The Calling Assembles Quietly

The people who end up holding something together rarely arrive with an announcement. In a sectional title scheme, the owner who finally agrees to stand as a trustee is often someone who sat at the back of several annual general meetings without saying a word. They were watching all along, reading the levy statements and noticing whether the managing agent actually answered emails.

Then one year the scheme is in decent shape, the books are clean and the arguments have calmed down, and that same owner puts up a hand. Nothing changed in them. What changed was that the structure looked strong enough to be worth their time, and safe enough that joining would not mean inheriting a mess.

That is how good people gather around most things in property, from a well run body corporate to a decent office. They come slowly, on their own clock, after watching from a distance for longer than anyone realised. Loud recruiting seldom works as well as a record people can check for themselves, in the minutes and in the way small complaints get handled. When those are in order, the right people tend to turn up, and often they turn out to be the ones who were in the room the whole time.