done right etc. Blah blah. But in the meantime the BMC will not get half a million £££’a year...

Why not get a paper written on that on Crag's site. There were clear concerns expressed at the Peak Area meeting on the delays and the implications of that, not just on funding (some funded posts have already gone) but on volunteer support ... that going to hillwalking especially... and the morale (and genuine worries for the future) of BMC staff (especially those on fixed term contracts and those in the exec who are constantly under attack from some quarters). I can hardly find any ordinary climbers or hillwalkers (ie those who have no contact with the BMC other than their membership and general support of the good work the organisation does) who are concerned at all about governance,  as long as its legal and not all going to explode again in 5 minutes.  Going to the NW area meeting (taxi driver for Lynn in her new exec duties) was like travelling to a parallel area meeting universe, half those there (of about 15 voting members) looked like governance wonks. Debate was good (excepting some paranoia from Jim Gregson of the BMC 30) but the thrust seemed to me to be completely detached from the concerns of the average BMC member and the implications of further delay on the organisation (aside from a few including the only woman voting and the only other voting person under 50) . If their concerns continue and dominate the agenda the process will take much longer than if the clear message is: get on with it, ease the pressure on BMC employees  and ensure that and the volunteers can get back to as close to 11 on the scale of the good work they normally do in less troubled times.

[shark]

Anyway - as far as I understand the situation - it’s going to take 18-24 months to act on the review that’s taken place (think local authority/bbc style buerocracy operating at snails pace).

Which is fine - all should be done right etc. Blah blah. But in the meantime the BMC will not get half a million £££’a year...

Why not get a paper written on that on Crag's site.

You can sign it as coming from the 'UKB Furtive'

[JR]

Here's a short (ish) blog summarising some of the subsequent discussion and next steps, a place to download the reports, and in some ways a signing off from the ORG.  Now is the time for the members to really get behind the discussions.

https://johnroberts.me/outdoors/climbing/2018/03/what-next-bmc-org-governance-sport-england

[shark]

Hi John,

Thanks for the write up and the exceptional amount of work I know you put in as part of the ORG team - duly wadded.

The report is essentially an ambitious programme of modernisation which I hope isn't significantly watered down in the horse trading that may now go on to appease a minority of highly engaged reactionaries. Trouble is a 75% vote is required to get through the constitutional changes through and given that only 2,500 out of 84,000 members voted on the well publicised "motion of no confidence" proposal the influence of this minority is proportionally high. Online voting might partially help redress the imbalance.

In defence of the 81,500 that didn't vote on the MOM (and largely are likely not to vote on constitutional amendments) they didn't sign up as BMC members to learn about and become embroiled in governance issues and however you dress it up governance is about as dry a subject as it gets - an example where importance is indirectly proportional to interestingness.

It is frustrating that the BMC failed to reform itself and needed this external input of the ORG to catalyse change. It would have been far better if a lot of the thorny political and constitutional issues had been sorted out largely out of the public eye years ago (in the way that club block voting was addressed under Mark Vallance) rather than festering until a crunch point and crisis was reached and the lid of Pandora's box was blown off. For example, governance issues on primacy have been raised by Sport England for years but there was no leadership drive to deal with that when I was on National Council. 

My main overall bugbear is that all of this is entirely inward looking rather than what the BMC should be doing which is be outward looking - doing the job of representing and promoting the interest of members, climbers etc.

Whilst some introspection is healthy this has gone way, way beyond that. The timelines have been extended for making decisions and meanwhile we are likely to continue trading with a 6 figure deficit whilst potential grant money from Sport England goes down the toilet. Furthermore many projects or work that is ambitious/contentious will be stalled or slowed down whilst issues remain unresolved and the attentions of (currently risk averse) decision makers are elsewhere.   

However, we are where we are and have to deal with it.

Next step - Let's see what emerges from yesterday's National Council meeting. 

[JR]

Thanks Simon. There’s very little, if anything, to disagree with there.  Governance is as dry as gorilla grip, but wider engagement in policy decisions is almost as much about governance as voting at an AGM is, it avoids the crunch points in future.  At least with a greater “turnout” everyone has a greater confidence in the validity of the decision.

As chair of ABCTT (NICAS), I’m acutely aware of the funding issues and frustrating timelines. The pace has to pick up, it’s totally possible to resolve with the right motivation, risk taking, leadership and by picking the battles carefully.

[teestub]

...meanwhile we are likely to continue trading with a 6 figure deficit whilst potential grant money from Sport England goes down the toilet. Furthermore many projects or work that is ambitious/contentious will be stalled or slowed down whilst issues remain unresolved and the attentions of (currently risk averse) decision makers are elsewhere.   

Does the BMC have the coffers to support such a deficit, or will there be cuts to programmes/jobs/mountain mending whilst this is being sorted?

I’m not surprised that the BMC don’t want to do anything (further) contentious and that they are risk averse, they’re a governing body, not hedge fund managers after all.

