Over the week, I met with a friend who told me that he had spent ten years in dedicated service to an organisation that, at least on paper, was meant to support our Italian community. Yet over time, the gap between what it claimed to be and what it actually was became increasingly difficult to ignore.
There were constant divisions, internal fractures that seemed to define the organisation more than any shared mission. Instead of collaboration, there was competition; instead of unity, there were factions. Energy that should have been directed outward, towards service and community building, was instead consumed by internal disagreements and political power struggles. It created an environment where progress felt secondary and where maintaining influence often took precedence over achieving meaningful outcomes.
Communication, too, became a tool rather than a bridge. It was selective, at times calculated, and often exclusionary. Information was not always shared openly or transparently, but rather distributed in ways that seemed to reinforce existing interests. Some voices were amplified, while others were quietly sidelined. In such an environment, trust eroded quickly, replaced by uncertainty and, at times, quiet frustration.
For a long time, he rationalised all of this as something inherently “Italian”, a cultural tendency towards passion, strong personalities, and at times, disorganisation. But over time, that explanation began to feel insufficient, even misleading.
The more he observed, the more he realised that these dynamics are not confined to any one culture or community. They exist in any organisation created “built at the table,” so to speak, not always with the intention of serving the broader community, but often to consolidate influence, protect positions, or advance private agendas.
There are structures that, while appearing legitimate on the surface, are carefully assembled behind closed doors to serve specific interests, keeping some “members” engaged with ad-hoc Board and Executive appointments while others remain excluded, disillusioned, or ultimately pushed aside altogether, waiting, one day, for an AGM
