Looking to the Future: Clwyd

From latecomers to Early Adopters

In Clwyd, when it came to transformation, we started off very late to the party.

While we had two District Commissioners at Basecamp, we didn’t do very much after that until the end of 2022. We didn’t have a Transformation Lead and hadn’t really looked at what we’d do as an Area.

Springing into action

Then, we got ourselves a new Area Commissioner. Kevin joined us with no previous background in Scouts, but he did have a rucksack load of experience with uniformed youth organisations, and in management. He couldn’t have come along at a better time, and we wouldn’t be in the place we are now without him.

After a few initial meetings, I realised despite being a District Commissioner myself, I could probably have a decent go at being our Transformation Lead with Kevin’s support, and if I was able to recruit a team to share out the tasks.

By January 2023, we had a Transformation Lead, a Transformation Team of six and the beginnings of a plan.

Dream team

We found our Transformation team members through open invitations to anyone in the Area. It turned out that those who put themselves forward were perfect! Another great thing is they’re such a diverse group of people - from varying roles, ages, and experiences.

We knew that to make transformation work, we’d need to bring every volunteer in the Area on the journey with us. I knew each member of our team would be able to reach different kinds of people, including those I’d never usually meet.

When we first met up, we realised we had some very different opinions. It became a very valuable discussion as we got to hear each other’s viewpoints, which then also represented some of the different views that would be held across the Area.

By having these discussions as a team beforehand, we were more prepared for the kinds of challenges that volunteers on the ground might throw our way.

So, what’s worked?

Our biggest surprise from speaking to people around the Area was how well it all went down. In most cases, people had been waiting for this change and they were keen to get started.

One of the most successful things we’ve done is to use ‘task cards’ - we took all the different tasks that future teams would do from the Team Descriptions page online, and put them on separate cards.

We then wrote down headers for current roles in Scouts, and went through each task card and asked who currently did this task. Mostly, the cards ended up under the District Commissioner and Group Scout Leader headers. This showed the strain on these roles, and backs up the statistics which show how difficult it is currently to get people to do them.

Next, we created headers for each of the new teams - 14-24, Programme, Support, Volunteering Development, Leadership - and went through the task cards again, splitting them between the teams. People could see this was much more balanced and the tasks were shared out.

Yes, we still had the issue of ‘but who’s going to be in these teams - we still need volunteers’, but most people agreed it’d be easier to gather people to join the new teams, than it would be to recruit new District Commissioners and Group Scout Leaders currently.

People have also welcomed our ‘One Pagers’ - headline information put in a simple and easy to read format on a single page of A4. This has helped get the message across to our busy volunteers.

Early Adopters

The success we’ve had in such a short time has obviously been noticed, as when UK Headquarters were looking for an additional Area in Wales to become Early Adopters, we were asked.

I was cautious at first, because while I thought as a Transformation Team, we could do it, I didn’t want to spook volunteers across the Area who may’ve already been worried about the upcoming change.

There’s also the risk of systems not being 100% ready when we transition, which would give a less than perfect first impression of something we’ve been trying to encourage.

But, when we asked around at different levels, the overwhelming feedback was - go for it!

Challenges that were there anyway

Any difficulties we’ve had so far have been challenges from people who question where we’re going to get ‘all these new volunteers from’. But, these are challenges we were facing anyway, and ones which should be made easier to meet with the simpler set up and better digital tools.

Several of our Districts also had very small District Teams struggling to meet the needs of their Groups and Units. I think our new Area Commissioner would’ve undoubtedly made a difference here anyway, as he’s very keen to get Districts working together, supported by Area teams who want to cut out duplicated tasks. But, the new structures will now make this much easier to do.

We’ve already made huge progress, and we can’t wait for the next steps.