You might have heard that a guy named Gerry Pike has started a proxy war for control of the DMA board. He’s a board member himself but hasn’t been nominated for a new term.

The current DMA leadership is fighting back with, for instance, a feebly thuggish attempt at a cease and desist order, a flurry of emails and outbound telemarketing.

The interesting thing about all this is that the DMA, like many large organizations these days, could probably sail merrily along for a couple of years with no top echelon leadership at all.

Enron, GM, Chrysler, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Citibank, WaMu, Wachovia, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae would not be any worse off today had their boardrooms and executive suites been empty for the past 10 years.

The legislature of the great state of Texas, our only successful large state, gets together every second year and for a maximum of just 140 calendar days. One old school Texas politician said that his state would be better off if they switched the numbers around and met every 140 years for a maximum of two days.

My impression, first as a semi-insider then as a non-member over the past 5 years, is that the DMA leadership, such as it is, costs members a lot of money and adds very little to DMers’ well being. The association itself is valuable, though. The staff is great, they know what to do and how to do it. The high mucky-mucks seem to be working hard for … the high mucky mucks.

Direct marketers have a simple question about everything: what’s the ROI? Bad enough when it’s 0, disastrous when it’s negative. What do we do when that happens? Pull the plug and start over.

Good luck.