Get all your atrocities in at the outset

At the AGM, the Chairman of the band elected to step down, feeling he was getting too old, and that he didn't want the hassle any more. He nominated his successor, and then accepted a nomination to serve as Vice-chairman. Naturally, my immediate reaction to this was, "Uh oh." It's never easy taking over when you have your predecessor looking over your shoulder.

Still, things seemed to be going okay (mostly) until the committee meeting yesterday. At which the new chairman presented us with a document entitled "Chairman's Vision", and provoked a big argument. Our Vice-chairman took this as a personal insult, suggesting that the band hadn't been doing the right things thus far and, more importantly, that the new Chairman should have waited a few meetings before issuing such a document.

I'm somewhat torn about this. On the one hand, I can't agree with our Vice-chairman. As Machiavelli rightly points out in "The Prince", when a new ruler comes to the fore, if he must make difficult changes then they should all be made as early as possible, and all together. This does what needs to be done, and allows wounds to heal once the dust settles. (The alternative is to roll out the changes over a period of time. At each step, someone is sure to be offended, and things will never settle down.) This approach was also famously adopted by Orson Welles, who would hire an actor for the specific task of being loudly fired by Welles, thus establishing his authority on the set.

On the other hand, the changes that our new Chairman is seeking to make are utterly wrong in almost every particular. This makes supporting them rather difficult, despite my support for the principle that changes should be made, and should be made now. He also put things rather tactlessly in his document, but the worst offense of all was his use of appostrophe's to denote plural's in the Chairmans Vision, and not to denote possessives. I cannot support the misuse of such things under any circumstances whatsoever, even where it would be considered amusing.

Still, never mind. Internal politics are part and parcel of being part of a pipe band, and have destroyed more bands than any other cause. The key is for those of us who are apolitical to engage in a quiet revolution and improve the band without anyone noticing. Which is basically what I've been doing.