Adding Board Seats, Elections (in the future), and Sudden Flood of Burnout Thoughts

[ira_gladkova]

Heyyy so there was a pretty big announcement: the OTW Board will be expanded to 9 people and the bylaws amended. In case it is not immediately obvious from the length: yes, I had my hands all over this post, with a base outline provided by excellent Elections Officer jennyst and revisions and input from Board, the Elections Workgroup, and Comms. (I also did the graphics; it was a nightmare.)

So there's a lot going on here. I was Elections Officer last term, so I have a pretty keen interest in elections goings-on. I never really posted about my election works much: near the start of elections, I went on leave for a family illness, during elections it was necessary for me to remain neutral (which was simplest by staying quiet), and afterwards, I was, frankly, too exhausted and demoralized. Until recently, I was also too sick. Basically I have a backlog of elections feels thoughts.

The things I want to cover include:

• What are you thinking with this adding seats business?


• How did we get into this mess with the seats?


• What happened last year?


• How will elections work this year?

But then I realized this would be very tl;dr. I do know I have a problem. So I'm saving the last three items for later; today is going to be all about:

Adding Board Seats, Burnout, and Taking Care of Our People

Just to be clear from the start, the idea of adding Board seats does not spring solely from a need to fix the elections issue. (This is another reason I want to cover the more electiony stuff separately: it is a separate issue.) As the OTW news post linked above demonstrates, it certainly helps. But the Board does honestly struggle with workload in ways that would be ameliorated by being able to spread the work around a little. Our committees are growing; the number of committees is growing; the number, reach, and scope of our projects are growing — and that's all awesome, but it's also simply too much for seven people to cover.

However! Not all of the workload stems from this. A large part of Board's problem is that we are currently still too involved in micromanagement and/or management on a level that causes conflicts of interest. As an example, when some kind of staffing or work gap appears (say, due to a sudden retirement), we often feel like we have to be the ones to step up, either first or as backup. And in the case of filling chair positions, I think it also creates conflicts of interest. We do not do this to hog positions or work, but because we often feel like there is no one else — we are some of the most experienced people in the org with a wide range of skills. But this also gives short shrift to everyone else in the org and robs people of opportunities to grow.

There's not really a simple answer like "well Board should just stop filling these gaps themselves". A lot of the time these positions are pretty key and there is work that needs to be done urgently: we don't have time to wait for someone to train up or to recruit someone. The real issue here is a lack of personnel management and succession planning, not just for chairs — something we've been keenly aware of this year — but for key positions at every level. If we were consistently training people up and had a framework in place whereby anyone doing load-bearing work had an understudy, we wouldn't be having this problem. But one huge obstacle is that the org is collectively often too busy doing its project-based work to also do its people-based work ^{(ETA 01)}: we're too busy building our projects to also build the builders. And I think that's a real loss and a true tragedy in terms of the org culture. Given the way things are, I'm not sure there is a solution besides just slowing down on projects for a while in order to build up our people. That's a hard thing to accept, both for us and, I think, for our audience: why should the users and beneficiaries of our various projects have to wait because we can't manage to keep our house in order? However, I am, have been, and am increasingly of the opinion that this is what we will have to do.

[ETA 01]: After reading bookshop's comment, I think this (from my response to her) would be a more precise and accurate statement: The org is collectively more concerned with producing popular and/or acceptable output (often in the form of projects) than with doing the personnel support and management necessary to make that work happen in a healthy way. Apologies for the suboptimal initial wording! [/ETA]

And it's not fair. I know it's not fair. It's not fair to our staff and volunteers, who do this work because they love it and believe in it. It's not fair to our audience, who have to wait on things that matter to them. It's not fair because in the end, we collectively screwed up and now everyone, whether part of the problem or not, has to pay for it. We made a collection of mistakes that put us in this position. There is no one person or group of people to blame; the issue is too endemic.

But the status quo, letting it continue— I think that would be even more unfair. It undermines our work. It undermines our people. People leave the org feeling sick and used. Even if people simply leave feeling tired and nothing more, their legacy is tarnished by our poor ability to preserve it: the work they left suffers from the lack of structure, because the people left to continue it don't have enough support, in one way or another, to do the work proud.

Our Volunteers & Recruiting committee does not have the resources right now to handle a huge influx of people at any level, from volunteers to high-up staff, though I know they are working their asses off to strengthen the personnel management aspects of the org (read renay's posts; she is Volcom chair and does mind-boggling amounts of work). But even if Volcom could handle an influx, the rest of the org, for the most part, still can't: almost everyone is already overwhelmed by project-based work, way too much to do the mentoring and nurturing necessary to handle incoming volunteers. This is one huge reason behind the endemic burnout: there's no one there to catch you.

We cannot afford to keep growing our projects without growing our people.

So what does this have to do with increasing the number of Board seats? I mean, reducing Board workload is nice, but — given everything else — so what?

I think an increase in Board seats has to be part and parcel of a movement to decrease Board micromanagement and increase Board's role in (temporarily) slowing down project growth while focusing instead of growing the core of the org: its people. Resource allocation is our call and our calling. And we need more resources in our people. Yesterday. We need Board members who can focus solely on this tremendous task, on shaping us into a more reasonable, professional space. With the number of directors we have now, we simply cannot do that.

