THERE'S A PATTERN HERE

Some of you may recall a little over one year ago when the Young Leadership Cabinet made a presentation to the JFNA Board on the Cabinet's "plans," they were confronted with Board members public expressions of disbelief, disappointment and pushback. The response was something like this: "We hear you. We'll go back to the drawing board and come back to you reflecting what we've heard from the Board members." 

So, it was back to a rethink and, with the aid of two consultants with insights into the Cabinet, last month the YLC issued a "Strategic Planning Update:"https://fedweb-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/fed-42/1997/NYLCabinet_StrategicPlanningUpdate_Oct2016.pdf
Now, you really have to read it for yourselves but I can tell you two things: (1) it's wholly uninformative (other than "we have so much more work to do"); and (2) nothing...nada...zip... reflects what the Cabinet leaders heard from the JFNA Board over one year ago.

Somewhere our great friend, the late Rabbi Herb Friedman, z'l, is crying. 

Yet, this Cabinet "thing" is wholly consistent with the JFNA "thing."

One needn't travel too far back in the history of JFNA to remember the fiasco of the birth of the Global Planning Table. Pursuing the personal dream nightmare of Kathy Manning, JFNA hired Karen Barth as its Global Planning Table "consultant" (why have so many of JFNA's most costly mistakes been framed by consultants is a question others should be asking). Barth prepared an expansive (and expensive) Draft plan for the GPT and she and Silverman took it on the road to "get the input" of federation leaders at regional meetings around the country. At each one of these "hearings," Silverman and Barth heard these federation leaders of every City-size reject, sometimes with the laying down of "red lines" ( "if this goes forward as the Draft suggests, that will be a red line for federation X"), but, always, with the assertion that if the Draft materialized into a final product it could not be approved because the "solutions" it offered ("Signature Initiatives," "Coalitions of the Willing") were an express rejection of collective responsibility. At the end of each regional meeting, federation leaders were assured that "we hear you" and "we are going back to the drawing board to assure that what we heard will be reflected going forward."  Given the opposition at the regional meeting I attended, I didn't have to say a word.

And, what happened? Well...nothing...changed. The Draft Plan with some minor "tweaks" became the Global Planning Table Plan. No substantive changes; no reflection of any of the criticism leveled at the regional meetings by federation leaders. For JFNA, this was business as usual. Unfortunately, for the federations this was business as usual, as well -- "red lines," meaningless; the deconstruction of collective responsibility, ignored.

And, in the end, after the investment waste of unaccounted-for millions on this thing, after the diversion of staff from work that might have actually helped the federations, after JFNA failed to raise the funds that might have made the GPT relevant in some ways -- after all of that the Global Planning Table was collapsed at the last moments of the Siegal administration. (Would that be considered an "accomplishment?") Maybe you remember Silverman's frequent statements to the effect that "if the Global Planning Table fails then it will mean the end of JFNA." Maybe he was right.

Oh, there's more, way more!! How many millions lost in the wake of multiple TribeFests?  The aimless wanderings and underperforming of the National Agencies-Federations Alliance. Failed allocations. Unpaid Dues. Failed internal fund rising. Hidden consultant contracts.The list may actually be endless.

But, who cares?

Rwexler