Clean Slate's working principles

The Clean Slate:
Working Principles for a 21st Century Mensa
Version 1.0

1. Make member services and "the Mensa experience" the primary focus of the entire organization. Make members not just satisfied in, but active contributors to, and advocates of, This Smart Thing of Ours.

2. Embrace that individual and local group activities are the primary interaction members have within Mensa. Actively fund local activities. Actively share successful activities across local groups. Actively document support information. Actively quantify critical success criteria to enable evaluation and doing more of what works, less of what doesn't.

3. Mimic what makes the internet the most successful invention in history. Experiment, learn, & enable tight/quick feedback loops. Let adoption, promulgation, & extension determine success.

4. Embrace social media & mobile culture. Make member interaction a 24/7/365 possibility. Use video to capture & share the joy of being a smartie. Integrate publications, events, & discussions via social media. Minimize lead times. Maximize coverage. Enable every member to customize their Mensa experience based on their tastes/preferences.

5. Quantify everything. Collect data obsessively. Use it to make data-based decisions. It's not science unless it can be measured.

6. Use SMARTER principles to enable objective, data-based creation & evaluation of goals & objectives: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely, Evaluated, & Re-evaluated. Actively compare objectives to results. Make course corrections as soon as a problem is evident.

7. Actively train local leaders in the nuts & bolts of running a successful local group. Update & futurize handbooks. Create FAQs. Hold regular training
workshops. Capture sessions on video for easy sharing & reference. Embrace remote & net-based education to expand reach while lowering costs.

8. Establish a sound financial base for Mensa now & into the future. Align expenditures with member services. Justify & control expenses. Budget revenue on data-based, realistic membership retention & growth. Establish transparency in budget & actual expenditures. Cut expenses & hold the line on dues.

9. Establish a culture of transparency, openness, & inclusiveness. Broadcast & capture AMC & budget meetings. Enable members to see how time, effort & money are spent representing them & governing the corporation. Explain decisions. Minimize/eliminate time spent in "executive session."

10. Embrace viral/word-of-mouth/recommendation marketing. Make every member's experience so good that they can't wait to share Mensa with their friends.

Desire for Change in AML

From what I have been told, there are already approximately 30 candidates for AMC who have submitted their paperwork to the Nominating Committee, and almost all (if not all) of the races already have at least two candidates. (I don't have a full list. It might be possible to get that directly from the NomComm.) There will surely be others, like myself (running for Secretary) and Alan Baltis (running for Chairman), who will only be using the petition process for various reasons.

Given how many people are running and contesting (nearly?) all of the positions on the AMC, it should be fairly obvious that there is a large desire for change. What the change is that each individual wants, and how compatible those various visions are with each other, is another story. And something that will hopefully play out meaningfully over the next several months.

To that end, there is a new yahoogroup (yep, ANOTHER list) that is dedicated solely to the current AMC election cycle: M-US-Elections. Any current AML members who want to subscribe to it, just send an e-mail to M-US-Elections-subscribe@yahoogroups.com -- the plan is for this to be an area where the candidates can both proactively describe their vision, background, etc., but also for members to ask questions of the candidates that go beyond the standardized questions that are part of the Candidate Information Forms. 

Growing AML

One of the members on M-Pol posed the following questions: How do you propose growing the organization? Mensa has about 50,000 members out of a potential pool of 7,000,000 - my numbers may be off, but as an order of magnitude there aren't many dues-paying members. Why do you think the numbers are so low, and what do you propose do do about it?

Here's how I answered:

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As a likely member of the slate [as candidate for AMC Secretary], I'll take a stab at this one. The best thing that we can do towards increasing our membership numbers is increase the pride that people feel for being members of Mensa. So much logically follows from such a simple premise:

--Increased positive word-of-mouth about the organization. If friends, family, and co-workers see just how much enjoyment one gets from Mensa, they are likelier to test/submit prior evidence and join themselves.

--Increased volunteerism. When people feel good about an organization and like what it is doing and what it is about, they are more likely to participate in ways that are beneficial. Not only will we get more hosts of local activities, but we will get more people willing to lend a hand for the officially sponsored activities, and even run for local group boards as well as AMC. We will also be able to recruit more proctors to hold more tests more frequently, increasing opportunities for candidates to test and join.

--Increased community awareness. There will be more people who are inspired to do their community-oriented volunteerism in the name of Mensa, such as those of us who judge for Odyssey of the Mind, local science fairs, Mathletes, school trivia bowls, or whatever.

--Increased donations to MERF and/or local scholarship funds. This feeds back in increased community awareness and positive word-of-mouth.

So, how do we go about fostering that increased sense of pride in Mensa?

--Increase transparency among the AMC, National Office, and the membership writ large.

--Increase regular, meaningful communication between the AMC and the local groups.

--Assist local groups develop additional leaders, enabling local groups to have a “deep bench” so as to avoid the burnout that so many suffer from.

--Share lessons learned among the local groups.

--Solicit ideas and volunteers from the membership before engaging an outside firm whenever possible.

--Modernize our communications efforts so that we can reach the members in the ways they want to be reached.

--Do a better job of recognizing achievement on a more regular basis.

--Correct problems and/or inequities within our bylaws and make sure that we, as an organization, live up to our bylaws.

--Make sure to have fun at AMC meetings and have attending members also enjoy themselves, making it obvious that it is possible to be light-hearted while doing serious work for the benefit of AML; this can then be translated to the local group level.

Numbers are low at least in part because of ineffective marketing efforts and our having more of a social stigma placed upon our name than a sense of pride. Adjusting our marketing will need to be something that the AMC takes an active role in guiding, having it be the new AMC's vision being the driving force and the marketing staff's experience in the business to implement that vision effectively. Shifting the social stigma will be a much more difficult hurdle, as we suffer from the confluence of a general anti-intellectualism in the country and a disregard for many groups that are branded as “elite.” These are long-held, ingrained social mores that take many years to break down, and likely would require more than just the resources that Mensa can bring to bear.

But with the results of the increased pride in AML, we will get more people willing to become proctors and hold test sessions. The more frequently we can test, the faster we can capitalize on the curiosity of inquiring test candidates. The more those proctors are involved and can talk up the local group in a fun way, the more likely the test candidates who pass will join and come out to their first event relatively quickly.

Granted, this is all a very tall order. And anyone who promises to actually get all of it done within the span of a single term is kidding you. However, what we can promise to do is to start adjusting the stilted culture by our very presence, words, and deeds in such a way as to make much of the above more readily accomplished in the medium-term.