Scoutmaster Podcast 110

And now the old Scoutmaster. Tom, you know why you can't starve to death in the desert? Uh no, Because of all the sandwiches there. Oh, There's your cut-in right there. Clearly he'd been thinking grand in the back of the boys' lives.

How many of our sons you know? That's the first page they turn to in the magazine. Oh yeah, That's the one I look at. We could tell: Hey, this is podcast number 110..

Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. Good to have you back. Let's look in the mailbag. Brody wrote in. He said I am currently working on my queen scout in Australia.

Just like to say how helpful and awesome your site is. Best wishes. Thanks very much, Brody. Sure, do appreciate that.

Australia, How about that? I think that's the first message I've read on the podcast from Australia.

So the rest of you Aussies down there, Let's write in. Let me know you're out there. Tom Gillard said very good show this week. He's referring to podcast number 109.. Bob Mazooka had some good insights into what volunteers are doing. I really like the closing.

It'll be hard to top that one. Thanks very much, Tom.

You know, Tom, one of the interesting things is that many listeners write in and tell me how much they like it when the show closes. I don't know if they meant it the same way that you did.

Well, anyway, Scoutmaster Jerry tweeted: just listen to Scoutmaster Podcast with Bob Mazooka- Terrific show. You also take the time to listen.

Well done, Clark. Well, thank you very much, Jerry. Jerry has the SMM podcast and the Scoutmasters Minute blog. Make sure you get over and take a look.

Kayleigh Gallapo is up in Canada and she was mentioned last week but now she's been mentioned twice and I've gotten her name right twice. Hey, Kayleigh. Phil Peck on Google Plus said: Clarke Green has made it to the big leagues, Bob Mazooka.

Well done, sir. Can't wait to listen to the podcast.

And then Adam Cox replied. He said I would say that Bob made it to the big leagues.

Yes, well, Now it was quite exciting to have the Chief Scout Executive on last week and I have returned to Earth. So in this show we have a Scoutmaster panel discussion and I think you're going to find it useful. It's about the troop committee and we kind of majored on the relationship between the Scoutmaster and the troop committee.

We were very fortunate to get Frank Maynard to call in and talk with us for the panel discussion. Frank is the author of Bob White Blather. You'll see him referred to fairly often on my blog and he returns the favor on his. But Frank is a committee chair and has a lot of good things to say.

So the panel discussion is going to take up the rest of the podcast, So let's get started, shall we?

It's time for another Scoutmasters panel discussion, And joining us tonight we've got Tom Gillard. Tom is down in Tallahoma, Tennessee.

How are you doing, Tom Good Clark? How are you? I'm hanging in there. Walter came back from over there in Hawaii and he's back joining us.

At what location? This time? Around, Walter. I'm once again on the 14th floor. It's a beautiful, clear day here. I can see Mount Tam- that's probably 60 miles away.

Oh wow, And that's in California. What part of California?

Again? Santa Clara, Santa Clara, And Larry Geiger in Vieira, Florida.

How are you doing, Larry Good Clark? Good evening, Good to hear from you, And joining us is- I've captured a Bob White. If you are out there on the interwebs and you are looking for scouting information, you may have run across his blog- Bob White Lather.

And we have Frank Maynard joining us this evening. How are you doing, Frank? Hey Clark, it's good to be with you guys.

So, Frank, what part of the world are you in? Well, I'm in Novi, Michigan, which is in southeast Michigan. It's sort of between Detroit and Ann Arbor. We are in the Great Lakes Council currently, but we are in the midst of what is shaping up to be a possibly more widespread phenomenon where councils are actually merging into large area-wide councils- The Area 2 project. You may have heard about and probably read in Scouting Magazine this month- And we're right in the thick of it here. The Greater Michigan Council was just formed and we're going to be folded into that pretty soon.

You're working with which troop there? I work with Troop 407, which is in Novi. We've been in business for close to 30 years.

We have 58 scouts- actually 59 scouts currently- and we're expecting to add another 08 to 10, perhaps with the Weeblows crossovers this spring, back to our normal strength of about 68, where we've been for the last- oh, I'd say three or four years, And we got there through a concerted effort of marketing to the Weeblows scouts. It does work. Folks, You are currently serving as the committee chairman. That's right, I'm the committee chair. I've been in committee chair for five years. Prior to that, I was on the troop committee as a.

My function was the Weeblows resource person And I go back to Cub Scouts as Cub Master, Weeblows leader, Den leader and assistant Cub Master. What we hear from Frank on his blog is things concerning the troop committee.

