The question is in the title.
There’s always alot of talk about sharing best practice in the ACO. How, at the moment, do you think it is shared (If at all) and how do you think we should do it?
Word of mouth and shared experience seems to work best.
Whenever there is a gathering of staff, talk always seems to come round to what each does and what has been seen to work and what hasn’t. Most times things are shared from these chats via email. Ideally I imagine it should be via Sharepoint, but it’s unfriendly to the user email seems to be the way most are happy with.
We do a lot of things in a group of 3 squadrons and all bring our own skills/way of working to the party.
Historically (about 10 years ago!) there were mamouth documents circulated to every squadron about once a month/quarter which had around 10 different subject areas within. Each subject area had a case study of best practice shared, in depth. It didn’t float everybody’s boat - back then I found around 1 topic of interest in each document. BUT, on reflection, as my interests grew, so I started to refer back to them to gain additional insights.
Now… well… errrr… occasional training courses… ACC… searching for a subject area on SharePoint and hoping something shows up.
With the development of SharePoint I’d really like to see this resurrected - and could be one of those “HQAC Project roles” to coordinate it - perhaps as a result of the comms review? Topics which immediately spring to mind would be “Social Media”, “setting up Air Rifles”, “Getting qualified in Clay Target Shooting”, “Flight Sims - expensives toys or training aids”, “How to bid for money”, “Using SharePoint”, “Using Outlook”, “Running DofE on Squadrons”. Some of the topics on here recently have reflected many of the sort of things which HQAC coud do with taking the lead on…
Wing wise, we have some reasonable training courses; we used to have an excellent one entitled “Squadron Executive Officers Course” which covered all the major roles on squadron in some detail and made an excellent platform for sharing best practice, ideas and discussing how each squadron does things differently. It made a brilliant insight for new, post-BASIC staff who might have been given a role by their OC, but hadn’t necessarily had that role set in context of the wider ACO environment (a training issue for OCs there!).
This has now been broken down, so rather than doing a 2 day course covering 8 roles, it’s now a day course per role, with the view that people would only attend the specific role of interest. So far, the AT course has happened, but I’ve not seen the others - and the course was dissappointingly attended. It’s a shame as the overview our SExO course offered was excellent and provided a brilliant stepping stone for new staff - covering much more detail than BASIC ever covered - and enabled an excellent way of sharing practice (some just practice, others best practice!).
Most of the time best practice is shared is informally in the bar, mess, pub, over lunch between friends and acquaintances within the organisation. Or via email, text etc when people ask.
A series of “How To” guides as Batfink suggests would be an excellent idea and several of the topics on here could be a good starting point for such guides to exist in some format. Its all well and good delivering a new policy document but a simple guide on how to operationally deliver a project/bring a new activity into your Sqn’s “Cadet Experience” would IMHO be an excellent asset to the organisation.
I too used to enjoy the old best practice guides and with the advent of SharePoint there is no reason a similar catalogue of “best practice” couldn’t exist. We’ve already got the knowledge volunteers in the organisation so this could be done with relatively little input from the permanent staff!
I do quite like the idea of a ‘How To’ newsletter style guide; perhaps 1-2 sides at maximum?
Might entertain myself trying to come up with a format and have a go sometime this week!
[quote=“redowling” post=4570]I do quite like the idea of a ‘How To’ newsletter style guide; perhaps 1-2 sides at maximum?
Might entertain myself trying to come up with a format and have a go sometime this week![/quote]
Send me the template and I’ll have a bash too! “ACC - How To Guide”
How does this sound?
Each month, two new topics are made, which could be referred to as:
The ‘nomination topic’ for people to nominate next month’s topic.
The ‘discussion topic’ for people to discuss the current month’s topic, and add their own ideas, suggestions and experience.
Towards the end of the month, the nominations topic is closed, and turned into a poll for people to vote on which of the nominated topics should be covered next month.
The discussion topic is closed at the end of the month, and someone takes a week or two to compile all the advice into a best practice guide. Once the information starts to become outdated, people will start to nominate it for an update.
The only reservation with best practice / “How to …. “ guides is how many do you need/want/get and some poor individuals treat them as the definitives.
The other problem is currency. Things change and unless you’ve got someone who either has it as part of a job role or on the ball, they can become dated really quickly. If staff change and they’re the ones who’ve put them together, again they don’t get updated.
This is where the casual sharing of generations comes into its own.
A first go…
Ah crap, stupid work firewall won’t let me upload it. Leeroy, could you upload my first attempt?
[quote=“the fixer” post=4565]The question is in the title.
There’s always alot of talk about sharing best practice in the ACO. How, at the moment, do you think it is shared (If at all) and how do you think we should do it?[/quote]
I know several officers who say that you get more done in 10 minutes in the bar than an hour in the office.