The following memo was sent to Sierra Club staff members on September 19, 2011 by Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune.
Hi everyone,
When I first started at the Sierra Club, someone took me aside and told me, "After you've been here a little while and see how much work the Sierra Club gets done and the reach that we have across the country, only then will you appreciate how powerful and effective we truly are." And then she added, "And when you've been here a little while longer and see how massive, sprawling, complex, and messy this organization is, you'll be even more amazed that we're actually able to accomplish so much!"
Both statements were true.
I know that every organization is proud of it's accomplishments, but wow! We're doing such great work together. And yes, it's also fair to say that being the big, grassroots, democratic organization that we are, sometimes it takes some effort to get out of our own way. That's why I've made it a priority to help make the Club more efficient, accountable, and better integrated, so that we can be more effective in achieving our mission. It's why we combined two fundraising departments into one. It's why we put Conservation and Outings into the same department. It's why we created the Digital Strategies department.
And it's why I brought 30-plus members of the executive team and the senior management teams in each department together late last week in San Francisco. (We did not have a full complement of people from Digital Strategies, whose management team will be developed soon after Chris starts.) Our aim was to break down the barriers between departments so that we could identify the top priorities and challenges facing the entire organization, and develop cohesive strategies in which each department would work together to address those challenges. As I told everyone on our first day, each department at the Sierra Club is responsible for the success of the other departments. To achieve our mission and be the most effective organization we can be, we can't just identify problems that other people or other departments have to solve. We have to help solve them ourselves.
Then we did the hard work: identifying a long list of big issues facing the Club, most of which we had already probably heard, more than once, from all of you -- and then choosing the three most important. Here are the three we committed to address:
Roles, Responsibilities, and Decision-making Authority - few things are more frustrating and waste more time than when it's not clear who's making a decision or when and how the decision will be made--and when decisions get made again and again and again, it's enough to frustrate the most motivated among us. We committed to a six month project to clarify decision-making at the Club. At the end of that time, everyone on staff should have clarity on who has what authority to make what decisions, as well as some principles on good decision-making and how to communicate decisions once they're made. Our guiding premise will be that accountability begins with the first person to touch a project and that decision-making authority should reside as close to that first person as possible. We're going to get this done by March 15th. Stay tuned for more.
Diversity - this one isn't new, but it's more important than ever. To change America, we need to look like America. And we need to bring in the ideas, talents, and experiences of people from across America. The good news is that we've made some progress in enhancing the Club's diversity, particularly over the last 9 months. But the reality is that we have a long way to go. We committed at this retreat that enhancing the Club's diversity wasn't a project that would sit with one person, or within one department, but would be a long-term commitment by each senior manager and each department. This is a long-term challenge, but we want short-term results, so we'll put together a comprehensive, organization-wide project plan by November 1st that will carry through the end of 2012.
Increasing the availability of money that we can spend, without adhering to preexisting restrictions, so that we can do more on a wider range of issues. We are committed to bringing in more unrestricted c3 and c4 funds, and increasing restricted funds that can be dedicated to underfunded Climate Recovery Partnership Campaigns and priority programs (such as Beyond Oil, Resilient Habitats, Protecting America's Waters, and Environmental Justice). The Bloomberg grant of $50 million is fantastic, but it doesn't help with a long list of other projects and campaigns and departments that need support. And unfortunately, the Sierra Club (like almost every other enviro and social change group) is facing declining membership and/or unrestricted support. We committed, across all departments, to analyze how we got into this situation and what we need to do to reverse this trend. Again, this is a long-term challenge for which we expect short term results. We'll put together a comprehensive, organization-wide plan by December 1st that will carry through to the end of next year.
As I mentioned, we want to clarify decision-making authority over the next six months. As that gets settled, our hope is to pick up another enduring Sierra Club challenge and give it more attention: finding ways to strengthen the relationships and quality of collaboration between the national activities of the Sierra Club and our work at the chapter and group level. The Board has established a staff/volunteer task force to begin to explore this issue; a report with recommendations will produced early in 2012. We'll keep you updated on that task force and how we'll follow it up with actions.
What I was most excited about at this retreat was that we had a glimpse of what is possible when people from every department unite around a common purpose and dedicate ourselves to solving a persistent problem. Imagine how strong we'll be when we have clarity throughout the organization on roles, responsibilities and decision-making authority. Imagine how effective we'll become when we are a more inclusive, multi-cultural organization made up of people from all ages and economic backgrounds. Think of what we can accomplish with a greater balance of funds and resources for all our work. These are the issues we've prioritized. And we'll all need to work together to make sure we succeed--because in the end we have no choice. If we want to take on the country's biggest polluters and most backwards politicians, then we have to take on the Sierra Club's biggest weaknesses in order to win. And when we do prevail against these persistent problems, it will make the Club bigger and stronger and help us accelerate the awesome accumulation of victories we're wracking up as we push toward a healthy, clean energy future.
We'll discuss this some more at the next staff meeting. In the meantime, thanks so much for all you're doing,
Mike
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