Notes From The Organization

Most of the DJ-gig of Sunday afternoon 6th of June 2010 :

Roger Waters - The Tide Is Turning

Roger Waters - The Pros and Cons Of Hitchhiking

Laurie Anderson - O Superman

Syd Barrett - Terrapin

Peter Gabriel - I Think It's Going To Rain Today

Steve Hackett - Spectral Mornings

Muse - Knights Of Cydonia

Glass Hammer - Empty Space / Revealer

Mystery Jets - Two Doors Down

Genesis - It's Gonna Get Better

I'd Rather Go Bowling - Notes From The Organization - Part IV

The latest news, though I really don't know if it's entirely correct(Ooh yeah I Heard It Through The Grapevine!);  The threesome that handled the volunteers coordination etcetera, has now been reduced to a solo act as two of them have apparently resigned. How why and when I do not know yet. Whatever! It can't possibly get any worse than it was.

Anyway, on with the story...


But It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time!

Someone introduced a rule about two to three years ago(when I was 'on a rather long leave of absence') to 'pay' the volunteers for their work not in one way but in two ways. Payment would be in tokens(a token has a value of roughly a beer or a coke) and there would be an administration in the office so everyone would know how much tokens they were owed. In effect it meant that the pay out doubled overnight; both a token per hour as well as one drink per hour. This was quite a change, a break away from the past, because when The Organization was just the Volunteer-driven Amateur Pre-professional Organizational Riot(a.k.a. VAPOR) that everyone seems to scorn nowadays, we just used to drink something while doing our work and that was it. Yes it cost money but there really was not that much abuse compared to the total turn-over of The Organization.


Frank Zappa's Cheapness.

The newly introduced administration system also allowed for volunteers to be able to 'save' their tokens, in a bank as it were. So a volunteer could take out some tokens when he or she needed them or one could buy other things with them like specialized education... Can anyone imagine that a volunteer who makes 10 tokens(while working from 19:30 until 06:00) then saves these token to buy training that he or she can use IN The Organization?!? Like First Aid and that sort of thing? In my opinion "Cheapness" (as Frank Zappa so aptly described it on 200 Motels) was redefined by The Organization; Instead of training your volunteers at the expense of the organization, so the quality of their work would improve, the volunteers had to pay for that training themselves. Needless to say that the tokens that people were owed where typically used to BUY BEER on the volunteer's night off, not on specialized training.


Balancing the books.

Of course there was another and much bigger operational problem with this system : The Proper And Timely Administration Of The Tokens Earned. Keep in mind that The Organization is open almost every day of the week so volunteers earned tokens every day of the week, which then had to be accounted for and administrated. After a while the delay in the administration meant that a volunteer had to wait an average of two to three weeks before his or her work was administrated and the token were added to their account.

A typical problem; a volunteer visits The Organization on a Tuesday and want some of his hard earned tokens. Sorry, no go, because there is no one present who is authorized to hand out tokens. This was 'solved' by supplying the bar personnel with a list of all volunteers and their 'credit'. This way the barman could make a note when ever a drink was ordered and these lists would then be entered into the database a.s.a.p.(otherwise known as 'In Two Weeks') by the official administrator in the main office.


Having Your Tokens And Having Them Too.

It gets worse : a rule was instated that said that a volunteer was entitled to drinks on his credit as long as the list had not been updated! Stunning!! Can anyone see the operational problems that this stupid rule causes? How about a volunteer who has 5 tokens/drinks on his credit and drinks them on Tuesday night. The same volunteer comes again on Thursday night and still has the five drinks credit so he drinks them again(although the list at the bar was updated on Tuesday so there is no credit left except in the computer database). The volunteer is now five drinks in the red and has to work five hours to get back to zero.
  
Now multiply the number of drinks because some volunteers had 35 credits on monday and had used up 135 monday a week later(until the list was officially updated).
    
  
So the problems that The Organization caused all by itself without anyone else to blame for them :

1. Extra administration that was not done in a timely fashion and therefore caused problems when paying out a volunteer.

2. People 'going in the red' on their credit, sometimes up to 150 drinks(!). First inadvertently, as time went by on purpose.

