Radical Idea

[rybo]

I know I say there is a lot of Red Tape around here but I think when I say it, it is justifiable. Why? I think there are a lot of rules and guidelines from years before that were mismanaged. I think the board, now, is one of the best and can/will pull this club out of it's "recession". You guys make sound decisions that I know is with the clubs best intentions in mind. And I understand that I need to learn more about the club and why things are the way they are, but honestly... I think it's time for a change and people seem to agree. The problem with our current situation is we have to many of these " - " in the equation, and we need more of these " + " especially in the financial department. I, by no means am saying we should take unnecessary risks that will jeopardize this organization, but there are areas where potential profits are being lost due to restraints within our current guidelines that "could" be re-evaluated.

Premie - I agree that we need to adjust some of what we're doing since personally I don't think we're in an "economic storm" that we need to get through - but we're in a new financial reality. We need to size the MRA to that reality (the company I work for has already done this quite drastically).

My concern is there can be good change and bad change. People are full of piss-n-vinegar right now 'cause of the cancelled races, bad finances, and the rally of the troops to "Save the Club!!". What's going to be needed is sustained, focused work & headstrong persistence in getting us back in black. I'd hate to see the energy people have for the club wasted by changing things just for the sake of changing and not resulting in improvements.

At work, we call that "motion being mistaken for progress". It's a quick way to demoralize people and we *really* can't afford that.

So, rather than rambling, "we" (or I) need to summarize the ideas here and evaluate/estimate each one as to financial, legal, racer, sponsor, MRA worker, and spectator impact. Then we could rate each one on it's effectivness on what we're trying to achieve and go after the highest valued ones. (for those still following me, I'm suggesting doing sort of a Paredo analysis on these ideas).

Comments?

BRAVO JIM!

I've been relatively silent in this discussion so far, mostly because there are a lot of ideas out there.

There is a lot of danger in making radical "changes" in times of stress. We all hear that you shouldn't drive when angry (or emotional) and I think a lot of the same logic applies here. We (the club) should not make changes in desperation.

There are a lot of reasonable suggestions in this thread and I think evaluating them in isolation is probably a good start. Take each recommendation and analyze it based on it's own merits.

One of the suggestions that keeps coming up is some kind of partnership with Chicane. I'd like to see that option further explored as I think a win win situation can develop out of it, but also don't want to push my organization on the MRA. As such as we evaluate that option let's consider that there are others who may be interested in offering the promotor practice that's being suggested in multiple posts.

Also, there is a lot of suggestion of allowing Chicane trained riders to do some racing. I'll say a lot of good things about what we are doing with training, but we are NOT training racers at my trackdays. I think to send them out onto the grid with 30 of their closest friends and have them do a standing start into T1 would be a bad idea, and invites people to get hurt. That is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. The purpose of my organization is to run fun, safe, non-competitive events and I plan to keep it that way. If the MRA was interested in letting an outside organization run a trackday that could be used as practice leading up to an event I would be interested and would change my daily schedule to accommodate that use, but I won't be running races at my events, it's not what we do.

I want to be a part of the solution to the current MRA situation and believe that careful consideration of a radical change is necessary. The club has been in worse positions, when I joined in 2002 there was a crisis that easily rivaled our current situation and may have even been worse. I know that we have the ability to solve this problem, but don't think that making radical changes RIGHT NOW is the real solution.

In the meantime I suggest that we start an evaluation of each suggestion so far in the way that Jim suggests. It's tedious and hard, but it's the only way to make a good choice.

More from me later

Scott