He's had some really excellent advice on there and a series of posts about running committee meetings and things like that that I think you will find very useful, And we'll make sure to link to his blog in the post that contains this podcast. We've got him here to talk about the Scoutmaster troop committee relationship a little bit. Sometimes they're pulling against each other, but what we're always looking for is that kind of well-balanced relationship. We're getting the program to the boys.

What's the best way, Frank, to get the committee chair and the Scoutmaster pulling in the same direction? Well, I think the easy answer to that is that, since the committee chair is responsible for selecting the other adult leaders, he just needs to select a Scoutmaster he can work with. But that's not always possible. A lot of times the committee chair will come into a situation where a Scoutmaster's been around for a while and is entrenched. He doesn't have the opportunity to select, to hand pick a Scoutmaster and maybe doesn't have the experience to do so.

So I think you really have to develop a sense of cooperation between the committee chair and the Scoutmaster, And it's got to be mutual, so that each respects each other and hopefully each is on the same page. It really takes a clear understanding of each other's role and a willingness to really do your best in your own area of responsibility in order to make things work. Because if there's friction between the two- where the Scoutmaster wants to depart from the Scouting Program the way it should be done, for instance, or where the committee chair tries to push things around that the Scoutmaster doesn't want to do, then you really won't have an effective troop for the boys. Let's start with you, Walter.

What was your relationship with your committee chair as a Scoutmaster? Well, my committee chair was somebody I worked with as a Cubmaster as well.

We both moved on to the troop, And so we were already a good combination. Typically, I'm not very good at some of the things that committee chairs are supposed to do, so I'm glad to split the job up and let them have their run.

Right now we have an interesting situation where we have both the Scoutmaster and the committee chair stepping down, So we're looking for a new team. And, Tom, how about you? We've got a real good relationship with the committee chairman.

He understands what I'm trying to do, what the whole goal of the Scouts and the boy led, And he's behind it 100% And it's very, very lucky that it's working out real well for me. And Larry, how about you? I basically had three committee chairs and two troops. Basically, we worked as a team. I had one for a couple years and we started a new troop And I had a guy that was there for eight years. He had four sons and he was really into everything, But he was very business-like and ran a very good meeting And before long he had about 20, 25 people in his meeting.

The current troop that I just retired from had another great guy. Now in my committees I've always had probably slightly more committee members than assistants on campouts, So I've had a pretty good participation from committee members. We've all had some very good relationships with our committees, our committee chairs.

How do we define what Scoutmasters and assistant Scoutmasters do and what the committee does? Let me throw that over to Frank for a minute. It's really fairly simple.

Actually, we talked about this at a roundtable discussion last year which we called which lane are you in? We explored the subject and it's pretty simple to define what the committee's job is.

If you look in, I think it's chapter four of the troop committee guidebook. It lists the things the committee is directly responsible for: Things like ensuring qualified leadership is on hand and trained, Providing the meeting room and the meeting facilities and making sure it's safe. Responsible for finance, property, facilitating the outdoor program, supporting advancement, conduct boards of review, help with friends of scouting And the rest of the responsibilities. Basically directly support the Scoutmaster in the program, Advised on policies of the BSA and the chartered organization, supports the Scoutmaster in working with individual boys who might need a little bit of additional assistance and in general support the direct leaders. The Scoutmasters biggest job, also referred to in the troop committee guidebook, is to train and guide the boy leaders. Everything else pretty much falls under that heading.

He works with the other leaders, the other assistant Scoutmasters, to use the methods of scouting to achieve the aims of scouting. He meets with the parents to explain the program to them and he advises the patrol leaders council.

So just as the interface between the adults and the boys is between the Scoutmaster and the senior patrol leader. The interface between the program and administrative half is between the Scoutmaster and the committee chair. That's where those two come together and our goal in scouting really- and you think about it- is not to manage paperwork but really is to instill the values in the young people. This is done through the program side. The committee has to be there, has to understand that its most important role is to support the Scoutmaster and indirectly then through the boys, through the various things that they do. Training is emphasized for the Scoutmaster and assistant Scoutmasters, who are more directly involved with camping trips and things like that.

But we don't really think about the fact that we need to train the committee as well. Yes, absolutely, there is training available. It's nicely done in person and best done as a an entire committee- the troop committee challenge- and it's also available online.

So there's really no excuse for not taking it and it does give a really clear view of what the committee's job is and what the various roles are. I've really stressed- and my committee chairman have also- that the main committee chair people have to get committee training, treasures advancement committee chairs, and everybody's been on board with that. There's always a couple of committee members that may not have done that in the past one or two, but they're usually not that active. I guess some people think, oh, that's a goofy little three hour course.

