[gryph]

This is getting dangerously close to a flamewar, MGF vs. The Boards, and that's something I think we can all agree this board doesn't need. Everyone seems to agree that that's one thing we have over the OZ report. If a newbie were to walk into this board right now to find info on the sport, they might get the impression that we were a bunch of over-political poopie-heads. In the interest of avoiding that, I would beg and plead the following:

1. Be specific. Don't rip on the org just to rip on the org. If you have something negative to say, be sure you have something to say it about, and be specific about it. Adding a new reply just to say "see, the board's not listening to us again" adds nothing to that thread.

2. Be relevant. Finding info on some kind of board expenditure, pushing it forward as a challenge, then having it get batted down as a simple rework of the existing salary system doesn't prove anything except that you're willing to take any excuse you can to rip on the organization (and I'm not saying that to anyone in particular, there were three or four people behind that one). Make sure before you bring things up for debate that they're legitimate evidence of a problem.

3. Don't beat a dead horse. If it's been covered already, don't drag it up again and try to put new teeth on it, especially if there's already been some kind of resolution on it. We are not a cow, we do not chew cud. That's just gross.

4. Be understanding. One of the great universal truths is that Nobody Does Anything Because They Think It Is Wrong. Keep that in mind. If you find something you think is wrong, and you want to raise it to Mr. Forbes here or to your own RD, don't start off combatively - it may be (and probably is) something innocent. If it looks wrong, it may be that you didn't see it clearly for lack of perspective, or it may be that they may not have gotten it for lack of member perspective. Either way, starting off in full kill mode makes you look like a rabid pooch and is not going to get the kind of constructive response we need, even if your point is valid.

We absolutely need to get away from trying to bring up every little thing like it's some kind of huge injustice. Have a little perspective - the feeling I get from all of this is that the USHPA is simply too bogged down in its own bureaucratic mire to be very responsive to the members - which is exactly when a director can start looking at something like the logo vote and go "no, all the processes were handled perfectly; if you think it went wrong, move to appoint a subcommitee to review the decision," rather than "Hmm. That does look a bit strange, yes. Maybe we should have another look at how we did that." I think it's the process, not necesarily the people, that is at fault.

When the membership starts feeling that it's not being heard, whether it's layers of bureaucracy that are at fault or there IS in fact a Dr. Evil wearing a paragliding harness sitting somewhere in the middle going "Mmmyes, the world is mine! MUahahahaha," the sum total either way is that the members are right. But you can't attack individual people about the bureaucracy and hope for results, whereas a Dr. Evil can be dethroned. I think it's the former rather than the latter that we're dealing with, and if that's the case then cooler heads are called for, no matter how we fix things.

[Radwhacker]

poopie-head?

[gryph]

[Radwhacker]

BTW - all of your posts I have seen so far are articulate and well-reasoned. Keep it up.

I'll continue to represent the unwashed masses.

[sg]

Well said gryph, but it doesnt seem to leave much room for discussion.

There would be no dead horses to beat if ushpa took a moment to take members objections to heart and address them.

If ushpa took a poll with the graph which depicted which logo they chose, and the logo the membership chose, and asked if this was fair, I seriously doubt the response would be very good. But they would never do this on their own. A good org that noticed the complaints generated by an action such as the logo change, would poll their membership and get some customer satisfaction numbers. Thats what we do at our company. But then again, we have competitors and have to keep our customers happy to stay in business. So I suggest ushpa start taking some cust sat polls around decisions like this, even if they are monopoly.

So I guess the question now is, what is the official process to get them to do something? I just checked the ushpa website, and couldnt find anything. Mark tells us to contact our RD's but before I do that, I still want to know if this is how the logo change came into being in the first place. If not, I wonder why ushpa gets to do it one way without all the red tape, and members have to do it another way by getting the troops together and getting RD support.

If ushpa listened to the objections, I dont think any rational person could conclude that this was handled well. I really dont think we should have to go thru such a massive effort, to fix something so obviously mishandled.

I also dont agree we should sit by and throw our hands up just because a decision has already been made. Seems like a bad dynamic to me. Teaches ushpa that if they can just shove something thru real quick, it will stick and there will be no accountability.

So how do I get an email list for the membership? That would be the first step to see if there is any support for this.

