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vision rooted in a growing need to harness the RYA’s disparate elements. That need was shaped by spending her fi rst 12 months
travelling round the country listening to clubs, volunteers, other marine bodies, the government and her staff. Now she says she has to ‘join the dots’. “The thing I’ve enjoyed most is being out and about meeting the RYA members,” says Treseder.
“It has been quite tiring but really important. One of the
perceptions about the RYA, apart from the idea that we are all about racing, is that we are all about the south coast, which is not true. “So I’ve been working my way down the country, starting in Scotland and visiting as many regional teams, clubs and members as possible. There are ten English regions and three home countries and I’ve managed to cover half of them. “I have learned a huge amount especially how multi-faceted
the RYA is. Of course that is its strength but it also makes it darn tricky to get your head round. “The combination of all the different departments in the RYA come together when you see it in the clubs: sports development with kids racing and activities for disabled sailors plus the legal team and cruising department that help advise on environment issues, leases and access to water. “As an example, a lot of clubs lease their premises or their access to water from private landlords or water authorities. The recession means that a lot of local authority landlords are either trying to get shot of assets or looking for ways to make more money out them so some clubs are quite vulnerable to development opportunities.
“So our legal team are busy looking at leases, seeing when they expire and looking at the terms. If we start now and renegotiate them and don’t wait until time gets short for the landlord, then our clubs will be better placed.” What does the RYA ever do for us has been a recurring theme during her travels, Treseder says. “This suggests a communication issue rather than a ‘doing’
issue. A long time ago, our departments were known as divisions that were separately run so the whole racing, coaching and Olympic side versus the legal, environmental, advice and club thing grew up separately.
Confusing
“If it is confusing for someone inside the organisation, it is very defi nitely confusing for someone outside of it. “We do an enormous amount of lobbying and infl uencing behind the scenes, with government, legislators and all the other marine organisations and often we don’t tell people about it enough.
36 cywinter 2011 “So we have started to think about a manifesto so we can
demonstrate to existing members and potential members what we stand for and also provide a guide for ministers and legislators.
“It will tell them what we will always stamp our feet about,
what we aim to protect and what we won’t get involved with such as arbitration services for individuals or clubs. We are more about fi ghting for freedom of navigation or the maintaining of voluntary status on training or licensing not serving as a judge or jury.”
“I am pretty happy with our breadth of duty and responsibility but we need to join the dots a bit better so we better understand what impacts on what, how it is coordinated and how well we communicate that breadth so people can get into it at their own pace.”
Her one overarching priority, she says is for more holistic planning within the RYA itself to improve the way managers and staff work together to provide the myriad of services. “We will start with the Olympics in 2012….a cross functional
programme that will involve all the different departments. We want to encourage more people on the water and to support our clubs.
“When there are test events or when the Olympics and
Paralympics are being staged, we want people to engage with it in the Clubs with other people. It was more fun watching the Football World Cup matches with other people in the pub or a club on a big screen. “With the race trackers and online coverage, there are a million more opportunities to engage interest. We will use it to look backward as well as forward by planning to invite all the Olympic sailors that have represented Britain to get together so we can put together a ‘heritage exhibition’ – a physical British Olympic Sailing exhibition that might visit a few places with an electronic add on. Most clubs have their own artefacts or memorabilia so I’m hoping we will gather together a really good collection. “There are some incredible specialisms in every department and on every committee but I’ve learned in business that often
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