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Transition of Power

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I have been actively involved with a wide variety of nonprofit volunteer organizations over the years, everything from professional trade groups, to local sports organizations, homeowner associations, and fraternal/civic organizations. There is one common denominator shared by such groups, namely, membership is dwindling. The idea of participating in a volunteer organization appears to be a foreign concept to young people. They are simply not joining in the numbers they did years ago. I’m not sure why this is, perhaps it is caused by time constraints or maybe just simple apathy. Consequently, such groups are either closing their doors or making do with less, much less.

Inevitably, as fewer younger people join, older members must stay in charge until someone can take their place. If the same people remain in control for too long, the nonprofit becomes prone to stagnation due to the lack of fresh ideas from new blood. Those few younger people who join feel somewhat intimidated by the old guard still in charge. They shouldn’t as the old guard, in most cases, is looking for some relief and are more than willing to pass the torch assuming the youngster is responsible and competent to fulfill the role. Such organizations need true workers, not just someone trying to make a name for himself. The young member, therefore, needs to prove him/herself in order to gain credibility and trust with the old guard. Assuming the young person can do this, the old guard should be wise enough to step aside and allow the young person to assume their duty.

Consider this though, what happens when the young person doesn’t demonstrate they are capable of doing the job, yet expect to move up the officer chain of command; should they move up? It depends. The obvious answer is, No, the person is not ready and shouldn’t advance. In reality, the young person has become dependent on letting the elders perform the work, and is content to let them do so. Under this scenario, if the elders can hold on until someone else can come forward with the right attitude, they should hang on until then. However, if the old guard is growing weary and it appears the youngsters are taking the elders for granted, you might just want to step aside and let the weight of the office fall squarely on their head of the youngster. In other words, they won’t take responsibility until they are forced to do so and when this happens, they will either sink or swim, and this is the danger of such an approach. If the person fails, the organization may very well suffer for it.

So, we basically have a Catch-22 whereby the younger people develop a general distrust of the elders and vice versa and the nonprofit suffers while everyone jockeys for position. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer to overcome this problem. Then again, maybe there is, namely “communications.” For any transfer of power there has to be some open communications between the old and the new. They should not be viewed as adversaries as much as allies who think of what is best for the organization overall. The elders should be ready and willing to train their replacements, review policies and procedures with them, along with the various tools and techniques used to fulfill their duties and responsibilities. In turn, the youngsters need to ask a lot of questions. They may very well modify and improve how the job is implemented, but they must first understand the existing system before implementing any changes. Although the elders should monitor the young worker’s activity, they should avoid the temptation of covering for the youngster’s mistakes, otherwise this will create a dependency that is difficult to break. Give the person instruction and advice, but let the younger worker perform the work. It’s not a bad idea to follow-up and review the person’s work as well.

The ideal situation is to appoint younger people as assistants to key officers, thereby learning the roles. After the young person has assumed the role, keep the elder on in an advisory capacity. In other words, one stint as assistant, one stint as the actual officer, and one stint as an adviser. This would greatly facility the transition of power and bring a satisfactory level of conformity to the job. Unfortunately, not enough nonprofit groups do this.

When you discuss the old guard versus the new in nonprofit groups, it can be described as the immovable object meets the irresistible force. The young people think the elders are maintaining a stranglehold on the organization, and the elders think the youngsters are reckless who will ultimately destroy the group. No organization can survive with such deadlock. The two groups must seek common ground for the betterment of the organization overall. One thing is for certain, the old guard cannot do the job forever. At some point they must relinquish control to the younger members who must acclimate into the organization’s culture and assume their responsibilities. If they do not, the organization will slowly grind to a halt. Bottom-line, it is a matter of building trust between young and old and this can only happen through an effective dialog of communications. Only by communicating can we come to understand the strengths and weaknesses of our people.

Keep the Faith!

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Tim Bryce is a writer and the Managing Director of M. Bryce & Associates (MBA) of Palm Harbor, Florida and has over 30 years of experience in the management consulting field. He can be reached at timb001@phmainstreet.com

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http://www.phmainstreet.com/timbryce.htm

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Copyright © 2011 by Tim Bryce. All rights reserved.

Seeking Answers, Hearing Consequences

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Most of us have a Mentor/Confessor, somebody special and trustworthy we go to when things don’t make sense or problems ensue. I have been in touch with mine quite often lately regarding the developments in Mainstream Masonry and the difficulties in reporting same.

Grand Lodges are in a lot of trouble these days and Freemason Information has reported some of the worst case scenarios. We do so in the hopes that reforms will be made by informed Brethren who were in the dark about such goings on.

Yet 50% of the time we are greeted with derision instead of applause. Many have called us harmful to the Craft and a bunch of Grand Lodge bashers.

So I have taken to running these articles by my Mentor/Confessor for him to peruse and he has followed the developments of Grand Lodge abuse as it has unfolded for the last two years. At first he was incredulous thinking that perhaps there was much exaggeration or even misinformation from bad sources going on. As the stories multiplied and he checked them all out he finally saw what we saw.

When Nebraska hit the news I asked him if he had any special insights besides affirmation that he would like to share with me, something that might shed more light on the situation and perhaps heal some ill feeling.

This is what he sent me:

A grand lodge begins to sign its own death warrant when its internal governance and judicial procedures depart significantly from the accepted values and standards of the wider society of which it is a part.

Just as the seventeenth century English poet, John Donne, famously observed that, “No man is an island, entire of itself,” so too is this true of a grand lodge, any grand lodge. The conceit that a grand lodge can isolate itself, as if it truly was a sovereign entity in fact as well as in grandiloquent title, as if its members had no other emotional or intellectual loyalty to anyone or anything else, and as if a wider public was neither of concern to the grand lodge or itself had any interest in the doings of the grand lodge, is not only false in itself but a lethal basis for suicidal action by a grand lodge.

The general rank and file of the fraternity will forgive a great deal in the way of human frailty; they will accept errors arising out of honest error; they will generally cast a forgiving eye upon mistakes grounded in ordinary organizational inertia. But, when error arises out of conscious greed, the deliberate and knowing exercise of Masonic tyranny, or indefensible and arbitrary violations of the ordinary standards of fairness, square-dealing and honesty in order to conceal crime, promote racism or protect unworthy individuals from the ordinary consequences of their own deliberate and knowing transgressions, then the collective wrath of an outraged membership must, inevitably, descend upon those responsible.

As per the Letters of Junius, “The subject who is truly loyal to the chief magistrate will neither advise nor consent to arbitrary measures.”

Most recently, the manifestation of such withdrawal of consent has taken the form of judicial appeal to the secular courts. It has also become a prominent feature of Internet Masonry, a kind of modern version of the Committees of Correspondence that flourished in the colonies just prior to the more formal actions of the American Revolution. At some future point, it may take the form of mass resignations or demits from existing grand lodges, a kind of “vote with our feet” reaction. Lately, a return to pre-grand lodge Masonry in the form of the appearance of a few independent, sovereign individual lodges has appeared as an alternative organizational possibility.

In terms of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln once observed that, “If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we must live through all time or die by suicide.” Such is the situation of Freemasonry in America: our Craft is so strong in itself, so grounded in the finest principles and ideals of the Enlightenment, that, if it is to be fatally weakened or even destroyed, then it must be ourselves who do the deed.

Brother Junius