[gryph]

[tizeagle]

[mgforbes]

[gryph]

I have no trouble believing you are an engineer. I would hazard a guess that you're either a double-E or a software engineer, and that you work for a well established and fairly draconian organization. The granularity of your focus is INSANELY fine, but in this case is not an asset. Step back with me for a moment and look from a more empirical perspective. I will be as direct and specific as I can - after all, that's the whole point of the thread.

First the basic problem of perception. The general, over-arching complaint is that the membership is not being "heard." To respond to this with:

[gryph]

There. That got ungodly long. Post delivered.

[sg]

Great post gryph, really nails it.

To put it another way, the whole system is effectively rigged to prevent debate or a reversal.

No member is going to suffer thru 7 layers of ushpa beauracracy (7 rings of ushpa hell? ) to get them to agree that they screwed up the process and a re-do should be done. Just look at what percentage of logo's were just thrown out without giving the people a chance to fix them. Simply horribly run.

We absolutely should not have to start this process all over again. The point is, it wasnt done right in the first place, and ushpa is simplying hiding behind their own beaucratic process as a means of avoiding this issue. I for one think ushpa is horrible at listening to its members. I get convinced of this more and more as time goes by and the more I deal with them. This is not how a membership org should be acting.

With such little faith that ushpa would actually do something if someone poured their personal time into fixing this, the probability of anyone even attempting it is close to zero.

I wager if someone tried to do a logo redo, hey would get stone walled at all 7 layers of ushpa. You can already hear the excuses "there are more important things to work on" blah blah. Well, guess what, it was important enough to change the logo in the first place, so why is it suddenly not important to have a properly chosen logo?????

ushpa is lucky they are not a private company operating in a competitive market. I seriously doubt they would have customer satisfaction numbers high enough to stay afloat.

[gryph]

The thing is I think mgforbes was saying in the original logo thread that they thought it was the top acceptible member-chosen logo - but even if a new vote were to choose the same logo again, after being run properly, it'd still be worth having re-run the vote JUST to make the membership know SOMEONE IS LISTENING.

[mgforbes]

Despite the description if it, it's not really all that difficult.

1) Convince some regional director to champion your cause. It helps if
you lay out your argument in detail, and present the specific things that
you think should be changed. Back before I was on the BOD, I asked
that the rules for H2/P2 include a requirement that pilots understand and
acknowledge the site-specific rules and their importance to maintaining
our access to sites. This was in response to an incident locally. When
I complained to Steve Roti, he told me to write up what I wanted to see
in the SOPs, and he'd present it to the proper committee. That's what
I did. I got the existing language, edited it to add what I wanted in the
same format and style, and emailed it off to Steve.

2) RD takes it to the proper committee for discussion. In general, as a
committee chair I don't deny reasonable requests for agenda items. It
*is* my prerogative as chairman to set the agenda, but in general I'll
allow an RD to bring an issue for discussion. There are exceptions; I
asked for legal counsel's advice on one from last spring, because there
were reasons for concern. But usually, no problemo. If the committee
decides that the idea has merit, they'll either approve as-is, or tweak it
a little based on the discussion outcome. For my SOP change back-then
Steve took it to Safety and Training, which manages the SOPs related to
ratings. After discussion, they changed a word or two and passed it on.

3) Committee report is read out in general session and voted on. Until
then, the report is just advisory. When the BOD votes to accept it in
general session, then-and-only-then does it become the official "action
of the board". At that point, it's done.

4) Beyond that, if the action requires a change to the Bylaws, SOPs or
Articles, then the Organization and Bylaws committee takes the approved
committee report and deals with the formatting, numbering and so on to
fit it into the right spot in the policy manual, and updates the online copy
to reflect the changes. Any action items generated by the approved report
are loaded into AIMS, which causes computer-generated nagging to the
people responsible for getting those items done.

Yes, this is not as simple as a dictatorship. It also has enough checks and
balances to make it hard to do stupid things without sufficient review and
discussion. We get the occasional enthusiast with a single-issue focus,
and the process helps to insure that we don't implement things that are
bad ideas without enough thought. Not always, but mostly.

FWIW, new stickers were available at the Rat Race. Folks seemed to like
'em, and they were going on cars. I think they look nice. You'll be getting
one of each (old and new) in the July issue of the magazine, out next week.

MGF