August 28, 2020
Dear Everyone:
More news on the ARMA front…
About four years ago, when I was the
(reluctant) President of the Mount Diablo Chapter, we experienced a
sharp drop in Member participation, which is one way of looking at the
fact that no one was coming to our monthly Meetings.
At the time, the “Advisor for Membership and Marketing” for the
Pacific Region was a fellow that I’m calling “Clancy”.
“Clancy” came down on us like the proverbial
ton of bricks. He kept
“suggesting” useless solutions to “revitalize” the Chapter and
vigorously threatened to “close it down” if we didn’t follow through on
them. I checked with ARMA
International, and they assured me that “Clancy” didn’t have the
authority to do any such thing.
It’s possible that someone from “Headquarters” had a word or two
with “Clancy”. After that he
resigned himself to little more than sniping at us at every opportunity.
We were not alone when it came to a drop in
Membership and participation.
All of the Chapters were having the same problem.
Frankly, the Local Chapter model could hardly stand up to the
remarkable change in technology that meant people didn’t need to belong
to a Chapter to find information and network with others of like minds.
Add to that, the complication of Covid-19, which precluded any
local networking in any case, and I suspect that the “Golden Age of
Local Chapters” is coming to an end.
Last March, “Clancy”, now Manager for the
Pacific Region, suggested merging the three Bay Area Chapters back down
into one. It was put to the
Members of all three Chapters and received a resounding chorus of “Yes!”
votes.
Next, it was decided that each Chapter should
survey its individual Members again.
Out of 15 Mount Diablo Members still loyally hanging on, ten
actually responded to the Survey.
FYI, this is a very good response rate.
Of those ten, nine voted to Merge.
Only one Member voted against the idea.
You guessed it:
“Clancy” was the one and only dissenting voice.
Why?
Who knows? Maybe he’s
suddenly seeing his total number of Chapters dwindling.
Or maybe he just enjoys being contrary.
Regardless, he’s making life miserable for our
current Chapter President, “Becky”.
She recently asked me if I would like to replace “Veronica” as a
representative for our Chapter on the Tri-Chapter
Steering Committee currently dealing with the whole “Merger” thing.
I refrained from laughing in her face.
Instead I politely declined, without explanation.
The truth is, I’ve survived three major mergers and some smaller
ones, usually one corporate department gulping down another, in the past
40+ years. So my expertise
could be useful to the Committee.
But I’ve learned a few things in those 40+
years. And one of them is to
stay as far away from “Clancy” as I can get.
I’ll just sit quietly in a corner and privately chortle every
time I hear “Clancy” try to squirm out of what was his idea in the first
place.
It’s just so much more fun that way.
Love, as always,
Pete
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