There is an oft voiced concept that boards of organization should be made up of people representative of the general public. That may be good for window dressing, but it is a disaster for getting important things done!
One public organization has tripped over itself for years because of the inexperience and lack of accomplishment of its diverse board members, making the organization the victim of a few with weakness of leadership skills and the prey of those who use their office to further business and / or social standing. Tragically, this is very representative of the current two generations of early and middle age adults.
Rather, to get things done, one needs to put together a small group of people with a passion for the project and who bring real world experience and their own accomplishments. They will feed off one another and come up with proper directions and lead to ultimate success.
I wasted a lot of time trying to deal with ignorant and weak individuals in Lancaster over the past decade. They bore little resemblance to volunteers with whom I worked in past decades. .
No we don’t want people at the table just to achieve divergency. We can do that through focus groups or by interviews. We want committed, talented doers, not the ignorant led by some self serving jerks.
EDITORS NOTE: This is the first of a series of weekly columns by Robert Field that will be published along with our other columnists: Dick Miller, Bill Keisling (now largely on leave to write a book about corruption in our state), and Slava Tsukerman whose columns on Russia are read around the world. Lancastrians: Brace yourselves!
