The road to distinguished district

Tomorrow is June 1, the last month in the Toastmasters year.  Lots of people plan their work around deadlines, and Toastmasters are no different.  From individual to district, many Toastmasters goals have June 30 as a drop-dead deadline.

In the next-to-last-year of the Distinguished District Program (DDP) as we know it, with four critical success factors, and exactly six Presidents and six Select Distinguished districts, people are paying attention to performance.  Let’s take a look at the May 26 report.

Out of 82 districts, three have already met all four goals and are distinguished before the end of May!  Those are:

Districts with NO club loss?

It is easier to give birth than raise the dead. — Unknown

Every year, in the Hall of Fame at the August international convention, we recognize districts that have built the most clubs (“President’s Extension Award”) and the highest percentage of clubs at 20+ members (“President’s 20+ Award”).  Many people have no idea what these awards are.  I suspect few districts set them as a goal, and may even sometimes be surprised to hear they ranked well for these.

You can see the full list of the 2009-10 scoring for these two awards here:

http://reports2.toastmasters.org/Ext20.html

A net growth of 63 clubs in one year is a truly awesome event, one quite worthy of recognition, as D82 (India and Sri Lanka) did last year (they built 74 new clubs and lost 11).  That’s almost two thousand charter members discovering Toastmasters in one district alone!  Since this metric is based on club counts, not a percentage, large districts have a large advantage.  A district with hundreds of clubs has far more resources to build clubs than a district with 60 clubs.

Maintaining clubs at 20+ members is also important.  Clubs with less members often have poorer meetings due to members serving in multiple roles simultaneously, and generally are not providing as good an educational experience as they might.  Keeping clubs at charter strength ensures guests see the Toastmasters program at its best.  As of June 30, 2010, D71 (Britain and Ireland) had over 87% of their clubs at 20+ members, which is amazing.  (By comparison, the median percentage of clubs at 20+ members in the districts is about 52%, and it goes as low as 22%.)

But here’s another important measure: How many clubs did a district lose? Not total paid clubs (where you can make up for a lost club by building a new club), but based on individual clubs — did any district manage to keep every club that they started the year with?  For 2009-10, by my math, it turns out exactly one district did that.

D33 (central California and southern Nevada) lost zero clubs in 2009-10. Every single one of 171 clubs renewed!  And they built 12 new clubs and were distinguished!  Three other districts lost just one club each (D12, D24, D64).

This is a metric that smaller districts can do better at, since they have less clubs to try to maintain.  And one equally worthy of recognition at the Hall of Fame.  It’s also non-competitive — we could have many districts earning this award, just like in the new Distinguished District Program (DDP).

Club rebuilding is just as important as club building. The club coach program is a key tool that few districts use effectively (more on this in a future post).  While it may be easier to build new ones, most sick and struggling clubs don’t require a miracle to be saved, just a coach (or two) who is passionate about bringing Toastmasters to more people.  Plus, any guests who visit a struggling club are likely to get a poor impression of Toastmasters.  Sure, sometimes you run into a club that just can’t be saved (such as loss of company support or loss of meeting location with no alternatives), but those are rare.

Help your district save every club possible, make sure even small clubs present Toastmasters in the best possible light to guests, build their membership and bring the club to distinguished, and you’ll be part of a team recognized for your efforts at the district and international level!

[poll id=”4″]

The living DCP

Some people say that the recognition programs focus on the numbers too much, but behind those numbers are members achieving their goals.

My favorite educational session is about the Distinguished Club Program (DCP).  But I do it a little differently, by showing what those numbers mean.  For each DCP goal, I call volunteers out of the audience who are working on that goal and interview them briefly about their objectives and experiences.

For example, on the first goal, I ask for two people in the audience who are working on their CC, and call them up on stage.  I ask them what speech they’re on, what they’ve learned so far, and when they expect to complete speech number ten.  Ditto for the rest of the education awards.

For new members, I ask for a show of hands for anyone who’s joined in the last few months, call them up (two groups of four), ask them why they joined, talk about their Icebreaker, etc.

Club officer training is similar — ask for a volunteer holding each office, ask them about their role in that office, and get their commitment to twice-a-year training.

