Will Navel-Gazing by the Campfire Save the Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors?

This morning, a friend down in Prince Edward County sent me an email urging me to check out the latest goings on with county government.

As readers of the Iconoclast may recall, Prince Edward County government has been struggling for most of this past year in a morass of governmental dysfunction, unresolved ethics questions, and an increasingly unsympathetic general public. We have covered some of these matters in the Iconoclast since this past fall.

It seems that some members of the Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors are recognizing the need to change the course of the County and to restore the credibility of County government. This recognition seems to be the basic motive behind the Board’s present retreat.

This term “retreat” conjures up visions of a bunch of kids going out in the woods to find themselves and to figure out who they are and what they want to be when they grow up, all the while singing Kumbaya and toasting marshmallows over the campfire and all that other good stuff.

Alas, were it only that simple. These days, the term “retreat” means so much more particularly as it applies to certain management techniques to address organizational needs and problems.

In this sense, the term “retreat” is often applied to structured get-togethers of people in more casual venues to engage in some form of navel-gazing exercise. Almost any group of people can go on retreat including people from businesses, fraternal organizations, religious groups, political organizations, and governmental organizations. The term “retreat” in this sense comes from the basic idea of getting away from the day-to-day pressures of doing what ever you normally do so that you can clear your head, relax, and be receptive to the give and take of important discussion.

From my perspective, this idea of getting away from day-to-day pressures to discuss really important basic questions certainly has some merit. However, those who have been through some of these retreat exercises have suggested that the results vary dramatically depending largely on the motivations of the participants. Poorly motivated participants produce poor results; highly motivated participants produce better results.

The worst examples are just flimsy excuses to get out of the office, away from the day-to-day routine and to knock back a few cold ones on the on the company’s dime. The best examples, and there are some, seem to be the ones where the retreat participants recognize the fundamental limitations of the retreat concept but nonetheless seize the opportunity focus on and address core issues. Most recognize that a few hours or even a few days of retreat will never solve all of the problems. But sometimes a retreat venue may provide an epiphany, that rare opportunity to see things clearly and to boldly start in a new direction.

However, from the news coverage of the Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors retreat, it seems that the participants are so far still dancing around the most obvious core issue that has been hanging like a dark cloud over the Prince Edward County Courthouse for most of the past year. The problem seems pretty obvious: There are a growing number of citizens of the Prince Edward County who simply don’t trust the Board of Supervisors or the county government.

During the past six months, a whole constellation of problems have been reported in The Farmville Herald, The Crewe Burkeville Journal, and in scores of emails to the Iconoclast from citizens who range from mildly concerned to flat out irate. These reports paint a not so pretty picture of lost faith in the competency and integrity of the County government, lack of fair representation in the decision making process, and the lack of accountability from County officials.

It is indeed a good thing to have a mission statement. However, the Board of Supervisors must come to grips with the reality they face. They can have a fancy mission statement and talk about leadership and vision until they are blue in the face but it won’t matter a whit! A mission statement is not worth the paper it is written on unless and until basic problems are addressed. For example, I can imagine that the Titanic had a mission statement of a sort touting the attributes of that glorious ocean liner…big, fast and…unsinkable. We all know how that story ended.

While “navel-gazing” on retreat may be entertaining, let us hope that the good members of the Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors will get around to addressing real problems before they run out of marshmallows and the campfire burns down too low.

But lest we forget, this is not about kids out playing in the woods. These are big people and their actions and inactions have consequences . Let us hope that the retreat works.

Kumbaya…kumbaya…