Community engagement & soccer

Last week I volunteered to coach my 4.5 year old's soccer team. The organization's operations could not be more disorganized. This got me thinking about how this process is turning off a key audience.

Within one week of my excitement to be a coach, my engagement has waned and now am grappling with the "system" and its lack of structure, lack of logic and ridiculousness in treatment of paying customers. And I am frustrated with the poor communications, lack of information and general disregard for timing.

So what is the broader point? I think that this experience is akin to dealing with any bureaucracy that at one point in the entity's existence, it was there to provide a service to its constituents. Yet over time, the entity becomes bloated and focused on its own survival and not the fulfillment of the mission.

And when this happens, the people who care the most, those who are willing to be engaged become disenchanted and leave the field.