In my last article, I told you about the plans I have to develop Mensa all over the world and how COVID was a big obstacle for this Argentinian to leave his country and perform his job. That is starting to become less of an issue, as restrictions loosen up in more and more countries and Argentina has more stable numbers on vaccines and new infections, so I won’t address that topic today.
What I want to do right now… no, that is not correct. What I believe we NEED right now, is a call to action. Now that I have seen the innards of Mensa International, and how the cogs turn in every step of every process, I’ve found that we have a very small group of volunteers, with the same names appearing over and over again in every call, with almost no new members showing up. I’m 100% grateful for those volunteers and the work they have done and will continue to do, but I also believe that Mensa as a whole has become slow to react to the new needs of our membership, of our new national chapters, and of the new times we are living in. We are doing our best to adapt, improve and overcome, but we need new points of view, new ideas, and new ways to achieve better and faster results. And for that, we need to have more volunteers, with new names filling the new positions. For the sake of clarity, I’m not looking for a massive substitution, as I believe that anyone should work in Mensa all the time they want, as we always need more hands to support our ever-growing membership. What I believe we must achieve, is to enrich our knowledge base with new approaches, and I think that the best way to make that happen, is enlarging our volunteer list, perfecting our methods with new points of view, discarding what we know doesn’t work and getting the best output possible.
During our recent ExComm meeting (our first in-person meeting!) we started taking steps towards that goal. It was obvious in the first second of our meeting that our different origins, cultural backgrounds, professions and approaches would bring new stuff to the table, and the way that happened was beautiful. We are already starting to change how we track our work, using IT tools very common in big companies (Jira, Trello, Power BI, etc.) but never used here. We are also working towards the goal of making Mensa International closer to our members, providing insights, making available proven and successful tactics and procedures from national chapters to solve common issues that we all have seen in our national groups.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. We are talking about big changes that will make our work as volunteers more streamlined, more direct, and more visible for everyone. You voted for us, so you should have the possibility to see our work and measure it without delving into a sea of documents.
As I said before, my personal opinion is that we, as an association, have become slow to react, slow to change and slow to adapt. We can survive in this state as we always did, but I want more. I want bigger, better, faster. But I also believe that we have the needed permeability to change our ways. To learn and improve; to discard, and to enhance. I’ve seen this change starting at our ExComm meeting, and I would like you to see it too.
Reprinted from the Mensa World Journal, 6/2022, issue 113.