3. Double the cost as compared to the old system in which a volunteer 'just' got a couple of drinks.

4. Preferential treatment. As in serving the volunteers you like extra drinks for free.

5. Angry volunteers who have just worked their collective asses off during the weekend, and then could not get some of their tokens because there was no one in the office.


Introducing The Hard Line.
    
As I have described in a previous 'I'd rather go bowling'-item, The Organization ultimately discovered that their system did not work and worse; That It Was Costing Them A Fortune. So a meeting was organized for all volunteers(see previous entries) and a list of draconian and short-sighted measures were announced. To give one example; each cafe-crew ideally consists of three people; one barman and one DJ, and one backup for the two. Especially now that smoking has been banned in the whole building you need a third person to take over if one of the other two wants to go outside to have a smoke. Also; if one of the three is ill or otherwise unavailable you immediately have your backup available.
  
This crew-configuration btw, is what I was responsible for when I did the cafe coordination and it was an official agreement between 'The Office' and 'The Cafe'. Four people in a crew as the absolute maximum but three as the general number of crew-members per evening. However; as part of the new rules it was ordained that only two people would be allowed to work on any cafe evening, and that they would be allowed to have one drink per hour during opening hours(!). This may sound reasonable but it isn't. Opening hours were probably assumed to be from 20:00 until 00:00 but a cafe-crew would typically come in around 19:15 to check everything and to prepare the bar. The bar then would be open until at least 01:30 after which it had to be cleaned. In reality a bar-evening did not last for four hours, it lasted for at least six to seven hours.
    
Ultimately the result of these new rules was that quite some people refused to work for The Organization as they were of the opinion that they did not earn anything for themselves but for The Organization instead, and that this squeezing dry of the volunteers went too far.

A little while after having quit my cafe-coordinator work over all the amateur crap that 'the management' managed to pull, I suggested that maybe they should not pay the volunteers extra tokens but just let them have a drink while they're working. That would cut the cost of the volunteers in half immediately and they would all just be going back to the old situation that no one had ever had a problem with. Of course I did not get an immediate response and I'm absolutely not saying that my words had any influence, but a couple of weeks ago The Organization finally came to their collective management senses and did just that; the new internal policy regarding the volunteers has been revoked so it's all as good as back to the old status quo again.
      
Which begs the question : Why On Earth did no one consult the people who actually know how The Organization works internally? Who have so many years of experience that they have seen these new rules come and go many many many times? Because really; this has been one big blunder from start to finish and it has alienated yet more people. As if The Organization can afford to lose more motivated volunteers still...


Rocket Science.
        
If people want to organize things perhaps they should realize that organizing matters properly is a True Profession that you can study for at the University. And a little bit of emphasis on People's Management would not be a bad thing either.  Because it really isn't rocket science.

Notes From The Organization

Ok, so May 16th 2010, Sunday afternoon : A cafe full(I mean FULL!) of people, a progrock-band playing unplugged for two hours, a pretty massive consumption of beer and lemonades, and an atmosphere you will not find anywhere else or on any other 'night' in The Organization. The audience were so quiet that you could frequently hear a pin drop. If there would have been falling pins... And on the other hand half the audience sang along to Genesis' Ripples(SAIL AWAY AWAYYYYYY!!!).

The gig started off with 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" including the piano intro et al. Not a bad start at all. *grin*
  
The band played songs from ELP's first album, songs by the great Harry Sacksioni(obviously a favourite of the guitarist!). Hell, they even played stuff from 'And Then There Were Three', one of the most underrated records Genesis ever recorded. And no; it wasn't 'Follow You Follow Me' they played, it was 'Burning Rope'.

"You climb upon a burning rope
to escape the mob below
But you had put the flaming out
so the others could not follow"


But ProgRock is dead of course. That is what I hear from many many ignorant peasants so it must be true.

I'd Rather Go Bowling - Notes From The Organization - Part III

Ok, so the latest I heard is that there are now already several DJ's and bar-people who refuse to work for The Organization because of what they believe to be unfair and unworkable conditions. I sympathize and I agree with them completely. Of course you should not become a volunteer for the money or the beer, but what is happening now is the reverse: the failings of upper management are being paid for by the volunteers.

