Executive Director's Message

by Rick Henderson
Interim Executive Director

Well, I’ve been sitting in the Executive Director’s seat for nearly eight full months now and I’ve had a real good chance to see how this association works from inside the office walls. As many of you may know, I was viewing things from a very different perspective for the last four years - that being from the President’s seat.

I want to tell you that the view from inside West Quebecers’ office is often blurred by the sweat dripping down one’s brow as we try to keep up with the demands from every quarter. I’m probably getting carried away, here (looking for sympathy, no doubt), but I think it’s important for you, our members, to understand the new environment that we, our association and others like us across the country, work in – for better or for worse.

The new environment has a name that evokes, as it is supposed to, a real sense of bottom-line efficiency. It’s called Results-based Management - or RBM for all of us who speak Canada’s third, unofficial language: Acronymese.

**Non-Government organization – see how easy it is to learn a new language!

The Government of Canada now requires that the principles of RBM be applied to all NGOs receiving federal funding. This RBM thing became a requirement at about the same time as the government had to admit to taxpayers that it had lost/misplaced/mismanaged a few billion dollars or so over the years. So, in essence, as a taxpayer myself, I must say that it’s a good thing that the government tries to ensure that taxes pay for results.

Government will no longer fund organizations simply because they exist. Good for the taxpayers - good for the community.

For our association, it means that we must have a program of activity that meets the short, medium and long-term objectives of the federal government’s policy on support for official language minority communities. It also means that the program must bring results or measurable benefits to our region’s community.

Those are good things. Right? Good! We all agree.

The bad thing though, for us at least, is that it brings a whole new layer of reporting that is so complicated that several workshops were needed to train staff across the country and so time consuming that many Executive Directors are now chained to their desks for about 25% of their time just to fill out the paperwork.

It’s a catch-22 situation when you figure that the government demands results but the government brought no additional resources to the association to cover the increased workload brought on by RBM. In other words, RBM means more paperwork - more paper work means less results – less results means less funding – less funding means slower momentum.

The equation looks something like this:
RBM = CR/AWL; CR=Combined Results; AWL=Accountability workload.
Just to add to your vocabulary.

There is no doubt that RBM has brought us to a better model of management for West Quebecers program of activity. The Board has a clearer understanding that continued community consultation will lead us to better strategic planning.

It wants to focus on achieving results for all of our activity. But the community sees less of us when the staff is smothered by so much paperwork.

When I was President I could commiserate with our hard working staff, chuck them under the chin and say wise things, like: “Oh well, I guess we must soldier on, eh?” Now, though, having been on the other side of the chuck, I realize just how impossible it is.

So, what’s the solution? I’m not sure that there is an easy solution. Citizens want to get real results from government spending and they want accountability.There’s no turning back to the good old days when you could lobby for money to build a hotel and forget to build it. So, I guess we have to tell the government that it will have to find a way to balance the demands imposed on us by RBM if it wants to get good results from the programs they fund for our communities. I hope they will listen.

I’d like to think that all of this hasn’t completely changed my perspective …but, to a certain extent, I guess it has. For one thing, I now have a real sleep deficit. It comes from waking up at 3 in the morning, in a cold sweat, because I think I may have filled out App doc A instead of B in the DOLCP ’04 -’05 form sent by PCH to the QCGN.

Another thing … I’m a lot more fluent in Acronymese than I ever was before I took on this job. And …oh yeah … one last thing … I think a lot more about holidays these days than I used to.

Merry Christmas everyone and the best to you in the New Year!

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