Ibrahim Abdel Fattah Mohamed Personal bLOG

CAT Coordinator(‘s) Guide

This should be stated and read before you start reading this post; all what will be mentioned in the post area is just my opinion, from being a CAT Founder, member and some of the CAT coordinators’ assistant. So, I have seen a lot and I thought I may write this post as a guide for the upcoming coordinator or current nominees as a guide for their way in the CAT Coordination process. The thing that really matters is that this is the very first guide to be published of its kind for CAT, So, I will be really happy with your feedback.

Any previous CAT Coordinator can enhance the topic with just commenting on it to get a final knowledge base for such issue.

After I published this post I found it pretty long, so try to keep your nerves and have patience reading it.

First of all, let’s define what a coordinator is; a Coordinator is someone how coordinate (ينسق), and the coordination process appears in CAT resources. CAT Resources can be any thing that CAT may use by itself, or by its foundations; Money, Folders, Bags, Sound System and the CAT Datashow (CATashow) are all considered as CAT Resources. One of the hidden resources is the CAT Foundations themselves, yeah it’s a fact that each foundation is a CAT resource, by its members, activity and reputation – and in this point we should consider referring the foundation name to CAT before anything. -

So, the CAT Coordinator must coordinate between all these resources, and for example, Foundation X needs the datashow for some session/course/workshop, so the coordinator should coordinate between the foundation itself and the datashow as both being CAT resources; this can happen in many ways, like assigning someone being responsible for the datashow, when any foundation needs it, the foundation manager(s) should contact that person and get the datashow on a specific time. The criteria of this procedure comes from the coordination process done by the coordinator and it should be predefined and announced to public to make stuff as automatted as possible.

Actually, that’s not only what a coordinator have to do; one of the main activities of the CAT coordinator is to present CAT members and the team itself in every CAT-related event. Knows exactly what the team is and what is it’s mission/target/vision – and I will be talking about this in just a minute -. This is related much more to PR (Public Relations), which I think should be a separate department in CAT/CAT Core, but it’s one of the coordinator’s responsibility.

Back to the Mission (مهمة الفريق)/Target(هدف الفريق)/Vision(رؤية الفريق) thing, in my opinion, a target is a part of the mission which is acheived by following steps mentioned in the vision. A lot of you might have some other definitions for the vision especially, but as I said, it’s from my very own point of view; the vision describes the current state of the organization/team/community and points either of them to a specific direction to achieve the mission.

So, one of the coordintor’s responsibilities is to define the community’s vision, knows exactly its mission and choose the target he would achieve and for sure this target should be a part of the mission and/or serves a part of it. The traingle of Mission/Vision/Target should be strongly discussed by the team’s management (which in our case the CAT Core) and then clearly and publicly announced and kept the eyes on. This is really important, obviously, once the team start to overlap any of its mission’s/vision’s points the team members or the management themselves should get them/themselves back to the right track, to finally reach their target which was set by the Coordinator. It might seem at this point that it’s mainly the whole management’s (Core) responsibility, but no, it’s the coordinator’s responsibility to define it and the core to discuss it and that is totally different. This includes thinking about new activities/ideas that can serve the team’s mission/vision, it’s more likely to be the planning department’s responsibility, but it should be in the coordinator’s mind too.

Another really important responsibility to the coordinator, which is a talent not just a responsibility, is the ability to take critical decisions in really critical situations. Sometimes, it’s really important to do something, like sacrifising most of CAT’s financial resources in order to get a very successful scope without knowing how much can CAT get from scope sponsors or even if there is doubt that there will be a/some sponsor/s; this in my opinion a critical situation. With coordinating with CAT Core and Foundations for example, and with some good amount of information which should be reported by the departments leaders in CAT, a coordinator can take such decision.

Talking about departments, or much more to say the organization of the management, we should say that putting such structure is one of the coordinator’s responsibilities too. Financial, planning, marketing – which is different from financial – and PR are all examples of departments, and yes, it’s the coordinator’s responsibility to think about it, but the core’s to discuss and approve it.

Recapping, as being mentioned, there are a lot fo responsibilities a coordinator might take, but here is a list that shouldn’t be a complete one and can be completed by you; the post’s readers:

• Coordinating all CAT resources, and the foundations are considerred resources too.
• Presenting the team in every CAT-related event.
• Thinking about the team’s Mission, Vision and Target.
• Thinking about new ideas that can serve the team, its mission/vision.
• Taking critical decisions in really critical situations.
• Thinking about the structure of the team’s management, and the layout of the team’s management departments.
• The most common between what have been said is always notifying and discussing his decisons with the core and be sure that specific decisions are announced to the public (CAT Members/Foundations) and be sure that they got it right.

May be I will talk about the Core’s responsibility in another post, this is for now, feedback and suggestions are welcomed.

Ibrahim Abdel Fattah Mohamed,
CAT Founder.

..or you may would like to check other posts that can be useful..

1. A CAT Letter
2. dkSystems v2
3. A trip to Tanta 01
4. Just before I go..
5. Final Semester