I'd suggest significant changes to the mission statement: "To advance the art, science, and enjoyment of Amateur Radio." 1) "Art, science, and enjoyment" give the impression of a what-does-not-belong list. Art and science may be properties of Amateur Radio. Enjoyment is an emotion possibly experienced by some. 2) I do not know what the "Art of Amateur Radio" actually is. I might understand "Art of sending CW," or "Art of constructing equipment." 3) "Enjoyment of Amateur Radio" as a primary part of the published mission statement may not gather good publicity with the public. We have enemies who label our endeavors as being "just a hobby." I suggest we include something about public service in our headline. 4) "Science of Amateur Radio" is something that way less than 1% of hams is really involved in, and most of that involvement is with their careers, not amateur activities. Realistically, what we are involved with is applied technology, not science. The rest of the document appears fine. Thanks to those who produced it. 73, Dick Norton, N6AA On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 6:06 AM, Kramer, Harold, WJ1B <wj1b@arrl.org> wrote:
As a member of the Strategic Planning Working Group, I am forwarding this version of the Strategic Plan and its supplement to the entire ARRL Board on behalf of Chairman Jim Fenstermaker and the other Working Group members. The two strategic planning documents are attached as pdfs. Jim's introductory remarks regarding the current version are contained in this email. I have also attached Jim's remarks as a Word doc.
As Jim has noted, this has been a long and carefully thought out effort. All of us on the Committee hope that the Board will give this plan due consideration as the ARRL's roadmap to its future.
73, Harold
Harold Kramer, WJ1B ARRL Chief Operating Officer
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December 10, 2015 TO: ARRL Officers, Directors, and Vice Directors
As noted in earlier correspondence, the Strategic Planning Working Group planned to issue our report and recommendations regarding the ARRL's Strategic Plan for the next half decade. That report is included as two attachments to this memo.
During 2015, the Working Group worked diligently to craft a plan the will serve to be a road map to the future of the ARRL. We are confident that the two documents attached will generate challenges, ideas, questions, and solutions to the environment we will be working in during the next five years.
The first document attached is the proposed Strategic Plan for the ARRL for 2016-2020. This document includes a commentary regarding our charge, the team members involved in crafting this plan, and acknowledgements and sources used throughout our deliberations. Also included in the document is a recap of the mission, vision, and value statements. Note that we "tweaked" the Value Statements to include additional clarification language in respect to the Excellence and Diversity and Inclusiveness Values. We feel these slight modifications better encompass and explain our Values.
The heart of this document are those Strategic Goals supporting the ARRL's Mission, Vision, and Values follow on pages 8 through 14. These Six Goals include the key elements that the Working Group believes will meet the needs of the ARRL and its stakeholders in the next five years and beyond. Of primary importance is meeting the ever-changing and diverse needs of our members - the ARRL's reason for being. Following each goal is a brief discussion of the Goal and a set of Initiatives which further enhance and support the Goal. An initiative which has describable current examples has these examples italicized. We spent many hours discussing, categorizing, and wordsmithing the Goals, explanations, and Initiatives in order that they would be understandable and succinct. It is these elements of the Strategic Plan that the Working Group recommends adoption by the Board during its January 2016 Annual meeting.
While not necessarily a part of the Strategic Plan, the Second Document included in this distribution is a Supplementary and Supporting list of tactics that we believe support the Plan. As noted during our deliberations and in status reports to the ODV, the Strategic Goals are the "What we want to do" while Tactics are "What we need to do" to satisfy individual goals. Note that these Tactics have not been prioritized. The Working Group attempted to "tie" each Tactic to Initiatives and hence Goals. This linkage can be seen on the Matrix included as pages 2 through 22 of the supplement. In addition, we attempted to further segregate the Tactics into a Status including Ongoing, Improve, and Proposed activities. Even though an ongoing tactic might be currently in place or operating satisfactory, any task we do can always be advanced based on both internal and external needs. Finally, we attempted to estimate broad funding requirements for each tactic based on our estimate of a Low, Medium, High, or Unknown Cost of implementation. This explanation is noted on Page 2 of the Supplement. The second part of this section is a recap of the Value of ARRL Membership which appeared in October QST. This article helped us ground our analysis and discussion. While our work spanned over 9 months, the real work for all of us now begins. We must review our current situation, begin to prioritize the needs, develop timelines and measurements for individual tactics, and identify tactic leaders and teams. We believe these activities are the responsibility of the Board and Management as the ARRL seeks to implement the Strategic Plan.
Please review our recommendations and suggested tactics. We welcome questions and comments resulting from our work. It has been a thoughtful process, many challenges, hard work, and many conversations to present this recommendation to the ARRL Board. The Strategic Planning Working Group is a strong Team and provided many ideas to our process. It has been a delight to work with such a motivated group of people. Thanks to all of these individuals and to others who provided us ideas, information, challenges, and analysis.
Jim Fenstermaker K9JF Chair, ARRL Strategic Planning Working Group December 11, 2015
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