Effective Plan

Editor’s Note
The Thorndike Barnhart High School Dictionary of 1968 defines a plan as a way of making or doing something that has been worked out beforehand; scheme or arrange- ment; or to think out beforehand how something is to be made or done; design, scheme or devise. Since then, astronauts have walked on the moon and the computer has revolutionized our modern lives but the definition of a plan hasn’t changed. Raul Otero, a two-time Distinguished Toastmaster from District 68, designed an effective plan to rebuild the GSU Beaumont Toastmasters Club. He skillfully constructed the plan beforehand. He consulted with the club president, obtained approval from the officers and asked for member participation. The well- designed plan even contained regularly scheduled tune- ups, where the members could adjust the plan to improve its effectiveness. In the end, the club earned seven of the 10 Distinguished Club Program points and won the Select Distinguished Club Award. All club coaches should have a plan. It will unite the club in a common purpose, define the steps necessary for improvement and carry you through hard times. This story and accompanying educational vignette will help you create a plan, or redefine your plan, if you already have one.

Our Partnership Begins

GSU is a young club and had a very dynamic leadership team that strived to improve and expand the club. One of their greatest successes was recruiting members from a company that offered to pay the dues of all employees that joined the GSU Toastmaster Club. This success came to a sudden collapse when the company went bankrupt and suddenly GSU found itself with only 12 active members. The club was identified as one needing a coach. GSU Club was at this level for a whole year and looked like that club could end up disbanding. At this time, I was serving as the Division A Governor and noticed that the club had few members. I asked the clubs officer core if I could be their coach. They accepted and I asked our district governor to appoint me as coach of the GSU Club.

I was appointed coach of GSU on July 29, 2010. My first task was to assess the health of the club. I met with the club president and she and I went over the strengths and weaknesses of the club. We concluded that the club had a strong core group and that we could build on this foundation.I first made use of the coaching information I got from Toastmasters: How to Rebuild a Toastmasters Club, to develop a plan for moving GSU to Distinguished Club status. I submitted this plan to the officer core and got their buy-in of the plan. I setup a meeting with the club president and got her buy-in of the plan. Then we setup a meeting with the rest of the officer core and got their buy-in into the plan (details appear later in the story). We proceeded to implement the plan and setup meetings to review our status and modify the plan if needed.

The Plan

• Improve the Toastmaster experience for our members and prospective members.
• Ensure the meeting starts and ends on time.
• Look for a better meeting time and location.
• Improve our meeting format (organization).
• Improve the way our club handles role assignments.
• Increase participation of members during the meeting.
• Schedule special meetings that encourage former members to attend.
• Conduct membership drives with Golden Triangle & TOTAL Petrochemicals Toastmasters.
• Conduct a membership drive with the participation of three local Toastmasters clubs.
• Focus on building the membership of the GSU club.
• Complete the Distinguished Club Program.
• Submit the officer’s list on time.
• Encourage officers to attend training.
• Submit dues payments on time.
• Win communication awards: two CCs by December 2010 and one AC by March 2011.
• Win a leadership award: one ALB or ALS by March 2011.
• Recruit five new members by November 2010.

Our Plan Leads to Success

In this section, I will describe how the GSU Toastmasters Club implemented their three-part plan. The time and effort put into planning, really paid big dividends. We met most of our goals and the plan remained unchanged to the end.

1. We aimed to improve the Toastmaster experience for our members and prospective members by addressing several key issues. First, we wanted to ensure that the meeting started and ended on time. Because this was such an important goal, the club officer core implemented this policy immediately. To accomplish this goal the club executed the following steps: they assigned a club officer a special timer function to keep the meeting on time, and they made adjustments to the agenda were done to cut out any wasteful use of time on topics not important to the club mission. Typically the President kept track of the timer and helped the meeting move along to a timely start and end. If the meeting could go over the time limit or the speakers were to take longer than 5-7 minutes, then the Table Topics section was reduced to two participants instead of three and the announcements section would be abbreviated or eliminated altogether.
2. We looked for a better meeting time and location. The club officer core implemented this plan two meetings after the plan was approved. By working with the membership, an alternate location was found that offered the advantages of no cost and was close to the original meeting place. This allowed the club to have two meeting venues that were accessible and offered the space and comfort needed to conduct an effective meeting. The first location was the central library and the second was a building that housed the engineering firm CBI and formally was the offices for ENTERGY. Both location offered easy access, were safe locations, and there was no cost for the use of the facilities.
3. We improved our meeting format (organization). Table Topics was placed after the speeches to allow the evaluator’s time to complete the evaluation and save the time it took the evaluators to complete their task. This simple change saved around three to five minutes of meeting time.
4. We improved the way our club handles role assignments. The agenda was sent out 3 to 5 days earlier, giving the members the opportunity to verify if they would be able to perform the task. Also, the club began using FreeToastHost as a tool to get role assignments in a timelier manner. The latter is still a work in progress. This technique is being used successfully at the Lake Charles Club #1225 and the Total Port Arthur Refinery (formally Total Petrochemicals). The decision on the agenda distribution was made within the officer core with the agreement of the VP Education and Training who would be responsible for implementation of this directive.
5. We increased participation of members during the meeting. The Toastmaster would assign the roles not filled from the agenda through a raffle or random process that turned out to be a very fun activity. But, if time was a premium, such as three speakers all with long speeches, then the Toastmaster would volunteer members. The Table Topics Master was encouraged to develop themes for the meeting around which the Table Topic questions would be based. This allowed the members to have a general idea of what the questions would be about and reduce the stress level of having to answer a completely unknown question.
6. We scheduled special meetings that encouraged former members to attend. The special meetings would be meetings to give speeches only, such as a Speakathon. This served as a network vehicle between the new members and the older members. Giving this additional venue for speech presentations allows members to achieve their educational goals faster. The club had 1 of 6 previous members return. We are still pursuing this strategy. The sum result of all these efforts was a well-run, streamlined, quality meeting. Our members enjoyed the new meeting format, and our guests became increasingly impressed with their first introduction to the Toastmasters experience.

