At one of my favorite rail museums, the guy who runs the Web page refuses to share the work with anyone. My perception is that he enjoys being lord of that fiefdom. Yet he is too busy to do a good job at it.

At my regular job, the same situation. A senior guy in his late 60's is protecting his kingdom and won't let the younger people share in the work. Yet he is so overwhelmed by the quantity of work I fear he may keel over some day.

As I gain life experience, I am finding this type of behavior to be pretty common. The person may be talented but ultimately they can be bad for the organization because when they leave, no one is experienced enough to take over their job. They can also drive good people away who are looking to work and learn.

Technical problems are easy to solve. It's the people problems that are hard.

Ownership of a mission is a double edged sword, for sure......necessary to get a mission off the ground and turn it into an asset, then when it gets big and critical it can prevent necessary evolution. Probably compounded by not necessarily competent intrusions into the fiefdom in the past, leading to a sense of extreme reluctance to share what is by now an uncomfortable amount of accountability.

Lately, I've had the opposite problem - people who snipe from ignorance on the sidelines, and refuse to take part when asked to contribute and in the process learn more about why their concerns might not be critical after all.

In leadership roles, a vary painful step is replacing the visionary who got things started with a developer who can build on the visionary's success. Visionarys aren't usually great administrators or development people.

I see a lot of the Peter Principle at work.

dave

It is my general observation that the behavior of people in an organization is a direct reflection of the people leading the organization. I tend to believe that in most (not all, but most) cases, people are a product of the culture to which they are most subjected. Why is it that some of the best coaches move from team to team and always win? They bring a culture of hard work, success and an ability to NOT accept failure.

It would be easy to blame the man who hoards his job. Why was he allowed to do that in the first place? Who, at the top of the food chain allowed this to happen. Hoarding of jobs is a situation where TEAM work is not priority one. Remember, there is no I in TEAM. Anybody who feels like they are the only person who can do a job as part of the team needs to be dismissed from the team. There is no single person who can not be replaced......starting with the CEO and working down, or up, however you view the pyramid.

Old people get away with it because they have gotten away with it for so long that nobody will fight them. It takes a strong leader to sit down the oldest dinosaurs of the team and help them understand that we need to pass information on. We also need to constantly review our process, people and products to ensure that we are doing things in the most effective manner possible. Generally, when you have a failure such as job hoarding, you also have a failure to periodically review process, talents (people) and products (end results). Again, I am pointing fingers at a CEO, President or Executive for failure to correct a situation. Sad part is; some executives actually perpetuate the problem, not correct it. Why do they do that? They too hoard the jobs that they have and have not learned the most valuable lessons of business growth;

What got you here today will not get you there tomorrow

and,

As a leader, you need to work ON your business not IN your business and there is a big difference between the two.

I personally spend 90% of my time working ON my business, not IN my business and as such, we are on a constant 15%-35% annual growth rate.

My conclusion:

Bad culture that allows it to happen. Bad leadership that does not see it and fix it.

Wasatch Railroad has a very clear and established culture document. If any of you wish to see what our defined culture document looks like, I am happy to share it upon request.

Kindly submitted,

Having a VERY good idea whom you are referring to, I ask you, are YOU more qualified?Have YOU proven that you are trustworthy enough to handle this responsibility?

You make comparisons to an overworked coworker near retirement age, but the person you are referring to is nowhere near retirement.

You ask what will happen when this person leaves, when, from all indications, this person will remain a volunteer for many years to come.

Given recent events like the Sony hack, (allegedly perpetrated with help by at least one former insider) Who do you trust your organizations online presence and reputation to, the man who has given 20 years of volunteer service, and built the website in the first place? or some new, unproven talent who has yet to prove himself or his motives?

The keys to the website and server kingdoms are held are held by a select few, and for VERY good reasons.

Sometimes the people problems are not the people who hold the keys, but rather the people who insist on being trusted with the keys, without giving any demonstration of trustworthiness

Jeff

I hope this doesn't turn into mud slinging, it's a very good discussion.

What I see from Rock Island, I see myself a bit. Someone hoards a job, holds on to it till the bitter end, and the whole organization suffers. Often it's a culture of selfishness and it's not just one job, or one person. Others come on the scene, and they can recognize the problems, maybe even start to understand the solution, but they may not have the skill and experience to effect real change. And it's all too easy to say "he's new, he's young, he's full of &*$#, ignore him, dismiss him" And so the wheel keeps turning....

To emphasize a very important point from my previous post, the passwords to your organization's website, and your servers, should be guarded just as closely as access to your organization's financial accounts. Access should be on an "as required" basis.

Jeff

"Because that's the way we've always done it."

A guaranteed trip to the grave or liquidation, long-term, and not just for railroad museums or excursion lines, either.

