Tuesday, April 3, 2012

SO CONFUSED

Here is a portion of a transmittal from the Global Planning Table Chair to the GPT constituency:

"We anticipate closing the April meeting with a facilitated discussion with all Committee members, designed to begin formulation of  broad mission areas and identified subsidiary topics within each mission area, to be considered more fully by Working Groups of the GPT Committee. These Working Groups -- which will be expected to do their work in late Spring and during the summer months -- are intended to be the foundation for the Commissions we will be forming, for the second stage of our Committee's work."

I know, I'm so stupid. It's so self-explanatory -- we have a Committee and we have Working Groups and we have Commissions. But, then we also have a GPT Design Document, a Consultant (just one? Jeez) and an Advisory Group  (that's the rubber stamp that helped to frame this thing). OK, have you got it now? Oh, wait, there is also the "Executive Steering Committee," how could we forget that?

If you understand the difference between and among the Advisory Group, the Committee, the Working Groups and the Commissions, then the members are asked to answer the following four questions
  1. "What are the 3-5 most important global issues that are open to philanthropic intervention if the Jewish community could devote sufficient resources on a large scale? 
  2. If our collective work had an additional $50 million in dollars (I didn't write these, friends) to allocate to global needs, what would you recommend that we do with it?
  3. What criteria should we consider when determining the priorities of the Global Planning Table? What data or information do you want to review to ensure that you are prepared to make decisions about Global Planning Table priorities?" (I would want the recommendations from the attendees at TribeFest for sure.) 
  4.  What do you want for lunch?

Oh, did I forget -- we're going to accomplish all this in 5 hours (including the lunch you picked).

I may have mistakenly called the GPT a farce or something like that in earlier Posts. I apologize, this is clearly something worse than that. Uh huh.

Rwexler

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Call me stupid too. Every successful initiative I have been involved with had three critical components aside from the obvious one off need. Urgency, an upfront commitment of resources and the early engagement of operating partners. By the time this model, A longer time frame than Freudian therapy, gets passed the talking stage the world will have changed three times over. But hey, what happens at JFNA stays at JFNA.

Anonymous said...

Scary. Like a horror show. Bad for everyone, including JFNA but, in particular, the Network.

Anonymous said...

If you think this is scary richard should publish the letter sent to the federations on March 12 called UPDATE.

Just to give you an idea I am copying the first paragraph verbatim.

In an effort to ensure that Federations are up-to-date about our work, we have prepared this memo to assist you in communicating an update on the work of the Global Planning Table to your colleagues and lay leaders. Should you have any questions about the information below, please do not hesitate to contact Joanne Moore (joanne.moore@jewishfederations.org).

It gets worse from there on.

UsedToBeImportant said...

JFNA'S NEW VISION MADE COMPREHENSIBLE:

To strategically align thought leadership with leadership thoughtlessness in a compelling paradigm shift to a robust virtual table of non-participation, Jewishly.