Had a nice outing this morning that brought back a few memories, both good and bad.
The occasion was a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Orange, one of the poorest towns in Massachusetts, the ribbon-cutting being to mark the completion of a long and somewhat tortuous process to transform a ramshackle house in the middle of Orange into affordable apartments for at-risk young adults, at-risk meaning that the alternative would be homelessness.
I was just a spectator, but some years ago I'd been on the Board and Treasurer of the
agency that was the instigator of this project. I'd resigned from the Board under difficult circumstances -- not that I'd done anything wrong, but I had reached the limit of my tolerance for the executive director at that time.
Looking back at that experience, an involvement that lasted 6 or 8 years, the regret I have is that I wasn't tough enough, that I was too willing to let questionable performance slide. I think there were two different times when the question was whether the ED should resign, once when I learned after the fact that he had expected me to ask for his resignation (and I hadn't), the other when he asked me if I wanted him to resign and I was either unable or unwilling to say yes. In retrospect, the answer in both case should have been to show him the door.
He wasn't a bad person. He said at some point that he had come to realize that what he really wanted to do in life was to make the world a better place. He just wasn't very good at it. Mainly, he was way to optimistic. Everything would work out. But blind optimism only gets you so far.
So I quit, and then a year or two later (as I heard much later) he was gone too, with the agency on the brink of insolvency. I should have shown him the door many years earlier. Live and learn.
In any case, the new ED is a young fellow, brilliant. I knew him when he worked at the agency under the old ED. And under this guy's leadership the agency has got its act together.
So it was a pleasure to show up today. The usual speeches from the various parts of state government that were involved in making the project happen, also from the local politicians. But the point of my visit was the 5-minute chat I had with the ED, just a reminder to him that if he needs help, he just has to ask.
We had a similar conversation a year ago. It led to a non-trivial contribution (from funds of my mom's that are set aside for charitable purposes only) to get the agency out of the bind that the previous ED had left it in. And, from my point of view, about the best thing I could possibly do in life, helping an immensely talented young man do some really good things.
So I expect we will have another round of conversations this fall. And I expect (and hope) that the outcome will be that he will be able to do even more of the good things that he and the agency are doing.
When you have good people, then the challenge is just getting them the resources they need to do their job. And then the pleasure is being able to enjoy watching as they, for real, make the world a better place.