What would happen if the ATBA-UK was completely transparent?
The ATBA-UK holds most of it’s discussions in a group chat on Facebook Messenger that involves only those that are part of the management team. This is where we discuss everything from who’s doing what in preparation for the UK Championships, to problems that arise, from what instructor training is going on to how much money we’re making. Like all chat-streams, it works if you keep up to date with it but it’s easy to lose touch if you’re away from it for awhile. It’s good for ongoing synchronous and asynchronous communications but it’s really bad for recording decisions.
So, recently I’ve been wondering about other ways, such as using the ATBA-UK Management Team Facebook group more, with each topic of discussion having it’s own post with the discussion in the comments. It seems like it would be a better way to organise discussions around a diverse range of topics but in fact I think we’d loose the flow that we get with Messenger and it would quickly become impossible to keep track of the state of each discussion. How would you know if you should add a comment to a post, or if that discussion had ended? So, neither the Facebook Group or Messenger really work as Oven Doors, but thinking about the workflows of the ATBA-UK Management Team did make me wonder, what would happen if we held all of our discussions on the public Facebook Page that anyone can see?
If we posted all of discussions publicly, would the management team feel unable to say what they think or would it make us think about what we say? Would people be interested or would they quickly become bored of reading it? Would people feel more involved and engaged? Could each decision be a vote by the membership of the ATBA-UK? Could we post even more information than we currently consider such as how much money is in the bank? Would it provide more of an Oven Door to look inside the organisation and show in real time the state of the ATBA-UK? Could it provide a public forum for people to ask questions about how the ATBA-UK is doing what it does? Would it make the Management Team more accountable and more accessible? So many questions and so many possibilities.