Well, it looks like I won’t be getting offered that plum job as the next CEO of EC, despite the at-least five minutes spent carefully drafting my application last week. It’s probably just as well, though. It’s a beast of a commute from Vancouver to Ottawa, and hell would have to freeze over before I’d relocate from my beloved wet-coast to the land of two seasons: winter and mosquitoes. I also don’t think I’d adjust very well socially. Ottawa is full to the brim with civil servants, and as this blog has often attested, I do struggle to be civil with civil servants.
I wonder who the new CEO will be? Will it be someone from the private sector equestrian community who knows that sometimes you have to swing a dead cat by the tail to clear out the dead wood (fingers crossed)? Will it be one of those government lifers, possibly from outside the horse world, who thinks the greatest book ever written is Robert’s Rules of Order (please no!)? Or will we see truly fresh blood in the form of a non-Canadian who brings past experience from other equestrian federations? Just look at how great that worked out with our imported Dressage Team Technical Leader. Or am I blaming that failure on the wrong factor?
I got some very nice emails from people who saw my job application and approved of it. Of course, none of those people were members of the committee (known as the ERRR – which stands for Emergency Response, Resuscitation and, when all else fails, Recruiting) charged with finding the next CEO, but I was still heartened by their messages of approbation. I also got an email from El Presidente Mike Gallagher, who thanked me for my application before disabusing me of the notion that sucking up to him would get me the job. He said he didn’t understand why I was ‘targeting’ him, and added that it wasn’t his decision, that ‘we have a committee for that’ – though it should perhaps be pointed out that he is ON that committee (the chair no less). He is also president of the Board that will ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ the ERRR committee’s recommended candidate. And one more thing: as chair of the committee, Mike was also the person who got to choose two other EC members to be on the recruitment committee in addition to himself, the EC Board Secretary and the Board Treasurer. Mike never did answer my question about why he got to appoint two more people when the EC Governance Manual clearly states that there should be only one more name added to the Board Executive trio. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Mike closely follows the edicts of the aforementioned Robert’s Rules, which state that the chair of a committee votes only when there is a tie. If there were only three ERRR members besides Mike, then there would never be a tie and he’d therefore never get to vote. But by ad-libbing a fifth member, Mike increases his chances of voting from zero percent to quite a lot of percent.
In our friendly little email chats, Mike casually suggested that perhaps I should stop carrying on with my endless poking holes in things –things such as why he is running a committee that does not correspond to the EC Governance Policy – and volunteer for an EC committee. I do sometimes feel guilty for being EC’s Number One Critic (most published critic, anyway) while not becoming part of the solution by volunteering. But the problem with becoming a volunteer is that I would no longer feel free to go on my frequent rants (you are my idol, Rick Mercer!) about EC’s many, varied and persistent shortcomings. As some wise men know, the best way to silence a negative voice is to hire it, and I believe that becoming a volunteer would have a similar detrimental effect. No, thanks, I will just keep barking – my contribution is to lift up the rug. After all, if I don’t do it, who will?
I am writing this post from the back row of a stuffy flight to Charlotte, NC, en route to a pre-Christmas dive into the depths of Welly World. If the endless mudslinging of the Florida horse community is something you find either amusing or life changing, please make sure to drop by my other blog Low-Down this week. I’ll be posting my impressions from the Wonderful Underworld of Welly over there.
And finally, one last item for today: Since I can’t become a CEO I’ve decided to pursue another career that is nearly as famous- and rich-making: pop star! Here is my debut performance as youtube’s next sensation. I hope you enjoy K-Rob Gangnam Style:
