And in a sense … there you have it.
Still who are the customers of HQAC? Cadets, volunteers, paying public, parents paying subs?
It seems to me that this is an example of the worst kind in the wider World where the answer is to insert layers of management that do very little, are steeped in failure means a sideways move, setting long term targets means you will be sitting on a fat pension well before the next person in line has to achieve them (and changes them anyway).
No one would pretend running such a large national youth organisation is an easy thing and it needs popular and unpopular decision taking/making. (BTW … has anyone else noticed how old and weary Auntie Dawn is looking compared to photos when taking the job on?). But when the higher uniform levels create and enthuse amongst themselves, without grass roots input, the risk of believing one’s own BS increases rapidly and that is the death-knell. Certainly ‘Auntie Dawn’ is a master of hollow rhetoric and she will be long gone before anyone catches up with her past.
If anyone can spare five minutes I recommend re-reading story two in book number two of the Railway Series - Thomas’s Train. It won’t take more than a few minutes and in there you can see a fantastic allegory for the journey of the ATC into RAFAC and ‘Auntie Dawn’s’ Magical Mystery Tour.
As for civilians, there are none of genuine and worthwhile note on these fantastical constructs. All have their own agendas - if that is, they can be interested - I suspect all have questionable commitment to the wider organisation at squadron level.
One has to remember that this is a civilian organisation, run by civilians in uniform, interfacing with the RAF who provide the core programme (questionable in recent times) part-funded by the MOD and part-funded by independent charities.
celticmentor1 wrote:
‘We are all now civilian volunteers and can walk away at any time, respect is not an entitlement it is earned.’
Not entirely true. Maybe so for uniform volunteers or CI’s, but those Civilian Committee members at squadron level who are trustees, they are legally bound and liable. This is another area that has been fudged and there is more than one occasion where ATC-HQ have been forced to pay four-figure sums out in compensation for neglecting this fact.
War Kitten wrote:
“The current bunch of RC do appear to engage with the senior volunteers (ie OC Wings).”
I understand the sentiment, but in a sens there is one aspect of the problem - ‘senior volunteer’!
Who is more senior the five year in post OC Wing or the forty-year serving CivCom member?
The ten year in post OC Wing who, as a volunteer receives a level of remuneration and expenses or the twenty-year serving CivCom member who receives nothing nor any expenses yet turns out every week?
The three year in post retired RAF Regional Chairperson who has made a life-career and then comes back to a civilian post and yet still can receive remuneration and expenses, or the parent who has attended every bag-pack and car wash for five years for nothing save helping a dozen cadets get on a venture experience every so often?
I know one can write all about only doing it because you want to but if that were true all the uniformed volunteers would renounce their remittance and run the organisation throughout on expenses alone. Despite the grumbles from time to time on levels, it is a remuneration of some kind and they would shout louder.
I have no problem with that, save that it fuels the them and us which I perceive is currently rending the organisation asunder. And let’s be totally honest with ourselves, it is highly unlikely that the increased presence of retired uniforms in civilian roles is going to provide anything the like the Worldly experience and fresh-thinking that is needed in the modern world. History says so, track record says so and current experiences say so.
Put in a few lines of management and keep the difficulties away. If one gets through, isolate it, dispose of it and pretend its all going well. Management style from the 1970s.
So I ask again, who are the customer’s of ATC-HQ such that additional management levels are required from people we never see? (And I ask that question against a backdrop of reducing uniform volunteers and cadets nationally under the current regime).
