Conversely, their failures are spectacularly visible. If the Zoom link breaks, it is their fault. If the vote is tied, they are accused of poor facilitation. If they try to move a stalled initiative forward, they are labeled “overbearing.” They exist in a perpetual double-bind: do too little, and the committee drifts; do too much, and they are a martinet.
The ECC is the dry rot that does not happen. They are the lawsuit that was avoided. They are the new member who, because they felt heard, stayed for a decade. They are the quiet, stubborn scaffolding of collective life. the earnest committee chair
Where others see bureaucracy, the ECC sees architecture. Where others see procedural tedium, the ECC sees procedural justice. They operate under a sacred, unspoken oath: If we do this right, the right thing will happen. This is their gift and their curse. They are the custodians of a fragile faith: that meetings, when properly chaired, can produce wisdom that individuals alone cannot. The tragedy of the ECC is that their virtue is invisible. No one celebrates a smoothly run consent agenda. No one applauds the deft handling of a tangential debate that was guided back to the motion on the floor. Success, for the ECC, is the absence of failure—a silence that is mistaken for emptiness. Conversely, their failures are spectacularly visible