Finally, there’s the club officer list and on-time dues, for which I return to the club president, secretary, and treasurer from the previous group.

By now, I have 16 members on the stage, and now it’s time to underline the DCP membership requirement, noting that we need a few more people to round out the club and make a total of 20 (or a net growth of five).  There’s usually a few excited audience members who missed out on the earlier interviews who are ready to run up on stage.

I wrap up by summarizing the ten goals, pointing out the members achieving those goals on stage, and presenting the crowd of 20 members on stage as a ten-goal President’s Distinguished “club”, to strong applause.

Really a lot of fun!

How’s your district doing with the DCP?

The new Distinguished District Program requires 40% of base clubs to be distinguished (goes into effect July 1, 2012).  How’s your district doing so far this year, 1/4 of the way through?  Here’s the answer:

http://mikeraffety.com/DDP-DCP.html

I believe I have a reasonable way to measure that success, without having to wait for April dues to post, and it’s really surprising how well districts are doing with this goal.  I’ve written a program to:

  1. Calculate the number of distinguished clubs needed for each district (40% of start-of-year club base)
  2. Identify the clubs farthest along in the DCP (most goals earned to date)
  3. Add up their goals (but capped at 5 goals per club, since a club with 7 goals doesn’t help a club with 3 goals be distinguished)
  4. Divide that total goals by 5 times the number of distinguished clubs needed
  5. The resulting percentage should hit 100% exactly when the district achieves the 40% distinguished clubs goal.

Except that there’s also that membership requirement for the DCP.  So I’ve counted up the number of members that those clubs (making up the 40%) are short of whatever is required for them to be distinguished (+5 or >=20 members) and show that as well.  This number isn’t terribly meaningful until April dues are posted, of course; we only lose members twice a year, April 1 and Oct. 1.

D84 (north and central Florida) is already 63% of the way there!  11 districts are at least halfway there, and almost every district (80 of 82) is over 25%.  It will be very interesting to see how these numbers evolve in the coming months!

Feedback and comments are appreciated!

How would your district do in the new Distinguished District Program?

By now, most district leaders have probably heard about the new Distinguished District recognition program (DDP).  It goes into effect July 1, 2012, and basically does two things:

  1. Eliminates the competitiveness; every district can be President’s Distinguished, or Select Distinguished.  The objectives to meet those recognition levels are set for each district independently, as percentages based on the district size.
  2. Replaces the CC and AC critical success factors with Distinguished Clubs (and also eliminates the other point-accumulating goals of Distinguished Areas and leadership education awards).  Note that these education award goals are already in the Distinguished Club Program (which is unchanged), six of the ten DCP goals are education awards.

Here’s the breakdown of the new DDP goals.  The old qualifying requirements of completing and filing a District Success Plan Matrix and training at least 85% of Area and Division Governors by Sept. 30 are unchanged.

  1. Club growth (July 1 base to June 30 end of year) of 3% to be Distinguished, 5% to be Select, 8% to be President’s.  3% is the same goal as past years to be Distinguished.
  2. Membership payments growth (July 1 to June 30 as well) of 3% to be Distinguished, 5% to be Select, 8% to be President’s.  In the old program (still in effect this year and next), this goal is 2%, so this is an increase, but now it’s consistent with the club goal.
  3. Distinguished clubs (as of June 30, as a percent of the club base) of 40% to be Distinguished, 45% to be Select, 50% to be President’s.  In the old program, districts began accumulating points at the 30% threshold, topping out at 75%.

To reach any of the three recognition levels, the district must meet all three goals!  A shortfall in one goal is not made up by an excess in another goal.

How will this affect your district?  You can find out right now:  http://mikeraffety.com/NewDist.html

Here’s what you’re looking at:

Each district has one row (hover the mouse on the district number to see where it is located).  There are six groups of columns, one for each year from 2004-05 through 2009-10 (the year just completed).  In each group, you see the three goals with how the district did each year (the percentage goals from above are repeated in the column heading for easy reference).  If the goal was missed, it’s shaded in light red.

The district recognition status in the old and new programs is also listed for each year, “D”istinguished, “S”elect, “P”resident’s (or blank if not).  The ranking is also given as the small number after the letter.  Note that I invented a possible new program ranking, there is no published ranking system for the new program!  So that’s quite unofficial and subject to change.

