National Townhalls

Reading the death spiral thread again & noticed this from March 2022

It’s taken a couple of years but we’re starting to get there.

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Yes but the frank questions are not (yet) being responded to with a frank answer…

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The word “starting” is doing a lot of heavy lifting at the moment :slightly_smiling_face:

Doesn’t apply to the actual activities though…

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I think we are wholly aligned actually.

I think recognising that bias is health and something that as an organisation we need to accept, park, and work beyond to allow us to move forward in any meaningful way. I understand what you mean by being disinterested, but perhaps untarnished by the past may be a better turn of phrase. RAFAC isn’t alone in having these challenges, many large voluntary organisations do. The difference is that those other organisation seem to want to embrace new ways of working and moving beyond legacy challenges. I currently don’t see any visible signs that RAFAC is willing to embrace that at the moment and I think this is largely because the hierarchical nature of the RAF bleeds too much into the voluntary organisation. This is cultural and difficult to change, but not impossible with the correct personalities driving it. The AOC is showing his willingness to ignite change by coming on here and engaging and starting town halls etc to improve communication. Also know that Comdt 2 FTS has recently filmed some videos with more to come, as a new way of communicating in that area of the organisation. I think this is all very positive and will increase transparence and trust. But engagement is a two-way street and in reality face to face or tools such as yammer are some of the better ways to do that. Levering technology can also be a great help in engaging with a remote volunteer force like ours.

PS How did you know I was new and my role? This is an anonymous forum :crazy_face:

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The cynic in my asks will the ‘townhalls’ continue after a few months when the heat is off RCSW and HQAC? Will engagement dwindle downwards, in particular if the answers to questions are either woolly or stonewalled?

Of course it will…

I look forward to this evening, engagement such as this is key to VOV IMO and I’m glad the AOC has joined the forum to get a sense of things at the coalface.

“It will also explain, perhaps for the first time, the significant burden that the high volume of requests for information places on our people, which hinders them from progressing their primary responsibilities.”

I’m hopeful it will also acknowldege the lack of detail and short notice implementation requirement in some comms that has resulted in these FOIs.

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FOIs is one thing but really, IMO, this need to reduce the admin burden needs to work at all levels.

Take the Town Halls notifications as a good example. I got 3 emails from Bader, another from Region and a 5th from Wing… our organisation has got to stop circumventing the chain of command.

Everyone, at all levels, needs to adopt a better communications policy to reduce the amount of email we get. This would help everyone. The issue, as I see it, is that we need to slow down and allow more time for information to be allowed to filter down the COC and not allow people at any level the ability to send an all in Corps, Region or Wing email.

Our area has recently changed supplier for building maintenance. I’m up to 8 emails all saying the same thing because it is blasted out at Region and Wing level without coordination.

For an organisation modelled on the RAF we do an incredibly bad job of using the chain of command.

I step down from my soapbox… but im interested in the meeting this evening as it is probably a step in the right direction.

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Standby, Standby.

Can’t get into it, which is not a good start

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Used the link the invite “meeting hasn’t started yet”

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I think they’re wasting our time to make a point about FOIs :wink:

Who wrote the speech?

Can’t get in, aparently I don’t have access to the event despite using the link sent…

Not helping with the impression of bad comms from centre…

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Are you logged into your RAFAC account in the browser as well as in Teams?

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Just through my browser

Should work in the browser even so if you open the link there. Odd.

“Confidence in the new teams is good”…

By who?

No proper Teams invite which means a lot of people struggled to get on, they “moderated” questions (so some didn’t really make it through) and why does the comdt insist on calling his staff rank and 1st name!

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