Running Smoothly

STEP 4  Chick Rules

I swear there are so many rules to running an investment club that just reading about them takes all the fun out of it. I mean seriously... there are Operating Procedures, Agendas, Online Meetings and now... CHICK RULES!?! What gives?

Believe me, if we didn’t have the rules, it wouldn’t be any fun. It would be total chaos straight from an N’Sync concert. You’d have a bunch of giddy chicks with nothing to do but scream out their favorite song. I have to be honest, getting the rules established is the least fun part, but once you have them, you can sing BYE BYE BYE to the details. Today’s rules are the Chick Rules, not to be confused with Chicks Rule*, the title of my next book. Chick Rules are the Chick version of Robert’s Rules, the rules to conducting a Chick meeting, online or off. Lets get this out of the way...

Chick Rules

1. Cock-A-Doodle Do - The meeting begins.  Call to order... or a simple "Wake Up Chickies, we’re starting!" will suffice. It is very important to state what time your meeting will begin in the agenda and encourage members to be online five minutes earlier than the scheduled time to allow for sign-on problems. At promptly 9:00 pm EST…the Chicks Laying Nest Eggs begin their meetings, whether or not everyone is there.

2. Follow the Agenda  Like Chick Megan wrote recently, be sure to have a detailed agenda that you follow during the meeting. Have your members print this out so when they are actually in the meeting they can follow along with a piece of paper at their side. Stick to the agenda and don’t go off on tangents, or people will get irritated.

3. Chick Chat  In your agenda, there will be various points that need to be voted on. For example, did you want to adopt the Chicks Dozen as your investment philosophy? The president will make the motion that this is the next item to be discussed. Then the Chick Chat ensues. Everyone gives his or her opinion on the topic. Then...

4. One Sentence  When all of your Chick Chat has been completed, the president will summarize the revised agenda point and put it into one sentence. For example, let’s say our agenda topic was Charitable Organizations. During the Chick Chat we discuss which one we would like to be involved with. If after awhile it becomes obvious that we can’t narrow down to one organization, the President could make a summary like this: "Charitable Organizations will be researched and thought about over the next month and discussed at the next meeting. Everyone come with ideas." (Okay, that was two sentences, but you get the idea.) If more Chick Chat needs to take place, it can. Then the president will revise the agenda point and put it back on the table. If all discussion on the one point is finished then...

5. Chicken Scratcher (Secretary)  Repeats the one sentence back. (In the above case, it is two.) She does this to make sure she is writing it down exactly as everyone understood it. She is documenting the official minutes so she needs to be clear. If everyone is clear on the next point.

6. Vote or Agree  A vote can take place on the above agenda point if necessary. Not all points need to be voted on. Just agreeing is fine. For example, if your Secretary summarizes the agenda point as: "Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, November 14," that doesn’t need a vote. If it has already been discussed in the Chick Chat, then all you have to do is agree. But, if your summarized sentence is something like, "We have narrowed our next stock purchase down to three companies, Gap, Coke and SunMicrosystems..." then you need to take a vote.

7. Majority Rules  You must make sure you have a quorum to begin with. That’s at least 51% of your membership (or whatever percentage you decide in your Operating Procedures). Then you vote, and the largest number of votes is the winner. If it is a split vote... then more Chick Chat has to take place. This is the longest part, as you have to go back up to Step 3. This process continues until one idea or company gets the majority of the vote.

That’s it. Those are the Chick Rules for your meetings. Simple, yet detailed enough to help your club run smoothly. I hate to rush, but I’m so glad that we got the rules out of the way ’cuz guess where I’m headed tonight? The Moffats concert!! Yep, tonight I can go back to being a screaming giddy chick without a detail in sight!

* I made that up.