When it’s Time for a Committee to Retire... by Julie Adamen D
ear Julie: Recently I became the onsite manager for a large-scale, over-55 community – where the average
age is about 78. I’m the first “professional” manager they’ve had, and they’ve been self- managed for 45 years.
As this Board is moving towards and embracing a more professional administrative model, they are looking to disband some long-standing committees that hold a lot of power over the Board and the community. Truthfully, the folks on these committees like having authority without having the responsibility of being on the Board, and much of the time they make the Board’s life – and mine - a lot more difficult. The Annual Meeting is coming up, and we’d like to move on this. Any suggestions?
Great question and an issue that plagues many communities, self-managed or not. How best to retire long-term volunteers, who have, shall we say, become stuck in a rut, without alienating them and their allies? Here’s how: Don’t outright disband the committees,
re-populate them – but
do it with equanimity and for all the right reasons. Here are some tips to make the transition politically less painful and promote healthier committees:
First, have solid reasoning to re-populate committees. The Board and management can’t just tell people their services are no longer needed because
they have become unproductive (read: “a pain”) – especially for those on politically sensitive committees. So what is the reason to re-populate the committees? We want to invite other community members in to share the burden, we want to be inclusive, we want new members for a fresh set of eyes, etc. These are all legitimate reasons for wanting new blood. The bottom line is, the more community members that know what the real problems are, the fewer problems you will have in resolving them. Changing the committee population is also about informing the larger community.
Create and adopt policies that apply to all committees’ charters, comportment, ethics and tenure. In this case, time is short as the Board would like to handle this prior to the annual meeting, so management can put together policy and guideline recommendations for Board review and adoption; however, my larger recommendation would be to do
this over a period of time and by someone other than management, such a as task force of select Board members and residents. Why? Making changes to long-standing methods of operation will always be an affront to someone’s entrenched interests. Those changes will be viewed much more amenably by the community if their peers, and not employees, are suggesting them, especially if the eventual outcome is to do away completely with a committee.
And, only for the brave and skilled...You may wish to ask some of your more recalcitrant committee members (i.e., those you would like off the committees) to be on that task force. This serves a few purposes: The committee member may be malleable, and understand why it’s important
for others
to participate, and they also can’t head out to the community and say they didn’t know what was going on and cry about poor treatment. BUT! This must be well-
18 ommunity CAI
VOICE
www.southgulfcoastchaptercai.com
Second Quarter - 2016
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