Recently I was speaker at a local Probus Club and following my talk the topic shifted to the future of the club.
Numbers are down and the club is now joining a growing list of such clubs whose future is in doubt.
Rotary clubs are of course not immune from such pressures.
As is often the case when the pressure is on people look to leadership. That is often seen in the form of the single person who through vision or energy or charisma can turn the situation around.
There is of course an alternative. A pre-eminent educationist Thomas Sergiovanni, in a paper entitled Why We should Seek Substitutes for Leadership, argues that it is how much leadership there is in an organisation rather than where it is that is important. In terms of clubs such as Rotary if there are shared values, collegiality and a willingness by all to be actively engaged then there will be shared leadership and a highly functioning organisation.