Dear Moderator,
I appreciate having a three-month relief from all the rude noise. But I do not take this misbehavior into my heart. Luckily, my good mama taught me to expect bad behavior from badly-brought-up people, and good behavior from well-brought-up people -- and not to take either personally. Still, I will heed his warning, and begin stopping up the holes in my armor!
It is too bad that I am such a mediocre manager. And the person who decided this is the Voice of the People! How can I argue with such an exalted person? So I will not. As I promised him, I will not discuss anything at all with him.
However, his statements in a few instances reveal an ignorance about some things that may mislead your members, and for them, I should clarify at least one point.
A corporation is, legally, a person. It can own property and it pays taxes. It does not have to have shareholders -- and in no corporation are the board members necessarily the holders of all the shares. Those are different things. This Museum has no shareholders. The board members do not own the Museum -- the Museum owns itself. The task of a board is to meet once or twice a year, to learn what has been accomplished -- or not -- in the museum, and to approve or not. The Board chooses and accepts new members when others leave.
There is no guarantee that a new Director will be the same as the previous one. Each Director has different ideas about what the Museum's activities and policies should be. If the Board disagrees, there can be conflict. But generally, the Board tends to give the Director a free hand to to as his best impulses direct him to do, and it intervenes only at times of difficulty.
I have certain guiding principles in my life and in my work, and those are reflected in the policies of the Museum. I try to be open, with generosity of spirit and also material generosity. I believe that the information in my care should be available to everyone, and we are working hard to make it available. I treat people with trust first, and distrust them only if they prove me to have been mistaken about them. The next Director may feel that we are being too generous, that we are giving people more trust than they should have. And he/she will act differently from me. How can it be otherwise? The world turns, and people change. I must say that, if such a thing happens, I will watch in sadness from my seat in the clouds!
Your member was strangely confused when discussing people's demands for openness from other organizations, saying that I was too slow to expect that the same demands would be made on us. But there is no need for such demands, since we have always been ready to share whatever we have.
I hope these few clarifications have not been too boring, and that they have been of interest to at least a few people. Thank you for your attention!
Daniel Entin
|
Дерево сообщений
Поиск
Новая тема
Настройки