The new rules are mostly and quite squarely aimed at the cafe-activities, not so much at the band- or party-nights. What's much worse is that some people in The Organization believe this cafe cost reduction to be the magic bullet. Now I don't see how people can miss this but they do; even if/when the cafe-activities would run like clockwork and be extremely efficient and cost effective it still would not be enough to solve the insolvency of The Organization by far. In the 'good old days'(I'm talking 5 years ago here) the cafe only contributed a little bit to the total revenue of The Organization. What it did do was give people a chance to learn how to organize activities, which every now and then were moved to the main hall and turned into a big partynight. The cafe as the incubation room of The Organization. Every time such a new party was born it made a hell of a lot of money. Through the years this was how The Organization managed to put up decent parties without spending a truck load of money on outsiders. Nowadays the general and incorrect concensus is that the cafe has to be cost effective in itself.

I had several talks about this yesterday. Of course it is now easy for me to give advice, after all; I am now only a bar-man / DJ. Hearing several people, what struck me as odd is that the reality of the situation(change upper management's way of doing business before anything can be improved) is still not clear to everyone.

For example : who said that the price of a drink cannot go up? Ever? The price of a drink has not gone up in over 4 years while cost has been soaring. Increase the price by 5 percent(which basically comes down to a dime per beer) and you immediately make an estimated  8.000 to 10.000  euros a year more. It's a start. Then use that money to build a smoking room in The Organization which will then make much more money than it does now. I estimate that the total cost of the smoking room would be earned back within three to four months.

Of course this would mean an active role for the board... Oh well, one can dream...

I'd Rather Go Bowling - Notes From The Organization - Part II

Well well well... just as I thought. The Organization(as I will call it from now on) is going to economize by squeezing the last drop of motivation from the volunteers. All rules, no rights, current regulations suspended or plain cancelled, compensation for hours worked cut in half, etcetera etcetera.

We did this before and ultimately decided that the volunteers should not be the ones to suffer from a bad economy or bad management. But I guess they are re-inventing the wheel again.
     
It will all be in vain. Nothing can stop The Organization from hemmoraging money except for a good solution for the smoking ban, better internal management and especially; some really well attended concerts and parties.

Don't save money, MAKE money!

And in the meantime I keep wondering how much the board members get from the local government for the fantastic job they are doing...

I'd Rather Go Bowling - Notes From The Organization

Communication Is The Only Way
              
I work in the cafe of a concerthall every now and then. This is strictly volunteer work but it's fun; DJ-ing and taking care of the bar and all that. Until last week I was also the cafe-coordinator; someone the people could call if they really didn't know where else to go for advice. By and by over the last years this coordinatorship had turned into an almost full managerial job.
                 
The problem with the organization that I worked in/with however, is the almost complete lack of knowledge when it comes to efficient internal communications on the one hand, and the total lack of discipline when maintaining any rule of good communications that they are handed on a silver platter. For the record : I gladly exclude the one or two people in the organization who have actually read a book about the subject in their life, but in general these people do not even know how to write proper minutes.
                                   
Of course you may now think 'Is that all? You can run a organization without minutes and all those things'. Yes, but the lack of communicational and organizational skills is much worse than it looks. Because this organisation is run by volunteers who do not see each other too often, who have day jobs, etcetera, communication must keep flowing like water, using all means available such as email, internal forums or down-to-earth meetings and minutes.

Trust But Verify
                                         
What compounds the problem is that there is supposed to be a - completely new - management, or rather a 'board of directors' monitoring it all. Unfortunately the members of said board can be defined as 'people you never see in the building'. Some time after the government take over of the organization - say about a year ago - this board appointed a managing director to take care of the internal organization. Suffice it to say that - although I am not fainting in admiration at the man's skills - I can see that his job is impossible to do with the current people running around and taking care of things. This is a failure by the board to lead, to organize and then to step back. Ronald Reagan's famous words come to mind : "Trust But Verify".