Improving our Toastmaster meetings was like cleaning our house. Once that was finished, we were happy and willing to begin the second phase of our plan – inviting guests to our Toastmasters club. Being the division governor, I helped my clubs coordinate a membership drive together. The clubs were the GSU Toastmasters, Golden Triangle and the TOTAL Petrochemicals Toastmasters Clubs. The GSU Club had not conducted a membership drive in a while, neither for that matter had Golden Triangle or Total Petrochemicals. The three clubs worked together in the planning and execution of the membership drive. They used public service announcements on newspapers, radio and television. All the clubs contributed people and money to make the drive successful. The flyers had information of all the participating clubs and each club had members give a presentation of their club. The public service announcements (PSA) were the ones suggested by Toastmasters (available from the Toastmasters store) and for the television interviews a member would be prepared to tell the Toastmaster story and highlight the upcoming membership drive. PSA space is available in all markets, it just requires the clubs to contact the radio, newspapers, and television station and state the desire to make a public announcement about a not for profit organization. These efforts were very productive. The GSU had a large number of visitors attend their meetings, from this group of visitors they got 3 new members. Golden Triangle got two new members and Total got none. However; Total is a corporate club and though it is open it is harder for visitors to come to our meetings. We did however get two new members from within the company.

Then GSU got a big break. The Vista College, a nearby educational center, wished to participate in a Toastmasters club. We gave a demo meeting that sealed the deal. The club got nine new members from Vista College that and the three new members the club already had got the club to 22 members. The club had lost two original members that had moved out of the area. The club officer core decided to add Vista College as a third venue for meetings since it met the requirements of location, safety, no cost, comfort for the members. Two months into the plan the officer core and me met at lunch time to revise the plan. After review of where we were the group decided not to make any changes. Just to be sure, we agreed to meet at lunch time every two months for plan review.

The final phase of our plan focused on the details of the Distinguished Club Program. We wanted to ensure that the club got all the easy goals. We submitted officer’s list on time, paid dues and sent our officers to training. When the officers could not attend the TLI, as division governor I established makeup sessions where I would train the officers. This allowed the clubs to meet an easy goal that was elusive since they could not attend the TLI meeting. Then we went after the educational awards. Several of the original club members were encouraged to complete their advanced communication and leadership training. The result of this effort, when combined with our membership growth, was that the club completed 7 of the 10 goals and end the year as a Select Distinguished Club. This was accomplished in 11 months from the time of my appointment (July 29, 2010 to June 30, 2011). The success of this club also reflected a measure of success upon my own Toastmaster experience, I won the Distinguished Toastmaster Award on June 3, 2011 during my tenure as Division Governor. I completed my second DTM on August 25, 2011.

Lessons Learned

My key lesson learned is that you need first to get the support of the club you wish to coach that they need help and thus accept you as their coach. Second, prepare a plan for improvement. Discuss the plan with the officer core and get their buy-in into the plan. Review and modify the plan if required. The plan for GSU was reviewed twice. The officer core and I had agreed to meet every two months at lunch time to review the plan and make changes if needed. We had a total of two meetings and no changes were required to the plan.

By Raul Otero, Successful Club Coach of the GSU Beaumont Club #2484 District 68 and President of the Total Port Arthur Refinery Toastmaster Club

A Letter of Praise
I am the immediate past president for Great Speakers Unlimited, Club #2484 in Beaumont, Texas. We are a part of District 68, Division A, Area 1. Raul Otero was our club coach and Division A Governor in 2010-2011. He was a very busy man but he still volunteered to serve as our club coach. In 2009/2010, GSU only met 3 goals and we had a membership base of 13 and a membership of 13. Many of those members were on paper only and there were a few of us that were struggling to keep our club alive. Raul recognized our club needed some help and he rode in to save the day! He and I spoke via phone and email several times to discuss the goals of GSU and what we believed we could achieve during the 2010-2011 year. We then met with the other club officers and set club goals for club improvement and growth.
During this time, we began actively promoting all the open TM clubs in our area, encouraging guests to attend. This was done via press releases, electronic community bulletin boards, and public service announcements. These efforts resulted in all the open clubs in our area receiving many new phone/email inquiries and increased guest attendance.
GSU had several guests that have become members; however, we had one guest that came several times. This guest is an instructor for Vista College in our area and he was able to see how TM could benefit him and the students of Vista. He asked if GSU would be interested in conducting a demo meeting at their college so that their students/faculty/staff could see how a meeting was run and learn about the many benefits of TM. Of course we said yes! Raul also volunteered to attend this meeting. The campus manager for Vista, a former TM from the Houston area, offered to pay the initial fees and first 6 months dues for any of the students interested. GSU ended up with 9 new members from Vista!
Ultimately, GSU went from a non-recognized club, meeting only 3 goals and having 13 members in 2009/10 to a SELECT DISTINGUISHED club meeting 7 goals with 20 members for 2010/11!!! I can say without a doubt Raul Otero provided the extra guidance and push we needed to get our club back on track.
Lisa Taylor-Cowart PRO-GSU Toastmasters, Club 2484 and PRO-District 68 Toastmasters