When Being Leader Is More Important than Leading the Organization

The article “A Heated Campaign for a Ceremonial Post” in Saturday’s New York Times talks about the high-stakes sweepstakes for the top position in a community organization.

• As a total outsider, the situation seems to suggest a few lessons for other organizations:
• When the combined expenditures of campaigning to be president of the organization nearly exceed the annual budget of the organization, something is way out of whack.
• When the organization spends that much energy choosing a leader, it has few resources left to do anything meaningful.
• When being leader matters more than the organization, the organization ultimately turns off the constituency it was designed to address.

See the entire article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/nyregion/28koreans.html?hp