Well, people over and over again tell me: boy, I was sure glad I took that. It's now also one of the standards for the journey to excellence.

When our council now they can't register training, they have to have youth protection, introduction to scouting and troop committee challenge. We're- what do you call that? Prototyping that in our council.

Walter and Tom, are you seeing that? Not the committee not, but it is a good idea. I need to pass that through our committee chairman. We're working up to it.

We have the youth protection required for everybody and working and they're strongly suggesting training. One of the things I think is interesting and might be a source of confusion between scoutmasters and committee chairs is that nowhere in the scoutmasters handbook does it say what the duties of a scoutmaster are. It only says that in the committee materials, which of course you never look at, it's a scoutmaster.

I never even knew they were there, so it's really kind of odd. But once you look at it it makes a lot of sense and in fact it reminds me of our church, Episcopal church, where you've got the priestess for the spiritual life of the congregation and the vestries keeping the lights and the heat on and it's a little bit like that. The program and the boys and ASMs are the scoutmaster and keeping it all running, taking over as the committee. Your number one item in your job description is all other duties as assigned and that kind of applies to the scoutmaster because it's not a list of responsibilities, but the responsibility is to make sure that the boys have the resources and the training they need to run their program basically, and that's it, and it varies from troop to troop tremendously.

So the committee challenge can be either online or a face-to-face setting. Yeah, that's right. It's available as an online course through the online learning center. I've seen that part. It can also be run by the district training teams or, for that matter, if you want to get the materials, you can buy them and do it yourself. I'd recommend that you get in touch with your district training people to maybe get some assistance with it- One of the other hats that I wear is the training hat in our district- and check with your district training people and see if they'd be willing to come out to your troop, maybe get the other troops in town together for an evening and do the course.

What's the time frame on that? It takes about three hours.

I think the best way to take that class is at a district event with people from other units. I think it's very valuable. We're all serving troops of at least 25 or more at this point.

Am I right about that? Everybody? Yeah, that's right. A lot of times these dynamics in a larger troop are going to be different from a smaller troop. We're also all serving in troops that have some history behind them and have been around for a while, and the dynamics of this are going to be different in a newer troop. Because I end up hearing from a lot of scout leaders who are working with newer troops and smaller troops, let's say, maybe anywhere from a dozen to 20 scouts.

When we're looking at this from a smaller scale, what are the differences there? It's like similar to moving parents moving from Cubs if they've been in a Cub Scout pack.

That committee is very, very different because there's no PLC and there's no program outside of the adults and so they're not used to splitting that up at all. That's part of it if they're coming over from that. The other is that things are much less formal in a smaller group. You kind of keep track of them in your head, but people are doing a lot of different things and everybody pitches in.

When you look at the committee guidebook, Frank, how many people are on a committee? It really varies and can be as many as you have, but there are maybe a half a dozen or so specific positions that are called out.

When you have a smaller troop, you might only be able to get a half a dozen people and get all the roles filled, but otherwise you're going to have situations where one person is doing two or three jobs and then they can't really do them as well as they could otherwise if they only had one. The danger there is that your Scoutmaster or assistant Scoutmasters may feel compelled to start picking up some of the slack as well, and that's not a good situation because that takes their attention away from the boys in the program. When I started troop 709 we had a couple of leaders, but there were basically two of us, the committee chairman and myself- and we just agreed to do everything and he took the committee stuff and I took the Scoutmaster stuff and we had 12 scouts.

And the reason I'm saying that is because what we did was, as people came along, we let them just kind of hang around and figure out what they wanted to do. And, just me speaking, I don't like pushing people too hard.

I like them to pick what they want to do and then they stay at it for six or seven years. Okay, 19 years ago, when we first started, we had crossed over from Cubs and we knew that we should have a committee.

Well, it was me and my wife would show up at the gym and we would be the only two there and there was five of us- I mean, there were five kids in the troop at the time- and as the years went on and we would slowly get one or two more people involved and you finally get that critical mass that starts the whole thing rolling again. And at some point we got committee chairman and the treasurer and the whole gambit and we were able to step away and do what we're supposed to do.

Well, people don't have to start there, do they? I mean people don't have to start with a committee full of folks. I mean we just saw two examples of that, but you do need to have in your mind that that needs to build over time. Yes, absolutely. You don't ever want it to be where you hang on to that. It's just a starting point.

