| AUGUST 8, 2014 -- It occurred to me today why the Grange has so much difficulty obtaining new members. The reason is because there is no room for new members. No room one may ask? What do you mean? There is no room for new people to come into the Grange and perform the duties that belong to the current members. The current membership doesn’t want to have their dearly held positions changed. They don’t want someone who doesn’t know the “proper way” to be doing the things that they do. I think of the nursery rhyme where the children play, ‘There were three in the bed and the fourth one said, ‘Move over, move over’ ‘. No one in the Grange wants to ‘Move over’. So there isn’t any room. There isn’t any room for new members.
The opposite needs to happen. When new people come in there should be an immediate change in the status of the current members. The new members need to be given important tasks or responsibilities. The new members need to have a feeling of being needed, even to the point of letting them know how important they are and how much the Grange appreciates the job that they are doing. The new members need to quickly acquire the feeling that the old members already have, one of being important to the Grange. The old members need to ‘Move over’ to make some room and become mentors to the new members. They need to be able to assist new members in their new jobs. Get the weeds out of the way so that your crop can grow. The old members need a new responsibility, the responsibility to grow the Grange.
On another thought, I would like to suggest that the Grange conduct exit interviews to find out why members have left. If the Grange can find out why members leave the Grange can make changes to be able to keep members. While it is true that no one likes to hear complaints, if you don’t know what is going wrong how can you possibly fix your problem?
Let’s start a new theme, the ‘Move over’ theme. |
