‘Peace House Community Journal’ Archives
Unanswerable Questions
by MARTI MALTBY I’ve been a supervisor long enough to make lots of mistakes, and hopefully to learn from them. While I still make mistakes, they happen less often and aren’t as serious as they used to be. My skill in hiring staff has unquestionably improved over the years for one simple reason: when I realized I had hired the wrong person, I would go back to the interview questions I asked them to see what I should have asked instead. I thought of skills the employee lacked, and came up with a question that they would not have been able to answer well given their limitations. Over the years, I moved from the generic questions that you can find on LinkedIn and similar sites to questions that focused on the real world situations the employee might face. My favorite memory of asking better questions came from a young woman who wantedto work in a homeless shelter. I asked, “As you are doing your rounds, you notice thatwater is coming from under the laundry room door. When [...]
Prove Me Wrong, Please
from the series Peace House Community Journal... By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby On July 2, the City of Minneapolis announced a new effort to deal with the open-air drug markets that plague the city, especially the neighborhoods served by the alley. By the time you read this, the announcement will be a month old, and we will hopefully have some idea of how the effort is going. My prediction is that current problem areas will get safer, but currently safer areas will become more dangerous. I can’t pretend that I could solve the problems that drugs cause in Minneapolis, even if I was given an unlimited budget and power, but I can anticipate some of the hurdles that will trip up this effort. Some are inevitable, such as the addictive nature of drugs. There is no way to remove the attraction of drugs, especially among those who already use them. There’s also no way to remove the profit motive from dealing drugs. No matter what the City does, there will always be buyers and [...]
The Quiet Time for Friendship
from the series Peace House Community Journal... By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby I recently attended the 2026 Nonprofit Leadership Conference, hosted by the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. During the opening keynote address, Ryan Vasquez (Executive Director of the Minneapolis Highrise Representative Council) commented on how important it is to develop friendships when you don’t need them. The middle of a crisis, he said, is a lousy time to find out who you can count on. His comment reminded me of a related statement by Robert Lilligren (CEO of NACDI and then-Chair of the Metro Urban Indian Directors). During Operation Metro Surge, the Native American community collected and distributed literally tons of groceries and other supplies to families who were too threatened to leave their homes. Robert said something along the lines of, “A lot of people see how many supplies we are sending out and think, ‘You guys are really well funded.’ We aren’t. The Native community [...]
