Organization of a Committee

I am a member of the service fraternity on campus, Alpha Phi Omega, and last year I served on the 5K committee that was responsible for planning and hosting the annual APO 5K event. Every year the service fraternity hosts the 5K race to raise money for a different charity of choice. We raise donations by selling 5K shirts, a spot in the 5K, hosting fundraising events, and finding sponsors to donate funds or supplies.

The committee was made up of a simple hierarchy: with our leader, then supervisor, then supporting team members (B &D 101). In total, there was 9 students on the team. Our leader tasked himself with being the contact for the charity, working with the finance chair on the budget, contacting other venders for the race, send out weekly update emails to the committee, and overseeing the progress of the supervisor. In addition, our leader dealt with most of the transaction cost of the committee. The supervisor communicated with the leader and the other team members and acted as a middle man in our team (B & D 101), distributed the work to the team members, and held weekly meeting for our committee. The rest of the work like: finding and raising donations, making t-shirts for the event, advertising the event, and other tasks were evenly distributed among the committee members. Our progress was monitored by weekly meetings, where we checked in with the supervisor who in turn relayed the progress to our leader. The next day after the meeting, we would receive an email with updates and news.

Overall, we had a committee with intrinsic motivation, due to our common love of volunteering and passion for raising donation for this charity, that helped our committee be successful. We were all on the same page and passionate about making the 5K fundraiser a success.

However, at the end of the semester we were unable to host the 5K race because of scheduling issues with the service fraternity. We were still able to donate all the money we raised to the charity and it was record funds for APO 5Ks. As individuals, we were proud of what we accomplished, but we knew the success came from the performance of the committee.

I believe that Katzenbach and Smith’s “six distinguishing characteristics of high-quality teams” (B & D 107) applies to our committee. First, our team was created by the service fraternity determining that every year there should be a 5K race to raise money for a charity. This opportunity was brought to us and the members on the committee felt to desire to serve on the team. In terms of committee goals and how we attached them, we set goals at the beginning of the semester and broke each goal into steps that were assigned at weekly meeting and due dates for those steps. This made large goals into small tasks, which we could achieve.  In addition, our committee was small and manageable (B & D 108). With only 9 team members, we were held accountable by our leader and supervisor to achieve our common goal of a successful 5K fundraiser and no one was lost in translation.

I do not want to forget an important aspect to our committee. We were a successful committee, but as individuals we were successful team members. Personally, I was a productive member of the teams because: I completed each assignment in a timely fashion, attended every weekly meeting, contributed to brain storming ideas, supported the other committee members, and more throughout the semester. One characteristic I believe I have that not everyone on the team has is being an active listener. My friends and family know me for being a good listener and remembering specific details in a conversation that most people miss due to not paying attention or did not find it important to remember. Personally, I rather be a listener than a speaker in a conversation. I believe this comes from my introverted personality. Since I was always listening and paying attention to everyone on the committee, I could understand where everyone’s mindset was at and hear ideas that were lost in discussion. I was then able to bring up their ideas and remind them of their contributions so that they could come to the for front of the discussion. Obviously, in a larger group this might not have been possible because of the size and number of voices. However, I value my actively listening as an individual team member and I bring it to every team situation.





Reference: 
Bolman, Lee G, and Terrence E Deal. “Reframing Organizations Fifth Edition.” Artistry, Choice, & Leadership, 2017, pp. 95–112., doi:10.1002/9781119281856.

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanSeptember 30, 2017 at 5:37 AM

    A part of what you wrote I didn't understand. Where you said that the service fraternity couldn't host the 5K because of scheduling issues - what happened? Was the race held anyway? What does it mean to host it? Also, is this part of the same weekend where they run the marathon here, so there is also a 10K race and then even a longer race? Or is this something separate? On that part I was confused.