[shark]

...meanwhile we are likely to continue trading with a 6 figure deficit whilst potential grant money from Sport England goes down the toilet. Furthermore many projects or work that is ambitious/contentious will be stalled or slowed down whilst issues remain unresolved and the attentions of (currently risk averse) decision makers are elsewhere.   

Does the BMC have the coffers to support such a deficit, or will there be cuts to programmes/jobs/mountain mending whilst this is being sorted?

Yes we have a substantial cash reserve and the office is unmortgaged. I sometimes think that this strong financial position has given the BMC the luxury of not having to make hard decisions on priorities or a drive for value for money.

I’m not surprised that the BMC don’t want to do anything (further) contentious and that they are risk averse, they’re a governing body, not hedge fund managers after all.

Sorry that wasn't clear. I was alluding mainly to the risk of criticism. The BMC is so interconnected with other organisations and special interest groups that it is hard not to change something without upsetting one group or another. Rest assured the Finance Committee is very prudent - hence the large cash reserve all kept in mainstream deposit accounts earning bugger all interest you may be pleased to hear.

[tomtom]

...meanwhile we are likely to continue trading with a 6 figure deficit whilst potential grant money from Sport England goes down the toilet. Furthermore many projects or work that is ambitious/contentious will be stalled or slowed down whilst issues remain unresolved and the attentions of (currently risk averse) decision makers are elsewhere.   

Does the BMC have the coffers to support such a deficit, or will there be cuts to programmes/jobs/mountain mending whilst this is being sorted?

I’m not surprised that the BMC don’t want to do anything (further) contentious and that they are risk averse, they’re a governing body, not hedge fund managers after all.

http://www.kickassfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/The-Wolf-of-Wall-Street.jpg[/img]]

[shark]

Less of that insurbordination. Teestub said we are a governing body. That makes you my bitch.

[teestub]

... hence the large cash reserve all kept in mainstream deposit accounts earning bugger all interest you may be pleased to hear.

I like the idea of you having a monthly meeting with the head honchos, attempting to get them to get their money to 'work harder for them', the first slide of which is always 'this is not a pyramid scheme' :-)

[shark]

I've split the discussion on the participation recommendation to a new thread here

[teestub]

Shark, will the ORG stuff go to vote at the AGM as a single package, or split into separate issues? Seems like there is stronger feeling in some areas than others!

[shark]

My understanding is that the current mood on National Council is to split it, with the aspects relating to constitutional changes taking priority with a vote just on that in the short term.

[Crag Jones]

The reason this issue is of paramount importance is that the argument is not about a particular decision,

IT’S ABOUT HOW DECISIONS ARE MADE AND BY WHOM

Please forgive the capitals, but that’s the nub of it. Those proposed changes will inevitably affect all future decisions, drastically reducing the scope for member input. That’s what all the fuss is about.

The ORG proposals are highly contentious in both respects in that:

a) they are saying that a board of directors should be primarily responsible for taking future decisions not membership bodies.

b) also that a high proportion of that board is ‘appointed’, not elected, and furthermore, those appointees can then go on to make further appointments, further reducing members potential to influence the course of the BMC.

"Give us your money and we'll decide what's good for you and whilst we're at it, we'll decide who 'we' are as well." sums it up really.

To add insult to injury, all this has come out of an Organizational Review that was meant to address the lack of accountability. Their conclusions are exacerbating the problem not alleviating it. They review did not engage the membership or be honest with them about alternative options or why the favoured outcome was pursued.

Even as we speak the already contentious proposals are being re-written so the need for the board to seek members ‘approval’ is being further reduced so they only need to ‘consult’ and ‘consider’ the membership. Beyond that a largely unelected body can do what it wants.

There has been a lot of stuff written on this. Please see:
https://sites.google.com/view/bmc-rr/reviewdocuments
before the turkeys vote for Christmas!

[Will Hunt]

The more I read from the so called BMC30 and their chums, the less inclined I am to listen to their arguments. They've already discredited themselves by lying and trying to mislead people to get their own way, so why would I trouble myself with trying to pick through their ramblings to find anything of substance. It's a shame because there might be the odd shred of sense lurking here and there.

I know it might upset you that people go sport climbing and indoor climbing and bouldering nowadays, but nobody's going to make you do that stuff if you don't want to, Crag.

[highrepute]

Couldn't agree more Will.

[spidermonkey09]

The more I read from the so called BMC30 and their chums, the less inclined I am to listen to their arguments. They've already discredited themselves by lying and trying to mislead people to get their own way, so why would I trouble myself with trying to pick through their ramblings to find anything of substance. It's a shame because there might be the odd shred of sense lurking here and there.

I know it might upset you that people go sport climbing and indoor climbing and bouldering nowadays, but nobody's going to make you do that stuff if you don't want to, Crag.

Spot on Will, and remarkably polite about the so called BMC 30. Statesmanlike in comparison to my word choice!