After a successful year of Journey to Excellence (JTE) submissions in 2013, the national OA committee is continuing to improve the award in order to better serve lodges.
Every lodge in the country participated in the JTE process in 2013; because of that, the Order has an ocean of information and data it is utilizing to help make the award a better tool for lodges and help improve the OA as a whole.
Two new things are being implemented for JTE 2014. First, each lodge will receive a JTE insights report with helpful metrics that will allow Key 3 and LEC members to measure themselves relative to other lodges and in their region. Each region has a JTE coordinator to help lodges read through their report and use it to implement useful change:
- Northeast: Mike George (@email)
- Southern: Kevin Jura (@email)
- Central: Brian Chrzanowski (@email)
- Western: Steve Davidek (@email)
The data collected through JTE is also being used by the committee to help inform NOAC trainings, support the membership retention task force and guide other initiatives to support lodges.
The second new aspect for JTE 2014 is the benchmark for each award level (bronze/silver/gold). Each level has been adjusted to reflect the results from the past two years. Each level is set to a distribution (top 10% for gold, 50% for silver, 80% for bronze) and reflects the actual data received over the past two years.
The JTE team has also released a new resource for chapters: the chapter JTE workbook. The new workbook is meant to help chapters set goals and work through the JTE award requirements progressively.
All of the JTE resources are available in the Journey to Excellence Program Section. Chapters, lodges or anyone with a JTE question, criticism or suggestion can email @email.