That's. The advantage to having a smaller unit is that you don't have quite as much work to do, there's not as much equipment to manage, you don't have as many scout accounts to keep track of, so the work isn't quite as voluminous as it would be for a troop of 50 or 60 scouts.

So you could probably get along with a smaller committee. But as the troop grows and scout membership, you're also gaining families you need to add to the committee. We just crossed over six scouts last weekend and this past Monday was the first time that the committee met during a troop meeting and it was wonderful for me. It was standing room only in the little room where they normally meet.

You know five or six- now was probably 15 and I was first on the agenda. Did my report got up? Excuse myself, got up and left, which is very strange because that's the first time in 19 years I don't know what happened at a committee meeting.

So great way to go, way to go. You're almost there, dude, working at it well if things are working well, you can sit in on that committee meeting for most of the troop meeting and not even have to worry about how things are going out in the other room.

Well, I think Tom wanted to get out of the committee meeting. That's what I think. I don't blame them. Some of them can go on and on if they're not managed. Probably was I right about that, Tom. Yeah, because my place is more out there with the kids.

No, I have committee meetings. We should talk about this for a moment because it can actually. It can kind of make or break the effectiveness of a unit in some ways, and it can certainly make or break your own kind of peace of mind.

Frank, what do we do to keep the meetings from being eternal? That's a good question. I talked about that a little bit in my post this week about avoiding what's called death by meeting, or at least a term that I had heard before. The number one advice is to have an agenda and stick to it. Start and end your meetings on time. Don't let discussion get off track.

Make sure that every agenda item has a person responsible for it and make sure that the outcome of each item on the agenda is stated, or at least the desired outcome. You need to know when you have finished with something. You need to know when you have succeeded at a particular item.

What success looks like, I think is how it's commonly said. But keep things moving. If discussion gets off track, you kind of have to round things up and move along, because- and this is where the committee chair kind of has to have a gentle- but in persistent hand in running things, it's the committee chair loses track of or loses control of the meeting or the discussion. Then you could be there all night.

So one of the nice things I found, we recently, within the last couple of months, moved to having our committee meetings at the same time as the troop meetings, and that forces us to start and end on time, because the boys are really knocking down the door when they're done. If we're not done so, we have to keep the discussion limited to an hour and a half, and fortunately we've been well able to do that. One of the things you don't do is overload the agenda with stuff that doesn't really need to be brought up in the meeting. Reports, for instance, can be distributed ahead of time by email or just covered very briefly, you don't have to go on and on.

And I kind of pulled a flip flop this year by moving the report section from the committee members to the end of the meeting, because I was finding that they were taking up probably a good half of the meeting at the beginning and we weren't getting to the business end until you know, until now, 45 minutes in. So this kind of limits the time for discussion on those items. But do keep a firm hand on the agenda and keep it moving. That's the best advice.

Yeah, and also that scout mat, since we're scout mastering, that Scoutmaster guy, he needs to do a Scoutmaster minute and go, and and that's a place where sometimes- because a lot of discussion happens around camp outs or other things, the committee chair really needs to like say: well, we'll work on that during the outdoor chairman stuff and so thank you, mr Scoutmaster. You know, after 10, 15, 20 minutes he kind of needs to go.

Yeah, Frank, what do you want to hear from the Scoutmaster at a committee meeting? Well, I'd like to hear an update on how the boys are doing, what the program, what his perspective of what the boys program is all about. We always have an item, a line item, for the Scoutmaster and the senior patrol leader to report. SPL is always welcome to sit in on the meetings and in fact, and when we had them on nights other than the committee meeting nights, sometimes he'd sit in through the whole meeting just get a good earful of how the committee works. And he does kind of need to know that there's this other side of the troop that that runs the business, and but he's always welcome to sit in and I always ask him to come in and give a report and in fact we had our committee meeting last night. He came in, gave a nice report on the on the outcome of the PLC, had some really clear ideas and a lot of things that we had already talked about.

He brought up and that thought that these were the sorts of things that they wanted to do and I always float that item. That item is variable. It depends on when he can make it in. If we're in the middle of a troop meeting time and he's got a couple minutes to run, in will interrupt our discussion and let him have his five minutes on the floor. Likewise for the Scoutmaster, and he may have Scoutmaster conferences to hold and other things as well.

So so those positions are floated in the agenda and they can step in whenever they have a second. Walter, did you have like a pretty standard approach to a committee meeting?

