After a spiritually charged morning program in the presence of Their Lordships Sri Sri Radha Govinda and Srila Prabhupada, followed by a hearty breakfast of South Indian fare, the first day of the GBC Strategic Planning’s Organizational Development’s meeting got underway.
As we’re all aware, ISKCON has seen considerable global expansion since its birth in 1966. Srila Prabhupada designed the GBC’s current leadership model at a time when the movement was smaller and less complex than it is today.
To ensure that as ISKCON grows, its organizational systems and process remain relevant to a growing ISKCON, the Organizational Development Committee (or Org Dev, as we call it) was established and mandated to thoroughly review ISKCON’s current leadership model. While remaining loyal to Srila Prabhupada’s directions, Org Dev was tasked to study any necessary structural developments and enhancements in order to meet the needs of our expanding movement. The goal of these systems and processes is to address ISKCON’s current and future needs, providing support and the creation of an organization that encourages growth (outreach) and facilitates better care of the devotees. Org Dev is a committee that works both in ISKCON and on ISKCON, to ensure what needs to remain aligned to the original spirit and culture remain so and to establish the necessary adjustments to take ISKCON into the future.
One significant initiative that has come out of Org Dev’s work is zonal configuration, and part of today’s meeting focused on this topic. When Srila Prabhupada established the GBC in 1970 he appointed twelve GBC Zonal Secretaries to lead thirty-four temples in three or four countries. Nowadays we have twenty times that many temples, and thousands more devotees, communities and congregations, yet we still have only thirty-two GBC Zonal Secretaries.
That means that some GBC zones span three or four continents. This stretches our GBC Zonal Secretaries too thin, makes traveling around a zone expensive and jeopardizing the Zonal Secretaries’ health. In addition it doesn’t afford the opportunity for the GBCs to spend enough quality time in each part of their zone – and so it becomes challenging to comprehensively provide guidance, supervision, and support to the devotees they’re assigned to care for.
Fixing this situation is urgent if we want ISKCON to improve. Org Dev’s first pass at it has been to consult the different GBCs from the various areas of the world and they identified 133 smaller, more manageable, zones. As Srila Prabhupada instructed, these zones are not configured around individuals but take into consideration things like a zone’s culture, population, size, number of temples, economic profile (is it first-world or third-world?), and several other criteria.
The process of zonal configuration has revealed to Org Dev the clear need for more zonal representatives, compelling the GBC to consider related issues, such as scouting for talent and the development of leaders.
These projects will require full, focused attention and energy, but Org Dev members know that their implementation has the potential to open the doors to a very exciting future for ISKCON. Org Dev is taking practical steps to establish a GBC College for Leadership Development… but we will tell you more about that later.
And as all yajnas conclude with a feast, so our long meeting day concluded with a feast for the eyes as we offered ghee lamps to Their Lordships and then made our way to the temple restaurant where another kind of feast awaited us.
Srila Prabhupada ki jaya
Srila Prabhupada’s ISKCON ki jaya
Your servants,
ISKCON Community Relations Office of the Strategic Planning Network.
