Tenured In

How would a university reach its potential if all faculty were tenured?  Careers last decades, new talent either would never arrive or be temporary.  Not good.  But that is what has become of my shul with some very negative consequences.

Being a democratic organization that has to vote as a congregation but has officers and a Board, a nominating committee arranges a slate and the congregants approve it at a pre-announced meeting.  Some years ago, the term limits for officers was repealed, though not for President.  Virtually the entire slate of VP's has remained unchanged since.  There is no incentive to move on so nobody takes on the role of President.  Last year the President took an extra year by default.  Since nobody is better than our President, the Nominating Committee apparently upgraded by selecting nobody.  Without the medical jokes of space occupying lesions, or whether these officers really have developed any expertise over their 10 years there or whether they have one's year's experience repeated 9 times, this does not bode well for the organization.  Talent depends on advancement, and I just do not see it here.

There are board appointments, mostly same old who have been around for decades, but with the officers tenured in, there really is no upward mobility for them, making it a dead end rubber stamp type of minimally contributory effort.  Four of the ten positions are vacant this year, three last year.  I do not know who the three person Nominating Committee of former Presidents asked but declined or who they excluded.  I must be on the C-list.  Ironically there are gatherings of the Congregation that bring out a lot of people, meetings related to the sale of the building, High Holy Days where somebody parcels out Ark openings to as many men as can be recruited.  There are lists of who donated money published each month in the newsletter.  I suspect that the Presidents just have a very restrictive inner circle, some tasks to do with some urgency to the omission of the important, not a lot of vision, and no incentive to tackle a real problem, which is what you end up with when you neglect to develop the people that you have and take the path of least resistance, reappointing the same slate year after year.  I wonder if anyone of the three Presidents actually went over an attendance list from a well attended meeting to get names, or whether they even looked at the High Holiday peticha participants to get more names, or the membership list.  Judging from the actually submitted slate, it is more likely that they depended on their own awareness, which would be the people they see in shul on shabbos.  That is a very small veneer of the potential talent, and the slate reflects that.   It is a very ominous sign that portends depletion if not addressed effectively.