Having been a member the Dojo until recently, and a fan since they opened, I disagree with a lot of your characterization, and am going to give Ghufran the benefit of the doubt. However, this is important:
>Lesson: Bake your culture into your DNA, or when the good King era ends, the bad king era will begin...
What I see at the fundamental problem with the Dojo is that, baked into its DNA, is the belief that legal compliance and good management are not really important. The Dojo had to leave its old space because they were so in violation of Mountain View building codes that it would have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring them into compliance. A problem that could have been easily avoided if they had bothered to talk to the City about code compliance before moving into that space.
And now they've demonstrated a lack of interest in basic financial governance.
I wish Ghufran, and the new board, the best in terms of turning the Dojo around. But I worry that the disinterest in compliance and management is so integral to Dojo culture that it will have another (completely avoidable) crisis in 3-4 years.
>Lesson: Bake your culture into your DNA, or when the good King era ends, the bad king era will begin...
What I see at the fundamental problem with the Dojo is that, baked into its DNA, is the belief that legal compliance and good management are not really important. The Dojo had to leave its old space because they were so in violation of Mountain View building codes that it would have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring them into compliance. A problem that could have been easily avoided if they had bothered to talk to the City about code compliance before moving into that space.
And now they've demonstrated a lack of interest in basic financial governance.
I wish Ghufran, and the new board, the best in terms of turning the Dojo around. But I worry that the disinterest in compliance and management is so integral to Dojo culture that it will have another (completely avoidable) crisis in 3-4 years.