So how do you run a youth programme?
Does everybody have to be involved with every decision or do you have a dictator? How does information get circulated or do you just get to hear about things if you happen to be around.
Whether you have a team of 20 or two people doing the work, organisation is a live issue. If I know something that the rest of the team don’t, do I need to tell them or would it be better not to tell them? How do plans get made? Is your whole work driven by the vision and energy of one person who just goes on producing ideas, or does everything have to go through a committee? The worst committee I ever sat on had the minutes of the previous meeting as its agenda, so we spoke about the same things every meeting!
The day before is too late
What prompted this article was a leader who spoke to me recently bemoaning the fact that very few people turned up to his leaders meeting. I asked him when he called the meeting. His answer was not unusual — ‘by email the day before’. If we are working in a team (and most of us are) we have to ask what is going to make that team function as well as it can. I would have a few essentials.
