29 April 2009
GSGLA First Annual Meeting
Posted by admin under: Girl Scout Reorganization .
I was checking out my home Girl Scout Council’s web page and decided to see what was posted for the first annual council meeting that was held a couple weeks ago. I was interested to see some statements made that explained how all of the changes have come about. First is the statement from Laurel Richie, who was recently appointed Chief Marketing Officer of GSUSA. This is the person whose whole job is to sell people on the changes happening to the Girl Scouts. So, what did she say?
since this first annual meeting of the new Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles represents a culmination of one part of the transformation, it seems appropriate to take just a minute to look back at how we got here. We wanted to make sure that 100 years from now there would be a Girl Scout Movement to hand over to our great-great-granddaughters. A few years ago, it became clear that there was some danger of that not happening.
The biggest danger signal was the drop in girl membership.
It was slow and gradual—but it wasn’t turning around.
If left untended, eventually it was going to turn into a death spiral.
So the question was, how do we change Girl Scouting so it will thrive in the 21st century AND stay true to its roots? Finding the answer to that question came out of a series of meetings held all over the country. We developed a list of shortcomings and ambitions in each of five essential areas:
The programs we deliver to girls
The way we organize and govern ourselves
The way we present ourselves to others
The way we raise money
The way we manage our relationships with volunteers.
From that list, we developed the elements of the Core Business Strategy: program, governance, brand, fund development, and volunteerism
We couldn’t do everything at once, so the CEO and the national board shortened the list to three first-rank priorities: program, governance, and brand. In the program area, we needed:
Nationwide consistency
Measureable outcomes In today’s world you can’t do serious fundraising without them.
And it still had to be enjoyable for the girls.
Girls don’t do scouting because it’s good for them. They do it because it’s fun. The solution was the new journeys books.
Have been extremely well received by girls.
We’re still working at getting all the necessary support to volunteers.
It’s working. The better we all know it, the better we’ll make it work.
…
The core business strategy calls for two things in this area:
Transform the Girl Scouts image with a compelling, contemporary brand that inspires girls of every age and families of every culture to join.
Be the premier voice for girls and an expert on their growth and development.
Here’s one thing that looked very interesting to me
We’ll be delivering new brand materials to the councils in January of next year
What does that mean? Is that a new logo? A different set of books? Just the Journeys books? I don’t know.
Our board chair, Janet Braun, introduced the board of directors to the meeting and said a number of things, but the one that really caught my attention was this.
We have launched our strategic planning process through our Strategic Planning Committee, and engaged the entire Board in a piece of this process at our Board Retreat in February. Our strategic planning committee is finalizing a vision statement for our Council and identifying the critical factors that we need to accomplish our ultimate goal. We will be collecting information about the Strategic Learning Process that GSUSA would like all councils to employ and evaluate the extent to which it may enhance our current process.
Strategic Learning Process? What’s that? I had to look around until I found an old page that discussed it with the one person who was probably most influential in making it happen: Willie Pietersen.
Recently, our council was selected by Girl Scouts of the USA to participate in a Strategic Learning Pilot. What is Strategic Learning? Strategic Learning is a learning-based process for creating and implementing breakthrough strategies. Unlike traditional strategy, which aims at producing one-time change, Strategic Learning drives continuous adaptation. Strategic Learning process was developed by Willie Pietersen, Professor of the Practice of Management at Columbia Business School and is used in a variety of for-profit and not-for-profit contexts and was used successfully as the underlying process in the National Girl Scout Core Business Strategy in 2004.
I recently posed some questions to Willie Pietersen to help us as we transition to Strategic Learning. Here are my questions and his responses:
Q. Across the entire Movement, Girl Scouts has been experiencing tremendous change. In a meeting recently, I was asked a question that I believe represented what a number of others were thinking: “When will these changes be over?” What insights can you offer to help transform the way we think about change?
A. We need to think about change as a journey, not a destination. To survive, organizations must continuously adapt to evolving circumstances. Sometimes these organizational changes are major, sometimes more incremental. Girl Scouts is going through transformational phase at the moment, and it is very challenging for all concerned — particularly those involved in Council reorganizations. But this is an essential “adjustment” to help Girl Scouts become more focused, effective and nimble in the future. Once these big changes are consolidated, Girl Scouts will assume a more “normal” mode. The key will be to keep adapting through small steps as you go forward, and try and prevent these big spasms from happening too frequently. Keep your spirits up by always remembering the “reason why” for the current big change.
So, there is no end to the change. It will be a constant process. Adjustments to an existing program are something I’m perfectly happy with. I need someone to help me understand how never ending change is beneficial. I guess I just don’t get how that’s supposed to work.
Talk about your major transformation. Girl Scouts used to be one of those organizations who represented tradition and history that helped generations of girls learn new skills. The new image is a continually evolving leadership program for girls. This is very different. It is also taking an extraordinarily long time to get these answers out of the GSUSA. It feels like they want to change the organization and are just casting about to figure out which approach will anger the volunteers and girls least. Maybe that’s just me being paranoid.
By the way, my daughter has decided to continue in Girl Scouts as well as Venturing because she wants to earn her Gold Award and the Venturing Crew doesn’t have enough program for her satisfaction. I get to see first-hand all these exciting changes to GSUSA. 
- GSUSA: Los Angeles Girl Scouts Town Hall Meeting
- Girl Scouts Ditch Badges – Adopt Journeys Exclusively
- Any Questions, Girls?
- Girl Scouts Los Angeles Resident Camps Terminated
- Boy Scouts Might Advertise More Co-Ed Aspects