Did you have a report that you prepared in advance? Or I tended to talk about what was coming up, a little bit of report on. Maybe, if there's something, some issue with attendance on campouts- and often it was- this is this aspect of scouting which maybe you haven't done before, or how it's important to get the new scouts to summer camp and why that's important.

Or we got to start looking at we below, so just those program related, what are we thinking about this month and the next couple of months? From that, I do bring in the SPL often if there's something we're going to do or explain, just bring him in and have him explain it.

And Tom, what about you? I report to him about what, what's happened, campery wise or like, like Walter said, what's coming up, some of the stuff that I hear it around table, that maybe they they haven't heard training opportunities and just miscellaneous stuff, and just the general health of the truth, Larry, anything, anything different from either of those lists, usually a discussion with the outdoor chairman about where the camp out is, any details, kind of in front of the whole committee.

But otherwise, just like what Walter said, do assistant Scoutmasters, do they attend the committee meeting? Frank, ours usually do. I know that they're technically not members of the committee but they have great input and they have good participation and they care about the troop.

And since we've kind of gotten gotten away from voting on things rather than, what we're doing now is getting more to agreement, rather than taking a black and white vote, an up or down vote on on issues, we discuss something until we're generally on agreement of something, it doesn't really matter that they, that they don't have a vote, they have a voice and any parent has a voice on our committee. So we we invite all the parents to come and sit in and talk so so that that sort of distinction of who is a voting member of the committee, so to speak, is kind of faded in our in our troop. But yeah, the assistant Scoutmasters do come and and contribute to the to the discussion. Walter, assistant Scoutmasters at the committee we do bring in, say, the venture.

We have a liaisons for different patrols and one of them to the venture patrol. So if we say it's time to start thinking about film on two years from now or whatever the planning horizon is, then they'll come in and talk about the high adventure stuff, those kinds of things, or or maybe I'd have somebody report on who was one of the leaders at our summer camp and and report on that.

But mostly- and we do have a parent slash committee meeting, so we have and similar kind of consensus approach to it. Tom, what about you?

Assistant Scoutmasters? Yes, this time everybody was in there and I guess we have morphed into what frank was talking about, where it's not just committee members but the. If there was a parent standing around, we say, come on. Normally they show up or they don't. But if they were standing around Monday night we invited them to come into the committee meeting.

So I guess it's morphing into that to some extent. Larry, what about you? No, no assistance.

Sometimes they transition from the committee or back to the committee, but usually it's just me or me and the senior patrol leader, and you know we just visit, stop by and and leave. We also have a former Scoutmaster who's re-registered as a committee member because he likes doing boards or review and he's really good at it.

So that's really an interesting option for these older, for these ASMs who the kids have moved on it's if they want to do boards, they should register as committee members. Yeah, I've thought about that. In fact, we had it one a few years ago, shortly after we joined the troop. It's probably been about 10 years now.

The Scoutmaster at the time when we joined re-registered as the committee, a member of the committee, and then became the committee chair for a while while we were in between committee chairs, and so he basically wore every hat in the troop at one point or another and was was valuable in the sense that he could bring the Scoutmaster's perspective over to the committee side, and we all learned a lot from him in that regard. Let's talk about the place of voting as far as a committee is concerned, because I think a lot of people make the assumption that the troop committee should vote on different questions. You have trended more towards just developing consensus and moving forward.

Do you see that as being a better option than voting? Yeah, definitely I think it is, because it really brings out the discussion and it brings out the pros and cons and it lets you really see the other person's point and if you can all agree on a course of action, then I think that it's a much more effective outcome than it would be if you had 12 people on the committee and 7 people voted yes and 5 people voted no. Then you'd have 5 angry people, or at least disappointed people who really couldn't support the decision that the rest of them did.

So I think what you have to do is listen to what everybody has to say and then try to craft an outcome that satisfies at least the high points or at least gives everybody something to celebrate or something to embrace. Every issue is not a black and white issue and there are many aspects to them.

We had a similar issue within the last year and we reached a very good compromise that really pleased the people that were complaining about the situation as well as the people that were advocating it. So I think if you do open the discussion and just say: are we all in agreement with this or what do we not agree about and how can we smooth it out, and that's kind of where the committee chair has to guide the discussion and see where everybody stands- there are really two. When you look at a meeting facilitator, you look at two different roles. One of the roles is the impartial arbitrator, somebody whose job it is to just look at everybody's viewpoint and really not inject your own viewpoint into it, and that's the role that the committee chair has to take in situations like that where you've got a divergence of opinion and you're trying to reach a consensus.

