Synopsis

Do you have a burning question for Dr. Misner? Ask on his Facebook page.

This week’s question comes from Dave in the US. Members of his group ask “Why” about everyone of BNI’s rules. (You can learn more about the attendance rule in Episode 436.)

The answers to this question are in Chapter 5 of Givers Gain, discussed in Episode 31 of this podcast. Every single policy in BNI was created by the members or approved by the members through the Board of Advisors, which is made up of BNI members. No one can present and defend decisions to a chapter like a member of that chapter.

Without rules, a game like ice hockey wouldn’t work. Without rules, BNI would be chaos. BNI members have learned this the hard way over the year. BNI won’t work without accountability, and without systems in place, there’s no way to have accountability. BNI’s entire infrastructure is all due to the experience and input of BNI members.

Another podcast that addresses this topic is Episode 162: “BNI Light Just Isn’t Right.”

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of Episode 440 –

Priscilla:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast, brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:

Hey, I am in Costa Rica this week and part of next week as well. I am here for a TLC conference. Transformational Leadership Conference. I am also here to visit the BNI region for the first time in Costa Rica. It should be really exciting. I will meet members next week.

Priscilla:

Great, Ivan.

Ivan:

I am really excited to be here. I mean, going to new countries for BNI is fantastic.

Priscilla:

Yeah. You have to brush up on your Spanish.

Ivan:

Muy poquito. I am not very, but my wife is very fluent in Spanish. Very fluent in Spanish. So I just need to take her with me everywhere.

Priscilla:

That sounds good. So what is this topic: why the rules?

Ivan:

I have been doing this month a lot of Ask Ivan questions. For those of you who have a question for me, stay connected with me on my Facebook page, facebook.com/IvanMisner.BNIfounder. I will put a link in this podcast trascript. You can go there. Every now and then we ask, “What questions do you have for Ivan?” Also, you can post the question on the podcast. I will get to as many questions as I can.

Unfortunately, I can’t answer them personally- you know, individually. But I will do them in these podcasts as much as possible.

This question comes from Dave in the US. He says, “Members in our group are looking at every single BNI rule and they are saying, ‘Why? Why are there absences? Why do we have assigned duties?'” Poor Dave. He said, “It gets really tiresome. Sometimes I feel like a parent more than a business associate working on keeping relationships.”

So I just thought I would talk a little bit about why we have policies. Why we have rules. We talked a few weeks ago, Priscilla, you may remember, about the attendance policy. Incredible results from a couple of chapters that tracked absences and what results they had when they reduced them.