You don’t need another committee

At the RuralX Conference last week, Mike Knutson asked the audience what they heard from us that was new to them. One person said, “you don’t need committees.” Amen!

People just want to come together for a project and then move on.

You don’t need another committee. An audience once came to its feet and cheered when I said that. I can’t blame them. There is so much wasted overhead cost in maintaining committees, and we pay for it with our time and effort. 

In an interview the founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales explained that they don’t really have an organization. Whenever people ask him who is in charge of any specific thing, he says, whoever wants to pitch in. 

Kill your committee structure. Think about it. What is the worst that would happen if you didn’t even have committees? Would it really be worse than some of the disastrous committees you’ve had in the past? (We’ve all had our share of disastrous committees.)  

Stayton Sublimity Chamber of Commerce did away with committees and just invited people to pitch in when they had specific projects. Elaina Turpin who was with the chamber at the time said they spend more time explaining the difference the chamber makes in the community. They became more of a cause people can get behind and less of a volunteer obligation people feel they have to serve. 

I think we can all identify with that. 

Keep shaping the future of your town, 
Becky

PS –  If you could do me a favor, I’d love for you to share the Survey of Rural Challenges with your network of rural people. Just give them this link: https://saveyour.town/2019survey Thanks!