This blog-site has been on line for over a week now and already I have noticed trends and fulfillments of what I said in my perhaps too lengthy piece, Directions.

The most striking is the paucity of comments from our elected leaders out in front.

I suspect there are as many definitions of leadership as there are leaders. Here’s one “Leadership is about setting and not just reacting to agendas, identifying problems, and initiating change that makes for substantive improvement rather than managing change.” (Ann Marie E. McSwain:Lincoln University MO US.)

A great leader in Imperial Britain, Benjamin Disraeli is said to have remarked once: “I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?”

Who?
The senior governing body of ISA is the Executive Board, which is composed of the Society President, President-elect Secretary, Past-President, Treasurer, and twelve Vice Presidents chosen by two subordinate boards to represent all interest areas of the Society. The Board of District Vice Presidents selects six Members of its members, and the Board of Department Vice Presidents selects six members to serve on the ISA Executive Board. These are the people with responsibility the continuance of our society, entrusted by us constitutionally with this task. They are without exception truly representative of our profession.

Here is the incoming Executive Board:
Nelson Ninin
Leo Staples
Jerry Cockrell, CAP
Terry Ives
Stu Affleck
Rick Albrecht
Michael Bovenkamp, P.Eng.,CAP
Marcus Coester
Kevin Dignam
Jose Mattiazzo
Nick Sands, CAP
Bill Stange
Jim Tatera, CSAT
Ian Verhappen, CSAT, CAP
Jim Keaveney (Parliamentarian) and Pat Gouhin (Executive Director) who although they sit on the board do not have voting rights.

How many of these have you seen responding or participating in any of the discussions here? Or on LinkedIn conversations or discussions? Or any other of the blogs discussing where our Society is going? One or two? More? I see some of them are following this on the Facebook page let’s hear more from you guys! I believe you are missing a golden opportunity to participate in the conversation and have your messages heard? We are listening too!

My experience
My own experience has been that where I have made an error of fact, somebody has written to me privately to correct it. Or to point out some action that I did not know about. That is fine in so far as it goes but only in so far as it goes. It ought be handled and faced down, right there where it is stated. If I say (as I did in the Direction article).

“Many others in private like Cleveland, and in public on various blogs and internet-groups, have commented, suggested, cajoled but still the impression given is of a brick wall or worse a soaked sponge!  “I accept what you say, within reason,” but …..”

I expect somebody to reply to the blog, not to me or to the administrator privately, with details of what actions if any were taken. But in fact both I and the admin were contacted privately and the blog “Building and Preserving Association Relevancy” written by Jon DiPietro resulted. However it would have had much more effect to my mind if one of our leaders had posted that with links on where to find the relevant paper on the website. (I still haven’t found it though, thankfully,  Jon, with his inestimably and infinitely more intimate knowledge of the mysteries of the virtual world has been able to upload it as part of this blog entry!). The fact that I and a large number of members did not know of the existance of this paper is, to use an Americanism, a whole new ball game, which will possibly be addressed elsewhere.

Open participation
Now Walt Boyes, has written a response to Direction which starts “This is the reply that I sent to a broadcast email from Doug Rothenberg…” Now unless you were “in” the broadcast group that Doug Rothenberg mailed you really have no idea what that reference is about.

This makes another point for me. These conversations must take place in the clear light of day with full input from everyone who has something to say about it.  Otherwise, I believe there is little or no chance of getting changes through governance and no shot of preserving the Society we love.

Reply
Comments are being made on other blogs too. For instance Keith Campbell asked on Wednesday (16th Dec ’09), “Will ISA take the wrong path again?” He’s asking important questions on the focus of ISA. Has anybody responded? Privately? Maybe, but to all intents and purposes the questions remain unanswered. Unanswered questions or presumptions may tend to become facts.

The right people?
Finally another point which perhaps is overlooked. People are looking to staff to “solve” the problem. That to my mind is not the job of staff. They sometimes recommend but they actually do what we, the members, through our elected leaders, tell them. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to our staff who have seen us through over sixty years. They have suffered more than many of us this last year but we must realise that our Executive Director and our staff cannot solve this problem, only we can.

So to the members I say: Speak constructively!

To the leaders one short sentence: Follow the members, you, are their leaders!

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