Two general thoughts:
No, you don't want every Tom, Dick, and Harry to have access to the website, treasury, etc. But you also don't want only one person to "hold the keys," either. I've seen two organizations whose online presence went to heck for some time because the only one who knew the passwords, account settings, etc. either dropped dead or stormed off in a huff, pissed off by something arcane in the by-laws or something someone said. For this reason, you need to maintain the equivalent of an "In Case Of Emergency, Break Glass" box with the passwords or other access information.

Young people are internet/tech-savvy. Involving younger people in the thought processes of online/viral marketing is not only a way for the "old geezers" among us to get expertise that is actually relevant, it's also a way to get young people interested in what you do AND INVOLVED. No more chasing away young folks by putting them on rust-scraping or parking-lot duty. We all need to scrape rust, but what about having the "kid" do a YouTube or website promotional video, capturing spectacular run-bys from that copter drone? Or the young teacher that's looking for ways to make history relevant and can market your places to the school boards? Or the young adults that want to hold a folk and bluegrass festival at your place, or a Steampunk event?

While I agree that the "keys" to an organization's online resources; website, gift shop, restoration blogs, social media, etc. should be well guarded and limited access; there is a difference between "well guarded" and "personal fiefdom"

If only one person is charged with maintaining your online presence, what happens if they are in a car accident? The world will not stop in the eyes of your visitors because one volunteer had a car accident and can't work at keeping the website up to date. You need to have more than one person able to work on the website and other online resources, and have a defined goal set by the board or executive director for how the resources will be used.

Don't assume you know what museum I am talking about. Sorry for the controversy. Resemblance to actual persons may be purely coincidental, as the say.

What the heck, I’ll chime in here. To me, the key is a good set of by-laws which provides for a rotation of officers while building a strong group of directors. Committees are then the breeding ground for new directors and officers, so the process kind of works like this: begin as a committee chair, move to treasurer, move up the ranks as secretary then VP, then president, then become a director. Officer spots are two year terms so by the time a guy becomes a director he has at least eight years experience. Director spots are three year terms. I belong to several professional organizations with fairly large budgets which work in this fashion. If a guy is a lousy officer, you only have to put up with him for a few years. Again, creates strength within the board and committees and good people are then expected to move up and each committee chair tends to have a relook as new presidents come in. It really all starts with the by-laws.

What's being described here is not restricted to rail museums, but happens in all kinds of organizations. Often it's easier for the executives to leave the strong personality in place than to expend the energy to find fresh and more pleasant blood that might not stay in the job so long. It's similar to the thinking that lets the person who makes the bank deposits audit the same bank account. Sure, he knows what he did, but he's also certifying the correctness of his own work!
Sometimes it's possible to split the job so the strong incumbent retains the Title and responsibility, but others are allowed to do the work. More often, the strong personality convinces his superiors that anything he doesn't have the time or inclination to do isn't worth being done.

I have gone through the same thing that Rock Island has gone through, except my problem is with the president of the organization who opposes everything that I ever say no matter what i say. It is one of the most annoying things about that organization and its a major shame.

You said it.

Yes, I've seen many iterations of that same effect, and even been guilty of it myself. A person "gets charge" of a job, and they "take on" the job with a strong sense of ownership -- which is a GOOD thing. Except for two human effects. First, the tendency to want to control the job, under the logic that it's easier to do it yourself than allow others to do it wrong and then have to fix it.

And second is the would-be helper's natural reluctance to "jump in and mess in someone else's soup".

And obviously there are two ways this can go from here. The progressive way is to intentionally amplify the "helper" aspect by education: teach would-be helpers to do the job right, which raises their confidence, competence, willingness, and ultimately sense of achievement. Which begets more help.

The regressive way is the fiefdom, as you describe: ownership morphs into "protection from those who would mess it up". The problem is, these folks tend to be also procrastinators: a huge inbox of "wanna-do's" but (very weirdly) a simultaneous, mysterious shortage of "get-er-done". It reaches a stasis where the huge pile of jobs becomes a reason why none of them get done. "Oh look at me, I'm so overloaded!"

Bet you've heard THAT before.

It's almost as if their personal identity and sense-of-self relies on that huge inbox of owned, but incomplete jobs. So, "incompetion, as a state-of-being" becomes normal, expected, home, mandatory, to such a degree they must "do anything" to protect it. And then, jobs must be ripped out of their hands with great force and drama, since their self-identity is wrapped up in it.

God help you if you get several people doing the same thing, because then, the "psychic fortress of incompletion" devolves into "Little Empire of incompletion". And now the organization is really up the creek. Progress is blocked by all those jobs jealously guarded by the Royals, they will not be reasonable about it (since it's driven by emotion not reason), and the only way to break the deadlock and move the organization forward is all-out WAR. Which will do so much social damage that a reasonable Board questions whether the progress will be worth it.

