Saturday, March 31, 2007

Presidential power

I served for three years as the board president of a small specialty hospital, and was frequently amazed at the deference I was given by my colleagues, most of whom were both older and richer. (Much of the voluntary sector, leaving aside trade associations and other business-related groups, operates by the Golden Rule -- he who has the gold makes the rule.)

In fact, I used to joke about the limits of presidential power. If I had come to my board and said that our specialty was no longer relevant to the healthcare community, and that we should choose another niche, they would have said that I was closer to the situation than they were and that we should move forward with the transition. If I had recommended replacing the administrator, they would have told me that would create burdens for me, but if I was game to go to it. But if I had recommended that we move our board meetings from Wednesday to Thursday, they would have said, Are you crazy? We've always met on Wednesday!

As it happened, there was a real demonstration of this when the administrator resigned early in my presidency. During the previous gap between administrators -- which had taken place before I was in the leadership core -- the medical director had been given the position of acting executive director during the search -- and the consensus was that it had been a disaster. There was a also a strong consensus that the medical director job needed to be full time, not combined with non-medical administrative resposibilities.

However, the doctor made it clear that he was a candidate for the (combined) executive director job. In consultation with the executive committee, I suggested that he would compromise his candidacy by becoming interim or acting executive director. He was okay with that until I told him that rather than name anyone to an interim post, we were creating an administrative committee on which he would serve along with the comptroller and the HR director. At this, he went ballistic -- not just because of the shared authority, but, I have always suspected, because the comptroller was black and the HR director was a woman. He demanded a meeting with the executive committee, to ask them to over-rule my plan, and I arranged it.

There were two major points in his presentation to the excom:
1. By forcing him into this troika, we would be emasculating him.
2. He did not think he could work under those circumstances, and unless the troika plan was rescinded, he would probably find it necessary to leave.

When we went back into executive session, my colleagues recognized how difficult it would be to keep the hospital running smoothly if we were simultaneously without an executive director and a medical director. They also recognized that the added stresses caused by a dual vacancy would be borne directly by me. The upshot was a decision to let me decide, with the assurance that I would have their full backing and support for either decision.

Well, guys, I told them, here's how I see it: Status quo means emasculating the doctor. Conceding to him means emasculating the president. If I have to decide who gets emasculated, that's an easy one.

P.S. The doctor stayed not only during the search, but for more than a year after the new executive director came on board.

Friday, March 30, 2007

Beginnings

I guess you could say that the disease is hereditary. Both of my parents were organization activists and frequent presidents, so my involvements in some measure can be construed as seeking their approbation. (It should be noted that my brother totally escaped the disease.)

Although I became president of various clubs I belonged to in high school, I did not pursue any kind of college activities in the organizational world. I did become an almost accidental member of the student government, and the equally accidental chair of its committee on student organizations. (Perhaps a harbinger, but not a deep commitment -- I was too square and too centrist for the far-left campus group which had co-opted me to really feel part of things.) The real learning experience came from watching the opposition party fight our initiatives not on their merits or lack thereof, but using a barrage of ploys based on parliamentary procedure. Ever since, I have essentially kept my distance from Robert's Rules.

During the year I spent living with my parents right after college, my dad made one or two mild efforts to interest me in joining his pet organizations, but I resisted for a variety of reasons not germane to this blog. When I left home to return to the big city where I had gone to college, I did have the insight to recognize that I couldn't build my social life around my friends in graduate school, since they would leave and I would stay. I knew I had to transition off the campus and into the community.

I hadn't yet figured out how to do it when I was invited to lunch by the new administrator of a social welfare agency who had come from my home town, and on whose board there my mother had sat. In the course of our get-acquainted conversation, and knowing my parents' track record, he asked what I was doing by way of volunteer activity. When I replied, Nothing, he asked why -- and I said I had never been asked. His reply has stuck with me and guided me for more years than I care to remember -- Where does it say that you have to wait to be asked?

LESSON: Volunteer has two meanings -- 1, you don't get paid for what you do. 2, you raise your hand when the task is presented and take it on.