    The business guru Peter Drucker has written some interesting things about volunteer work. He argues that volunteers want to be learning and that is the reward they expect. If they do learn then the organization functions quite well. If learning is absent and it just seems like grunt work, eventually that can get stale. Also, if the organization seems ineffective in delivering on its mission, that can impact member motivation. One reason to ask the questions in the first paragraph is to find out if there was disappointment by members as a consequence. I didn't understand whether that happened or not.

    Apropos your last paragraph on being a good listener, I would have liked to learn more about how the group benefits from that. You mentioned recalling detail that others didn't remember. Did the group require reflective activity after the meeting happened. In my work where I would meet with a group of faculty in the same area, I would subsequently write an email giving my sense of the discussion, and let them react to that. It would give them feedback about what I had registered from the discussion and enable them to amplify on some points or make corrections on others. Did your group do anything like that?

    Some time ago I wrote a blog post called Teaching Quiet Students as it seemed I was encountering students like this more and more, though it was somewhat contrary to my perception of what students should be like. I found I needed to change my views about this. You might find the second half of that post interesting. It ties into how our class is run now, even though the circumstances are quite different from what they were when I wrote that post.

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    Replies
    1. Joan RobinsonOctober 3, 2017 at 7:43 AM

      I apologize for the confusion. When I said host I meant put on/held the race for the campus. We planned and organized the race, but in the end we were not able to have the race happen. The service fraternity had a lot of issues scheduling all of their events last spring. We had a date approved and then had to reschedule the date 3 or 4 times because of conflicts with other events. The fraternity did not want to have two events on the same weekend because they did not want an event to affect the turn out of another. Because of this the 5K race was continuously pushed back and then we ran out of dates to hold the race.

      There are a few different 5K/10K races that happen during the school year, but APO puts on a separate 5K race. This was also a problem with scheduling the race because we did not want the race to be the same weekend as another one on campus. We assumed students would not want to participate in two races in one weekend.

      I think Peter Drucker has an interesting view on volunteering. I have never thought about it in terms of learning and grunt work, but that makes sense. I would agree with him. I believe everyone on the committee enjoyed their time volunteering for the 5K race because none of us had ever hosted a race before. We were learning new tasks like fundraising and organizing an event.

      As a committee, we were disappointed that none of our hard work came to light in turns of the race actually happening. We were frustrated with the executive board of the fraternity for continuously pushing off our event. This made us feel like the 5K race was not valued the same way other events were. Because of this I'm not confident anyone would volunteer to host the 5K again. However, we were happy with how much we were able to fundraise and donate to the charity. The bright side was that we were able to keep our promise to the charity and raise donation for them.

      The committee consisted of a lot of discussion and input by the committee. Sometimes, people would talk over each other or be distracted by thee powerpoint, ect. and would miss information. I would recall that information and give my opinion or thoughts in addition to what they said. I think your email process is nice because this would give your group a visual representation of the topics addressed and gave them the opportunity to elaborate on those ideas. My committee leader did something similar to this, but the committee did not respond to his email. His emails did not warrant a response, but they would have been more affective if we did.

      Thank you for telling me about your blog post. I would like to read it and possibly email you about it in the future to discuss it.

      Delete
  2. Robert Giffen Econ 490 fall 2017October 3, 2017 at 4:09 PM

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  3. Robert Giffen Econ 490 fall 2017October 3, 2017 at 4:17 PM

    Great post! I have been on several teams that hold a similar structure to the one that your organization did and found that we were quite successful as well. It seems as though the tasks were delegated successfully and that your team seemed to make great progress in a short period of time. However, its unfortunate that it had to be canceled. I can understand why this may happen in such a large organization (its happened to me as well). I am glad that you were able to donate the money at the end of the day. Do you feel that your team was more successful than previous 5K committees? If so, what do you believe was the cause for your success or lack thereof?

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    Replies
    1. Joan RobinsonOctober 3, 2017 at 6:05 PM

      I do believe our committee was more successful than previous ones because we were able to raise more donations then past years. In terms of team members, I'm not sure how well the team members in the past worked together or if it was a group of likeminded people, but our team worked very well together.

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