I think we're mostly with Frank on that consensus on most things it's just everybody okay with that. But occasionally something comes up and you just, for instance, how you're going to spend some money. Sometimes you just have to make a decision and sometimes there's just a couple of people that want to go another way.

I think almost everything our committees have done it's just like: okay. Everybody says yeah, it's unanimous, I agree with that.

But occasionally we just kind of cut things off and said: vote, okay, we're moving forward. We spent three meetings on this. We got to get off this subject.

We're not going to all agree, and then 99% of what we do everything else is like: oh yeah, go ahead a lot of time. If you have a really complex issue, you need to have a subcommittee to discuss it and bring it back the following month, so you're not tying up committee meeting time.

There is lots and lots of discussion, they finally get into agreement and there is still a vote, but usually it's unanimous vote. So it's like Larry said: it's 99% of the time it's everybody's in agreement and everything's fine. But we do the same thing.

Walter, you want to weigh in on that? I know there's some situations where we voted but I cannot remember what they were and of course I'm not in there for most of the meeting. But we're mostly almost all consensus voting and the way that meetings work and things like that are sometimes aimed at resolving conflicts.

Can anyone talk about an example of a conflict that has been resolved within a troop through the committee? Yeah, we've had one very large issue many a few years ago and it was handled. It was handled internally through the committee and that didn't satisfy. That wasn't satisfactory for those involved.

So we had to call in the district exec and try and settle something that way. But the committee chairman was very professional and kept his cool, kept his. He was pretty much to the facts and tried not to put his judgment in on it. But it was a bad one of those bad situations that he had to deal with. The committee resolves things, but generally not usually in the meeting. Usually a couple of people and the committee chairman will get together.

Let me chime in here, if I may. The one kind of bottom line thing for the committee chair is that he has to take- he or she has to take- an attitude of servant leadership and look at his or her role as a role of support and service to not only the Scoutmaster and the assistant Scoutmasters, but to other committee members as well. The committee chair needs to be up on all the latest BSA practices and policies and all of the guides that come out. Ideally should be the first one, or one of the first, to bring these new things, like the new advancement guide, into the troop and to believe in and encourage and support the patrol method, which means doing his or her best to keep the adults out of the way and for messing things up for the boys.

I think that's probably one of the biggest roles that the committee chair should fill. Well, if anyone has great ideas recruiting the next committee chair, I'm open.

How long has your committee chairman been there, Walter? A couple of years, okay, so it's not been like eight or ten years or something. No, no, no, he's starting up at a new job which is going to take a lot of time.

So you don't think the next one is right there. There are some people who who could be, but just getting somebody to step up is really the question, right, yeah?

Well, the thing is is you don't ever want to wait. When the right guy is there, make the move, don't wait too long.

Yeah, I really think the thing that you need to do, the very first thing you need to do in taking a new job, is to recruit your replacement right away, so that you'll have somebody to back you up in case that happens, in case you have to leave. I have a couple of people in mind who might be interested in stepping in someday.

So you know, it's always a good idea to have that in mind. I think a lot of times, Walter, my experience has been, if you approach people from the idea of what their function is going to be rather than the title you have to take on, people are usually a little bit easier when you ask them to perform a function.

Well, we need somebody who's going to run committee meetings and, you know, make an agenda and make sure that things are happening, and I've had better luck recruiting with the job description rather than with the title. How about that?

Yeah, I think actually that does work, to have some description of what's going on. And for a lot of the jobs you say, fair share is just a couple of months here. If there's a time, the wreath sales are just November or December. That's the limits of that job.

So, Clark, how's that work? For Scoutmaster: hey, do you want to be Scoutmaster?

Or hey, do you want me to throw you in this room with 35 12 year olds and leave you alone and say goodbye? Most of the time, most of the time now, you would never want to give a Scoutmaster an introduction by giving him a job description. Good lord, none of us would have done it.

I don't think every time we get new parents- and I'm always on the lookout for, just in case you know, if one of them could actually step in and do that if I had to listen. I really appreciate everybody spending the time this evening. Frank, out of no by Michigan committee chair. I've been planning on it. We'll make sure to send everybody over to take a look at the blog. Thanks for spending the time with us tonight.

It's been fun and a pleasure, Clark. Larry, it's good to meet you, Frank. Thank you, Larry, Tom, nice being with you tonight. Good meeting you too, Frank.

Thanks, Tom and Walter, can you still see the mountain? Yes, then, the sun is just behind the Santa Cruz mountain, so it's time to say good night. Thanks again, fellas.