ANST - P-word

Lisa A. May xylm1 at ttacs.ttu.edu
Wed Feb 18 07:27:31 PST 1998


At 06:10 PM 2/17/98 -0600, you wrote:

>I admit I misremembered on the length of tenure.  Your statement
>proves that the situation is even worse than I thought, and gives
>even more credence to the value of increasing the tenure period.
>As I said in my first posting on this subject:
>"Anyone who has ever had a job that involves supervising others
>knows good and well that a high personnel turnover rate is a
>guaranteed cause of expense, friction and ineffeciency.  It works
>that way in the military, at IBM, at McDonalds...anywhere you can
>think of.  Ease off the turnover rate of royalty, and a lot of the
>problems that drive the push toward principalities will solve >themselves."
>
>In the dozens of postings that have flown across the net on this
>subject today, no one has yet tried to refute this point.

Your statement above is true; however, it applies more to situations in
which the turnover rate of the general employee population is high (as
opposed to that of management).  Naturally, it is not healthy in a normal
corporate structure to have high turnover in management either; however,
the SCA is not a normal corporate structure.  We are a volunteer
organization whose officers (including King and Queen for purposes of this
discussion) are not compensated monetarily for their services.  While they
are compensated in other intrinsic ways, you cannot stretch the corporate
model to fit our situation.  

The stresses of Kingdom level officer positions are great, and the jobs
often interfere significantly with a person's modern-day life (i.e., your
*real* job or other relationships outside the SCA may be adversely
impacted).  If you think corporate burn-out rates are high, just try
handling a high-level SCA position on top of your normal day-to-day
responsibilities for that length of time!  Especially the job of Royalty --
unless you've been there or been close to someone who has, you cannot
realize how much time, energy, and money go into that job.  Don't forget,
if you have a two-year reign, you are really talking close to three years
as a Royal once you include your tenure as Crown Prince(ss).

Speaking as a past Queen, I and most of the other formerly Royalty I know
would cheerfully commit suicide before committing to a two-year reign.  I
don't know a single person who has the financial means, energy, or patience
to handle the job for that long.  There may be many ways to "attack" our
problems in the SCA, but extending reigns to a length of two years--or even
one year in most cases-- would cause far more harm than it would benefit
the society.

Margaret

Countess Margaret ny Connor
Barony of Bonwicke
Kingdom of Ansteorra

Lisa A. May
former Personnel Manager
Ultrasystems Defense, Inc.


Lisa A. May
xylm1 at ttacs.ttu.edu

"And do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, 
then eat and drink as friends."  
W. Shakespeare
============================================================================
Go to http://www.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.



More information about the Ansteorra mailing list