Keeping Promises
Ted L Ramirez
Practicing Attorney/Author | Corporate Governance and Business Transactions | Counsel and Coach to Leaders, Business Owners and Boards of Directors Dayton, Ohio USA
Governance 101 | Bite-sized Nuggets for Serious Fiduciaries
GOV 154: Keeping Promises
Few principles anchor sound, credible Governance more than Keeping Promises.
Organizations vested with duties of service to our Communities, such as healthcare, education, spiritual discipleship, or government, live and work in the fishbowl of public responsibility. We ask for and receive massive quantities of Trust Capital. The people we serve WANT to trust us, to believe and invest in the Organization, to be proud of our presence and service to our Communities.
The larger the Organization, the larger the Public Trust. Some Organizations fall into a sad pattern of counting on the forgetfulness of their stakeholders. “Who remembers what we promised ten, twenty, thirty years ago? Who even cares?”
In truth, the fiduciaries who made those Promises in good faith and committed to honor them, together with the persons who received and counted on those Promises, pass from the scene in the way of humankind. The Circle of Life. “As blades of grass….” It falls, therefore, to the Organization and its institutional memory - AND ITS FIDUCIARIES, i.e., OFFICERS AND BOARDS - to document, remember, RESPECT, and keep the faith of Promises made.
Even if you worked in California or Florida “back then,” but now work “here,” Promises originate in the crucial interests and needs of those to whom they are made. Promises loom large in the measurement of Integrity. Why should anyone Trust us and our Organization? Are we TRUST-worthy? The stakes double or triple down where the Organization is “faith based,” ostensibly working in synchrony with “Biblical Principles.” At what point, some have asked, does fake faith morph into blasphemy?
When an Organization Promises to Community leaders the preservation and nurture of? “local board” Governance participation when it acquires or “affiliates” with a local hospital, then dissolves the local board, and “leadership” brags about “efficiencies” – “Look! Fewer board meetings!”
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Or Promises due process to Community board members and their role in appointing their successors, later decides that's too complicated, then shoves friends and trusting innocents onto the boards (when the roof at last caves in and the government shows up, the board exclaims, "Why, we didn't know! All we had is what management told us!”)
Or promises to use the Organization’s Corporate Assets to serve its Community, then spends millions wantonly over thirty years in far-flung ventures bearing zero benefit or accountability to the home Community (e.g., overseas trips, lavish spending, first-class travel, “investments,” real estate ventures resembling a REIT, and jobs for family and friends – all symptoms of metastatic “Big Shot Syndrome”).
When any of these occur, or worse yet, ALL of them, what’s left are chards of Broken Promises; all the worse when the Promise breakers know they have done so but choose to “stay the course. Just moving on, you know.”
Who watches? Who cares? Who remembers? Who will stand up and hold us all accountable?
Yours for Better Governance,
Ted L. Ramirez ? 7 July 2024
WVSOM
8 个月One would expect more from a faith based organization. Such a disappont to witness the evil doings of those “professing” to be men of God. Too many bad conduct of behavior “actions” take place to be coincidental. Sadly, these organizations keep passing failed leadership from one campus to another. Would NEVER work for an organization that professes to be faith based.