There are also some totals down at the bottom.  If the total distinguished districts looks a little small, that’s OK, because in the past, districts didn’t focus on distinguished clubs as much.  As that becomes a factor equal in importance to clubs and membership payments, the added emphasis will bring those numbers up; people manage to the goals you set for them.  If you want to plan ahead to be distinguished in 2012-13 (and later), focus on improving DCP performance, it will take more than one year to make a significant change. (Over 80% of the clubs in D85-China were distinguished last year!)

It’s fully expected that future boards will review performance against these percentages and increase them periodically.  Hopefully, every district will reach 50% or more distinguished clubs soon, and then those thresholds can be adjusted upwards.  Remember how practically every district always hits the old AC goal, sometimes doubling or tripling it?  When a goal is reached consistently, it’s time to raise the goal, to keep stretching and getting better.

The number of consecutive years each district has been distinguished (as of 2009-10) is listed on the right (“DY”), and just three districts have been distinguished for six (or maybe more!) years: 59-Continental Europe, 71-Britain/Ireland, and 79-Middle East.  Sort of a “double Excellence in Leadership”, very impressive!

Friday dinner: Golden Gavel Dinner

Wow, caught myself typing LUNCH up there in the headline — hard to think of it as dinner.  The honoree was Carolyn Kepcher, who became famous as Donald Trump’s assistant on “The Apprentice”.  Now, however, she is writing books and providing career advice in a New York Daily News column, and started a web site to help professional women, WorkHerWay.com.

Her presentation was a very interesting review of how she got to where she is.  One of her most interesting claims is that she didn’t believe in work/life balance; she used to believe that if you weren’t in the office, you weren’t working.  But the Blackberry has changed all that.

The distinguished districts were the guests of honor for this, they were announced, and pictures of the DGs and the trio names played on the video screens throughout dinner.

Thursday morning: Hall of Fame

The Hall of Fame is always a fantastic celebration of our achievements over the last year, the energy is so up and enthusiastic!  Every distinguished district brings their whole convention delegation up on stage for the awards!

I was privileged to be the very first announcer (photo below), reading off the Presidential Citations, and there were only NINE this year, compared to the usual 20-30 or so.  And two of them were for people from Region V, Michael Smith and Justin Gottfried.

Two of the Region V districts (where I’m from) were Select Distinguished, D43 (James Mayhan) and D8 (Dori Drummond), and three more were Distinguished (D30-Michael Gougis, D35-Kathleen Wesselink, and D63-Allan Daniels), which ties our best-ever number of distinguished districts (5 of 8).

Truly amazing — this is the event that district leaders worked for all year long, and they deserve it!

Thursday morning: Board of Directors briefing

The board members were present for this, but had no role.  We sat there and listened as the officers (VPs and president and immediate past president) have reports summarizing our work for the week.  Full details will be on the TI web site by Friday, Aug. 20, but in short:

  • New area, division, and district recognition plan (effective 7/1/2012)
  • Numerous policy revisions, including campaigns
  • Big new strategic plan for growth!

I was heavily involved in the first one, so I’ll summarize those here:

Distinguished Area

  • Twice-annual AG visit reports for at least 75% of club base
  • No net club loss (this is a change)
  • At least 50% of base (July 1) clubs distinguished

Select Distinguished Area

  • As Distinguished, but 1 more club distinguished

President’s Distinguished Area

  • As Select, but a net growth of 1 club (same as now)

Distinguished Division

  • No net club loss
  • 40% of base clubs distinguished

Select Distinguished Division

  • As Distinguished, but 45% of clubs distinguished

President’s Distinguished Division

  • As Select, but 50% of clubs distinguished
  • Net growth of 1 club (same as now)

Distinguished District

  • 40% of base clubs distinguished
  • 3% club growth
  • 3% membership payments growth

Select Distinguished District

  • 45% of clubs distinguished
  • 5% club growth
  • 5% membership payments growth

President’s Distinguished District

  • 50% of clubs distinguished
  • 8% club growth
  • 8% membership payments growth

Perhaps the best feature is that the Distinguished District program is no longer competitive — EVERY district can be Select or President’s Distinguished, regardless of how other districts perform.