Have A Smoke And A Smile
                                              
Unfortunately the situation is getting worse and worse now that the government is cracking down on smoking in public places. The organization has had almost two years to come up with a solution but didn't do crap all. So now that the local government(the owners of the building) have demanded a ban on smoking in the whole building, the organization does not have a single alternative. There have been proposals coming from the work floor but they have all been deemed 'too expensive'. We'll have to wait and see if that is still the case when the turnover will drop and drop and drop over the next couple of months. I have seen no official figures so I can make an estimate without violating any trust given to me; I think total revenues have gone down more then 50 %. Frankly; I think the whole place is definitely doomed if they don't come up with a solution in the next month or so. After all; coming up with a plan is one thing, executing it in a timely fashion is something else altogether.
                               
The 'smoking-problem' is a perfect example of the structural problem in the organization: You can see the problem coming, you ignore it for as long as possible, and ultimately you have not even made a financial reservation to be able to come up with a solution. Don't even look at what the competition(e.g. the professional bars and cafe's) do. Don't even take into consideration that most of them still condone smoking until the fines get too high, because they fear that otherwise they will go bankrupt. And don't even look at what it is going to cost you to be more catholic than the Pope.

One Vision
                                       
There is one other major problem and that is the complete lack of vision by the board members and the complete lack of information that flows from the board to the volunteers. Basically, the volunteers can go and play in their little sandbox like Linus Van Pelt, but they should not come out under any circumstances. I could indeed quote StarTrek : 'Resistance Is Futile'.
                                     
When compared to the situation as it was until a few years ago, the first thing that went out the windows under the new local government management was the input and the responsibility of the volunteers for what goes on at a higher level in the organization. This is of course lethal for the initiatives and the ambitions of exactly those volunteers who can really make a difference if they would be allowed to.
                                
If the current board would have formulated a proper policy for the next three to five years this situation would be something that(almost) everyone could live with. In the current 'I Amp Volunteer So Ai Know Nothink' culture that pervades the organization, no volunteer knows anything about anything except where to report to work in the cleanup crew or what time to show up for their 9 hour bar-shift.

                          
Breakdown

So it took another year but last week it was there; that moment when you are so fed up with a situation that you just can't seem to improve, that you basically just stop trying and give up.
                          
In the course of trying to get things working better, a communications breakdown occurred again last week when all the volunteers were invited for a meeting. First of all the communication was severely misdirected. People who no longer work for the organisation received email-invitations while others who still work their asses off did not receive one at all. The email-notice for said meeting was two days. The meeting had been planned while the cafe in the building was supposed to be open, etcetera. Oh! And it was also planned on Mothers' Day at four in the afternoon...

After complaining about this(I admit; loudly) via an email I was told by the person who wrote the actual email that he wrote it on the orders of someone else and he did not feel like discussing the contents of the email. Actually, he used other words as in 'not needing any conversation about this shit' but I'll try to stay polite on my blog.
                   
It was the straw that broke the camel's back so I quit as the cafe-coordinator. I do not stand for these kind of responses, especially when it is so crystal clear that something is being handled wrong. And this sort of thing has happened with alarming frequency for quite some time now.
                  
                    
If people don't want to listen then I'm going to let them do it their way. Because I'd rather go bowling.

Serious Music Cafe 18/04/2010 Riverside Live In Paradiso

DJ Lenne and his mates 'did' a serious music cafe again yesterday. These sunday afternoons are dedicated to ProgRock, ProgMetal and related genres.

Yesterday saw a cafe very much focussed on Progressive Metal. The CD of the month was by Knight Area and the music played was mainly Progressive Metal. The video played was of a concert in Paradiso by Riverside, a band from Poland, which I must say is very much Progressive Metal. Fun to see how the long haired fierce looking gentlemen of the band took a deep bow after the show, almost modestly accepting the audience's cheers and praise. I have seen a lot of bands with a hell of a lot worse attitude.

The latest Knight Area CD was the prize in a ticket raffle so somebody went home with an extra bit of music in his pocket!

Two weeks from now there will be a much more classic progrock sunday afternoon, and on May 16th there will be a band performing.

We may be quite a while away from Tilburg or even Zoetermeer, but it goes to show again : one can play Progressive Music everywhere.




(Overheard this afternoon: Riverside, Katatonia, Knight Area, etc.)