Like many organisations, BN has great trouble finding candidates for office. Often there is no candidate, and there is then a provision for the Executive Committee to co-opt someone. Having only a single candidate is so common that a special voting system is used, an unopposed candidate must still face a vote, where the options are for or against.

This system is notable for not creating any sort of succession. Often one person will do a job for a few years, get fed up with the workload and quit; no-one will offer to follow and someone unfamiliar with the office will be co-opted. Successful organisations will avoid this.

The key is to provide a path into office. In other organisations, each main office might be run as a sub-committee, more or less formally as appropriate, but a group not an individual. New members are much more likely to volunteer to be in one of these groups, to help organise an event, later perhaps run something themselves or perform some part of the group function. This produces people with knowledge and confidence to volunteer to head the group. The group leaders, working together on the executive, become the material for chairman and president.

Some groups do this well. Sports clubs for example with captains and vice-captains, higher and lower teams. Rotary clubs with a formal Council and Committee structure. I haven't seen BN doing this much. The Rotaract club I was in years ago had about thirty members and managed to fill the positions every year. The Cricket Club had I suppose about a hundred active members and sometimes had vacancies. BN has 11000 members yet probably co-opts half its officers.

Of course, Rotaract and sports clubs are local, so it's easier to do just a little bit of work. BN is national, so the officers perhaps have to be a bit more committed. But against that, BN has regions which could form breeding grounds for national officers. They haven't, in fact several of them have almost died.

However, things are changing. After the recent (2012) BN Convention, the idea of building active groups, aiding and amplifying the effect of the national officers and providing the future officers, is being actively promoted. This is especially important in the Public Relations and Campaigning areas, where there is much work to be done. Also the administrative side could do with some outside effort; the time taken to get the new limited company into action is unbelievable.

But it's suddenly looking good.

2012-04-30