Just before I went away I had an interesting meeting with the central office of an organisation I am involved with. This organisation is locally managed, and only has oversight from the central office. Anyway, the central office used strong arm tactics to force us to change the name of the organisation to fit in with their branding. Those tactics were used a few years back.

At the meeting a few weeks back I was discussing my ideas on a new constitution and said that as a matter of conciliation I would be happy to keep the name of the centre with a subscript giving local branding. The director of head office then said that we were required to use their branding under their bylaws. I asked if she was sure and she was adimant. We did NOT have the ability not to use their branding.

So I mentioned to her ‘I thought your bylaws actually only strongly suggested that the branding be used, and it was not actually a requirement’. The response was basically ‘yes, you are correct’, but interestingly there was no comment along the lines of ‘Oops, I had forgotten about that’.