We need to make a change in the way meetings are organized and run. If you want to be a leader, people have to believe you. How are they going to believe you if you continually fail to show up when you say you will, don't follow through and are unprepared. Sometimes when we try to adopt the methods that are working in white institutions, people are accused of trying to "act white" and forgetting their culture.
I'm a Dakota and proud of it, but I still drive a car, live in a house with central heat, cook on a stove and use a computer. There is nothing wrong with using tools others have developed to make your life and community better. Our ancestors adopted horses and rifles. Just how successful do you think Sitting Bull would have been at the Battle of Little Big Horn if he and his warriors had run at the bluecoats on foot with bows and arrows instead of rifles because they didn't want to be "acting white"? The thought is just laughable.
You can buy a Palm PDA (personal digital assistant) for $99. For $300 or so you can get a combination PDA and mobile phone. You can buy a daily appointment book for around $11. Heck, you can buy a notebook at Paul's Grocery for $1.19 !
Years ago, a friend of ours went to a workshop by Franklin-Covey on time management. His company paid hundreds of dollars for it. He came back and gave us a great piece of advice that has been worth the cost of the workshop many times over (which was a great deal for us, especially since we didn't go!)
"Whatever system you use, whether it is a planner, Palm pilot, a Blackberry or a notebook you bought in the grocery store, there is only one key to being organized. USE IT RELIGIOUSLY. Keep everything in one place and always write everything down."
Of the two major partners in Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc. one uses a Palm Treo and the other uses a planner. Neither of us is particularly organized by nature. However, what we have mastered is to write everything down immediately before we forget it. Meet someone and they give us a phone number? It gets written into the Palm or the planner. Have a meeting scheduled for three weeks from now? It gets written down. The other thing we both do is carry our organizer with us everywhere. Want to know if we can meet a week from Tuesday? We can look it up and tell you right now.
If we need to call someone, we know where to find their number. If we need to know a grant deadline, we can look it up right now. If you want to know when our next workshop is, we can tell you.
Being able to have the right answer, right away earns you credibility and respect. People respect your answers because they know you didn't just toss off the first thing that came into your head.
Think how much time and money is wasted by tribal organizations due to poor planning. Say the cost, with salary and benefits, of each person is $25 per hour. Every time three or four people drive over to a meeting and wait in a conference room for a meeting that doesn't happen, that is $75 or $100 wasted. Every time there is a meeting and the person who is supposed to be the chair is unprepared, that is $100 or more wasted with no benefit to anyone. Every time there is a meeting with no follow-up on what was decided - guess what, you just wasted another $100.