I’m going to mention the C word. That’s right, Christmas. I know it’s only July at the moment, but in a couple of days it will be August and before you know it, Decorations will be up, Mariah Carey and Slade will be on the radio and you’ll be wrestling the turkey* in to the oven. Once Christmas is here, it’s then only a week until 2018 and as with every turning of the year; it means the passing of the reigns to new teams at every level of JCI. As Deputy National President, I have been prepping in readiness to take over from Michael Steel in 2018. The next stage of this is to start looking for members from across the UK that will take on National roles next year. National roles are a great way to see more of JCI, both in the UK and also internationally due to travelling all over the country and also meeting up with other international boards from around Europe. These positions give great experience for a CV as well and help you gain skills through working with a dispersed team to achieve a common goal. This is the first in a series on Blog Posts that will cover off the different National Board (and National Officer) roles that will need enthusiastic, eager and experienced individuals to fill them during 2018. To start with today, I wanted to go over the structure that the National team will have. Whist a lot of it is the same from previous years, there are a few significant changes. I’ve not made these changes lightly as I am a firm believer that if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. But there have been certain roles in the last few years that haven’t had the impact we would have liked. This isn’t down to the individuals who have had the role, more about the levels of expectations and scope of the role, with people taking on far too much compared to the capacity they have to dedicate to a voluntary role. It is for this reason that some roles have had to change. [caption id="attachment_2725" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Click to expand[/caption] As you can see from the above structure, there are National Board members and National Officers. The main difference between the role types is that National Board members will be expected to attend each of the National Board meetings throughout the year, whilst the National Officers are not. There will be a range of other events both National Board and National Officers will be expected to attend, but these will vary from role to role. The details of these will be in each individual role focused blog post. Also, National Board will feed back directly to the Leadership team (National President, Deputy National President and IPP) whilst the National Officers will feedback to one of the National Board. The process for applying for any role is to complete an Intention to Stand form and submit it to Fiona Morgan (fiona.morgan@jciuk.org.uk) and myself by 23:59 on 26th August 2017. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be publishing more details about each of the roles and what is involved and expected with each one. If in the meantime, if you want to know more, just drop me a line to ben.hawley@jciuk.org.uk and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you've got.   * If you’re vegetarian or vegan, please replace this with nut roast.