What is a community? A group of people with similar goals bound by a geographic area? A conglomeration of businesses, schools and grocery stores? If those are the technical descriptors of a community, The Woodlands is technically a community. However, I think most residents want more emphasis placed on the intrinsic things that make a community feel like a community and less emphasis placed on keeping the residents in an information bubble.
There is an ever widening divide between the residents and the leaders of this community. It appears that the “Community” Associations of The Woodlands(CATW) is a “Community” Association in name only. Yes it provides information and help about basic residential services. Actually, it does a fair job in distributing the information about the community services it provides. The “Community” Associations are also very adept at promoting The Woodlands in order to draw more people into the community. However, any other pertinent information that the community needs from this organization is sorely lacking.
An article recently published in the local newspaper opened my eyes to the following. Anything that a person reads about The Woodlands, whether its about the Fire Department, CATW, or any other entity associated with CATW, no matter where it is printed, whether its a press release by the “Community” Associations or printed in one of the local newspapers, you can bet that the story has been sanitized either directly or indirectly by the Associations in some way, shape or form. The “Community” Associations of The Woodlands are militant about releasing information because they know information is power and apparently it is imperative to the Associations to have absolute power and control. Someone once said that those who seek absolute control eventually end up losing control, absolutely.
This is reminiscent of many countries that seek to control information that is available to their citizens. Throughout history regimes around the world have attempted to control information in order to mold or influence their citizens. These countries typically appoint an individual who is directly in charge of the dissemination of information from the government to the people. Under the direction of this individual, the government then censors or embellishes the appropriate information in order to maintain their power. In order for this situation to perpetuate itself, the individual in charge of information dissemination must have absolute loyalty to the government at the direct expense of the people.
The CATW, like the countries mentioned previously, have their own individual that is in charge of information dissemination. Her name is Mary Connell. Her official title is Community Relations Director. She is in charge of the dissemination of information that the CATW deems appropriate. May I add, she is an excellent gatekeeper of information. In many regards because of her valiant efforts, we the residents of this community, suffer from “information under load”. Of course, she is not executing this strategy all alone. In the past she has had a directive from the top of the organization. The General Managers and the board members for the most part, up until the present time, have all embraced the “information under load” policy.
In January of this year, Mr. Norrell took over as General Manager. I have heard some encouraging information about this individual, but it has all been second and third hand information. This is mainly due to my inability to talk directly to this person. I made an attempt to talk to Mr. Norrell about some current Association policies that I think he is unaware of, or if he is aware of them, I think he may be uninformed about their inconsistent application. I attempted to contact Mr. Norrell by phone and was told he was in the office and would promptly return my call. Three hours passed before I was contacted by the Director of Human Resources, Susan Welbes. I was surprised that Mrs. Welbes, not Mr. Norrell, returned my phone call. I queried her on whether Mr. Norrell was given my message. She refused to answer my questions and actually accused me of trying to trick her by asking logical, common sense questions. When I then mentioned that I thought the new General Manger had been left out of the loop on a core CATW policy, she was audibly irritated and once again refused to answer my questions while insinuating that he was not left out of the loop. I am convinced that he indeed had not been informed about a particular application of this core CATW policy. Shouldn’t the employees that work for the CATW be expected to have some integrity and honesty? My only reason for wanting to talk to Mr. Norrell was to make sure that he was aware of this policy. If he was already aware of the policy, then my goal was to try to understand his thought process regarding this policy's importance and to point out what I think are inconsistencies in this policy. I was told by Mrs. Welbes, that even though I am a resident of The Woodlands that I have no business talking to the new General Manager about this policy. I would hope that the General Manager would be more accessible to the residents and I am sure that he could tell me himself what he deems appropriate to discuss with a resident of the community that his organization manages. So essentially the second tier management circled the wagons to make sure I did not talk to Mr. Norrell. This behavior was quite disturbing. The tenacity in which I was denied contact with Mr. Norrell leads me to ponder, what else are they trying to hide in this organization? Is the second tier management trying to isolate Mr. Norrell and effectively make him a figurehead? Is this behavior consistent with the principles listed in the mission statement that the “Community” Associations of The Woodlands displays proudly on their web-site?( http://www.thewoodlandsassociations.org/mission/?page=29) Is this how we, as residents of The Woodlands, want the CATW to behave? The big fish, small pond syndrome is obviously alive and well in some of the current management.
It is evident that, even though they are a non-profit organization, the current mentality/philosophy of the CATW is that the organization comes first. Most of the management and a substantial number of employees’ loyalties lay with the board, the organization and/or themselves, not the community. The CATW employees are rewarded for company loyalty and longevity above competence, efficiency and effectiveness. In this environment the good workers get frustrated and eventually seek employment elsewhere. After many years of the competent, efficient and effective workers filtering through the company and leaving due to frustration, and the inefficient workers being promoted due to longevity and employee loyalty to the company, eventually you have an entire organization of loyal, sub par employees. As this community continues to grow this attitude must be reversed. If it is not corrected The Woodlands will deteriorate from the glowing and growing community that the CATW is so adept at marketing to just another community with trees. Although this “information under load” policy may have served the Associations well in the past, as The Woodlands continues to become more complex, I think this is increasingly becoming an outdated policy.
In closing, there needs to be a wholesale change in the personnel, attitude, philosophy, and core policies within the “Community” Associations of The Woodlands. I am hopeful that once Mr. Norrell gets settled in and has a chance to thoroughly review and revise the personnel, attitude, philosophy, and core policies that this ship will begin to correct its course.
