26e28dfFriday, ORCCA’s board of directors finally responded to my request for clarification on issues surrounding a $172K budget deficit for the South Coast Food Share. Chairperson Christina Alexander, invited me to attend an executive committee meeting with the board and the executive director, Mike Lehman, to discuss “the Executive Director’s and board’s plans to stabilize the organization as we move forward…” Lehman already provided me an overview in a July 10 email which was referenced in an earlier post, so meeting with him would be redundant. Also, in light of his misrepresentations to The World newspaper and revelations of possible ethical violations within the human resources department that have not been addressed by the board, Lehman is simply not a credible or reliable source of information.

A complaint filed last week with the Oregon Department of Justice goes further and alleges the board hired Lehman to be the face of ORCCA knowing he was too inexperienced and unqualified to run a $10 million non-profit agency. The complaint infers that Lehman’s inexperience combined with the board’s lack of oversight has left the human resources director, Carol Douglas as the de facto executive. This in itself is problematic because internal complaints have been lodged against Douglas for “tainting” the hiring process for key positions.

Taking the above into consideration with other information that will be presented here in the near future, what’s newsworthy is that the board still maintains confidence in its choice for executive director.

On a side note, Joel Peterson, the chairman of JetBlue Airways has penned an insightful article about how to handle “bad hires”. Top 10 Hiring Mistakes, #10: Letting it Fester explains that it usually only takes about 90 days to discover a new hire is not right for the job but when you figure it out, act swiftly.

Do it fast: It’s no fun realizing you made a hiring error and that it’s up to you to deal with it. But once you know, you have to take action. If you let the error sit untouched long enough, it can grow into a full-blown personnel disaster. Bad mojo from the hire can spread like a disease – if things get bad enough, other team members can threaten to quit or projects can get derailed.

It may turn out that ORCCA’s board of directors have left too many bad hires unresolved for too long, But Alexander has promised to get back to me about the complaints and what the board is doing about it by Wednesday morning.