When I was in my mid-thirties, through no fault of my own, I was cast into the Museum of Art. It began innocently enough, I responded to a Request for Proposal for a new brand. Proposal accepted, new brand delivered with accolades and awards, I thought our business was complete.
Then came the invitation from the Respected Architect*: Join our board! We really valued your input! It won't be much time! Yadda.
For the first year, I did alright, I punched out of work, met friends for drinks and hit the board meeting at seven o'clock, ready to share my opinion. I was expecting to be drummed out when the Veep** called, instead he was offering me a Chair on a Committee. Which I thought was cool. That lead to another Chair and the next thing, I'm having lunch with the Bailing Board President***, and vocalizing all the friends with which I'm going to stuff the board.
"Hold on," he said, "You need to watch your work, wisdom and wealth balance."
As a young businessman, I was used to recruiting to fill the hole and I didn't have the luxury of long-term planning. Tasked with filling a volunteer board, I was kinda punch drunk on the idea of putting the touch on anybody in the community to aid this worthy institution.
The Bailing Board President elaborated the museum board needed a combination of people willing to work towards its goals, people with wisdom to direct those goals and people with wealth to fund those goals. Which totally flew in the face of my plan to stuff the board with spray-paint graffiti activists and rock the institution.
The Endowment Committee needed stodgy, old Pete, who kept the investments conservative and predictable. Wealth.
The Assistant City Administrator**** provided massive amounts of information in a way that was easy for me to understand. Wisdom.
People who like identifying a goal and achieving it, just because they can. Cindy***** exemplified volunteer energy and spirit, and it was pleasure to hand her the gavel when my shift was over.
Eventually I came to learn those three elements are necessary for the success of any enterprise, not just non-for-profits: work, wisdom and wealth. Certainly not in equal measures, nor in sequence.
Apple and HP started in garages with much work, some wisdom, then in dribbled wealth. Everybody knew how to make steel and railroads in the nineteenth century, so much wealth, lots of work, some, but not much wisdom required for success. Patents and information technologies are wisdom which require work and wealth if one is to make an enterprise of them.
The point being that at some point all three elements must be present for any enterprise to succeed. So if someone is pitching a new business venture and you don't see a sufficient supply of one of those elements, it's an issue.
If you are being recruited by any***** institution, ask yourself what they are really interested in? At the museum, I thought I was being recruited for my wisdom, the museum's professional staff looked for my wealth and work. A friend was hired by an ad agency that immediately used his wisdom to port all his existing clientele, then fired him six months later.
-15-
I admire all these people immensely
* Perry Gere
** Glen "Budge" Gierke
*** Henry Neuman
**** Dee Bruemmer
***** Cindy Lathrop
*****