No 10-minute!

4/3/08

I can never really understand why this ever happens, or at least why anyone other than the Leadership Team knows the 10-minute speaker is missing for some reason.

The first thing the Leadership Team should know is who is the 10-minute speaker at that days meeting and as soon as that member arrives check that all is okay. If for some reason the member doesn’t show, then the Chapter Director should always have a ‘Chapter 10-minute’ ready and announce it as if that was how it was always going to be. Not ‘Oh. Fred hasn’t turned up this morning, don’t know where he is, so I’ll fill in with something ..’ What does that look like?

What is a ‘Chapter 10-minute’? Well, it could be a short Power 1-2-1 session, or a session on Power Groups, or a session on the four workshops. Just something prepared and sitting in the chapter box waiting for the day that an emergency happens.

But what happens more often with a 10-minute is no Bio or Door-Prize or in fact both and this is so easy to avoid.

What I found worked well, when I was treasurer, was this. The day after the meeting I would email the next speaker reminding them that it was their 10-minute the following week, enclosing a Bio sheet, asking for its return and reminding them to bring a wrapped door-prize.

Then the day before the meeting I would send them another email. This time asking if all was okay for the meeting the next day, saying thank you for their Bio (or not as the case may be) and finishing with something like, ‘Looking forward to seeing what your door-prize is’.

By doing it this way, any problems came to light then, not the next morning, so a stand-in speaker could be found if needed, a Bio quickly written and a forgotten door-prize found.

How much better than no speaker, a forgotten Bio, or no door-prize.
We have a Sightpath Business Catalyst in one of my chapters and his memory hook is ‘Success comes to those who plan for it’ and in this case the planning is so simple!