CATCHING UP IS HARD TO DO

I suppose that I could have titled this Post Deja Vu All Over Again, because , like Groundhog Day, that's what JFNA is...has become...always was.  For example....

• I was terribly wrong about a forthcoming umpteenth "Strategic Plan" to be sprung on an unsuspecting JFNA Board at the imminent Board Retreat. In keeping with the rebranding that has become the one constant at JFNA, the Board will experience the roll-out (which it appears it will not see in advance but be expected to discuss) of the...drum roll please...Strategic Initiatives Project. Yes, this "project" we are now told "...will enable JFNA to focus its resources on the issues of most importance to the Federation system." Pardon me, isn't this what we had expected JFNA to actually have been doing these last 13 years(at a cost in excess of $600,000,000)? I, for one, can't wait...And, these don't appear to be the very Strategic Initiatives sprung on an unsuspecting GPT Committee one month ago? So, while the Global Planning Table hasn't yet literally swallowed up the entirety of JFNA, this is but a sideshow...a constant one. "Strategic Initiatives" -- everywhere.
• The latest transmittal from the tiny group that is bringing you the catastrophic Global Planning Table, continues to take the federations down a disastrous path toward calamity. Now, although only a privileged few have actually seen it, your federation and mine have received a "Toolkit" prepared by these GPTers with which we are to "engage" (as only these characters define "engagement") our leadership with...something. You start with a thing called (and I am not making this up) The GPT Community Input Session Pre-Reading Document -- yes, your community and mine is supposed to "pre-read" this "background info." I guess before you read...ahhh, never mind. But, that's not all, there's a "Facilitator's Guide" -- in actuality, a five page, single-spaced script that you facilitators are apparently to read out in haec verba to the assembled --  and, leaving nothing to chance,  a "Community Input Session PowerPoint" to facilitate (that includes "audio clips of GPT Chair David Butler..." -- which, in reality, are the best evidence that the GPTers don't really trust you to "facilitate" even with a script and a PowerPoint as these "audio clips" preempt you from leading this session and substitute Butler instead -- maybe the GPTers can send on a hologram as well) ) that consists of 28 slides. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the Facilitator's "Guide" to suggest that participants bring a cot or air mattress. What the GPTers are demanding is really nothing less than total acceptance of their dictation of outcomes within a very narrow framework in the guise of a community "process."
• You remember our Post on those December GPT Webinars where Chair Butler spelled out the "Strategic Initiatives" that had never been discussed before. Well, surprise surprise, those are now the topics for communal considerations as if they had been vetted somewhere...anywhere. Thus, the Global Planning Table continues down the path determined only by its leaders. THIS IS NUTS.
• So, these "Strategic Initiatives" are to become the raison d'etre of JFNA going forward? Or will it be some alternative universe in which countless Strategic Initiatives are "debated." Give us a break.

Yes, friends, plus ca change...$600,000,000(+) and counting.

Rwexler

* I should note that on January 23, the Board Chair, with confidentiality warnings transmitted the Strategic Initiatives document. Given the strictures on confidentiality, I have not revised the Post above.