So they search for the "happy medium" in which progress can be possible without the war. It doesn't exist. But the Board spends a lot of time searching for it, which sucks all the fun out of being on the Board, which results in high turnover, so you never get a quorum bold enough to stand up to the Empire. Of course the Empire manipulates this politically.

This "Little Empire of incompletion" defies gentle untangling; it is a Gordian knot that only Alexander the Great can "untangle"… with his sword.


I laughed when I saw that. Kings are so vain, you probably think this song is about you! *laugh* no. Humans do this too often, it's an old, common trope. The King wants to think he's a special snowflake, but he's not... he's a sad cliche.



Same problem different viewpoint.

This is simply the view from the INTERIOR of the fortress. It's the King's story. And the king doesn't realize it's only a story, because people are not omniscient. They don't know THE truth. They only know their view of it, and they don't probe further. Probing further is hard, because it requires a fearless, egoless soul-search of the motivations beneath your own stories. People don't do this naturally because it HURTS! Why ever do it when you already have a belief system that works for you. (and if it didn't, you'd have already changed it.)

Anyway a number of these statements/implications are actually flat wrong. Let's go through them.

> there's "nobody to do the job". The King will be the first to admit he hasn't made a bona-fide effort to recruit new volunteers, under the logic that he just hasn't had the time. Let alone the time to train them or fix their mistakes. More expedient to do it himself. It's a catch-22, or more aptly a Gordian knot.

> all this work is really necessary. Kings in their fortresses are prone to developing overwrought systems/procedures that are more "about their system" than actually serving the organization. They can even get a bit "John Nash"ey. And they get stuck in those systems even when they're unreasonable or no longer relevant. They believe the organization will fall apart if they don't do it, but really, all that will fall apart is their sense of order. (or relevance. But that's a false sense, as it's actually more relevant to be more efficient.)

> the work will be left undone. As I discuss above, the king is actually plugging up the works! He's being vain, believing he's the only one who cares enough about the organization to step up to the task.

One thing I've learned is: Don't be that guy. Don't be the King with the jealously guarded inbox. Be the one that shares, supports, distributes and lets go. A lot of people seem to think they will just automatically do the right thing in a flash of emotion. No. The opposite will happen, which is why this happens so often.

I mean, the thing they do will feel right to them, and that's the sheer insidiousness of it! Kings are capable of spinning elaborate stories to support their worldview. They can even "retcon" these stories. It can get downright "John Nash". This internal dialogue is merely cancerous if kept inside, but when gossiped about, does grave damage to the organization.

It's harder than it looks to "not be that guy".


True enough, but leadership doesn't necessarily follow the org chart. The law says power is supposed to flow: owners -> Board -> CEO -> management… or in a nonprofit's case, Articles/Bylaws -> members (Attorney General) -> Board -> management. But really it flows all over the place depending on personalities.

For instance WRM is a membership organization on paper, but practically, only the Board can put people on the ballot. This creates an "echo chamber" which defeats accountability.

Anyway by your logic, you are asking for extraordinary foresight from the Board. These "Kings" with their "little empires" are subtle. They don't breach the walls and scream "I am taking over". No, it is more like the frog in the cookpot, and you're the frog. They come at you as a genuinely helpful supporter, taking on a job sorely needed, doing it well, then taking on more while you say "thank God for them". You don't see real friction for years, and then, the first few years of friction seem ordinary. You don't realize the grip they've taken until they're so deep you can't remove them.

A business owner like you can swiftly deal with this, controlling 51%. But that never exists in a nonprofit. Keep in mind this person is actively politicking your Board the whole time. Realization dawns, one board member at a time. When the first Board member speaks up, they are (at that point) a dissident. And their criticism is political suicide that tends to eliminate them as they arise. The only thing that'll work is for a quorum of the Board to "get it" all at once. That's hard.

For this reason I believe in pre-emptive soft-removals of any position with the potential to become like that. Fresh minds, new ideas.

At some museums and other kinds of non profits, and especially at stock corporations, the Charter or Bylaws require that only members of the Board (some or all) can put people on the ballot and even be the only ones who can vote for those candidates. National Capital Trolley Museum in Maryland seems to be that way. it's called a "Self perpetuating Board", and some of the consultants for the Branford Electric Rwy. Association's Bylaw revision have recommended that practice as being usual in the non profit world.

One of the projects I work on seems to be handling the web problem in the reverse manner.

I created content, I told the manager of the web site it was ready. I assumed that I would have to send it to him, he would do all the placement and then I would have to tell him what to fix.

Instead I was pushed and bullied :-) into learning how the system works, how to upload and modify content. I don't have all the secrets, but enough for me to do my part of the project.

I have always tried to share information freely and not be a "Keeper of the Secrets", but I do wish more people would at least say "Thank You".

-Hudson