The bottom line in managing any enterpreise, whether for-profit or
volunteer, is getting and keeping a consensus among the participants.
Otherwise you find yourself asking your people for a supreme effort
some time when you've managed to screw things up royally, and they
snicker and tell you it's time for their lunch break. Such things
happen at least as frequently in the for-profit world as in the
volunteer one, as people use a veneer of "professionalism" to hide a
clockwatching mentality.
How do you maintain a consensus? Well, it starts in recruiting.
Nothing kills a joint venture faster than hidden agendas, either on
the part of the individual contributors or their leaders. When you
sign people up to a team you tell them what the team's goals are and
find out what they want to get from the experience. You then make
sure they get from the experience something that closely approximates
what they want.
(If your goals are so corrupt and selfish that you don't dare tell
your followers, for fear that they won't share your ideals and will
stop following you, consider the example of Adolf Hitler. He preched
genocide in Mein Kampf and got the German people to follow him to
Armageddon. You can always find someone as contemptible as you are to
implement your goals, no matter how nefarious. More often you have to
worry, like Danton and Marat, that someone with even fewer scruples
will come along and practice on you what you have been preaching to
others.)
Dale