Increasing the number of seats does not come without a cost. It'll be harder for us to meet, and all the other possible communication problems that come with any increase in number of people with their hands in the pot. If we're serious about decreasing the trend in Board members also filling other key org positions — and from Board discussions throughout the term, this is the direction we're headed — this means that whoever we draw into Board will leave behind gaps, the very problem we're already having.

But the change has to start somewhere, and I think there is no way around the need for slowdown. Slowdown would make the gaps in coverage a little less dire, as the work will perforce be less urgent. There's no way around the fact that it will still suck. If there is a pain-free solution to this problem, I cannot think of it. The pain is already here. It already hurts. If we do this, it will at least be pain that's paid towards something other than perpetuating the same system we already have.

The bottom line, for me, is this: We need this increase because we are failing our people right now. Board needs these resources so that we, in turn, can give the rest of the org the resources it needs.

Comments

[bookshop]

Sigh. You know, I understand the impetus behind all this, but at the same time it honestly feels a bit like smoke and mirrors to me. Because, for instance, this:

that the org is collectively often too busy doing its project-based work to also do its people-based work

I have had serious difficulties doing any of my project-based work over the last two months because whenever those of us who want to move projects forward do things to move the projects forward, we're immediately blocked by other people throwing hissy fits or ego tantrums or ignoring our work or refusing to support us for whatever bullshit political reasons, and otherwise hanging us out to dry. So if this is the org being busy doing its project-based work, then I have to say, as someone on the ground trying to actually do that work and seeing hours and hours of hard work (my own and other people's) repeatedly undone, blown off, ignored, ruined because of miscommunications and procedural hangups, and/or cast aside in favor of placating people with bigger egos than ours, that work is not actually happening.

And since it's not actually happening, then it just feels like an excuse. We're not doing projects or building the builders.

(At least, we're not doing non-AO3-related projects.)

[ira_gladkova]

Thank you for these points!

Would it be more reflective of your experience if I had phrased it this way? (and we write off the previous version to poorer and less precise phrasing)

The org is collectively more concerned with producing popular and/or acceptable output (often in the form of projects) than with doing the personnel support and management necessary to make that work happen in a healthy way.

In other words: People are doing work, work is happening, but there is too little project-management structure to facilitate it and far too little personnel-management structure to support them in that work. Such is my impression, and this is much of the reason why I think we need to change focus from output to input. Namely, that of our volunteers and staff.

But for what it's worth, the experiences you're talking about are exactly what I hope we can address. I'm really glad you commented, because a more precise understanding of these experiences and a wider collection of experiences to draw from can only help us in fixing this.

If I sound vague on the details, it is not because I am trying to roll out the smoke machine without you noticing. It's because I do not myself hold the solution, not in detail, though I still think my overall big-picture idea has merit.

I do have some concrete ideas about addressing these issues (which I hope to cover in future posts), but they largely stem from my experience in technical projects: I, for myself, sorely lack experience in personnel management. And despite our various strengths, I think this is largely true of the current Board overall, too. We all have patches of useful experience (such as sanders's and jennyst's nonprofit experience), and plenty of seat-of-our-pants experience (various chairships and such in the org, leadership positions in our professional lives), but we do not have any experts in project and personnel management. And yes, that is a huge, huge problem. This will probably be one of the first things we need to address: finding people who know what they're doing and talking to them (internal survey for skills/experience? targeted recruitment? consults?).

And, of course: listening to experiences like yours.



Finally, well... on a personal note: I know what it feels like to be in positions similar to yours. I was a volunteer and staffer before I was a Board member, and I ran into the same problems — both before and after joining Board. I've had ideas and work blocked, I've had great ideas stall out for stupid reasons, or be ignored, or undone. I know this doesn't help you — or anyone else experiencing the same thing. But in case it helps understand where I'm coming from: I'm still working from within that same system, myself, as are a lot of people who are trying to help. That doesn't make it easier for anyone, but maybe it can help us get this right if we remember that we're in the same boat (that is full of leaky holes), and reach for each other.

[bookshop]

ahh, okay, yes! yes. this all makes sense and is much clearer to me, in terms of where you are trying to focus on. I was reading this post largely from completely the opposite pov, basically: I saw output as the product of well-managed projects being given efficient manpower, and it seems like you were seeing output as "produce results now, whether or not they emanate from sustainable practices." Ah, okay, yes. That makes a lot of sense. :) ♥

[ira_gladkova]

I'm glad it's clearer! I've amended the post with the wording change I mentioned; thank you for catching the poor wording there! I do apologize for the confusion and frustration.

[anatsuno]

Thank you for this post!

I look forward to the other ones - I admit that I was particularly worried about fixing the elections; not because elections-omg but because, well, they're the only true input members have into the leadership of the org, and I worry about representation / turnover / fairness. 3 renewals every year for 3 year seats on a 9 person board is exactly what I wanted. I just hope we get to a place where board burnout & early retirement as a phenomenon is a lot more rare... Here's to hoping. :)

[ira_gladkova]

Thanks! Believe me, plenty of us were worried for that very reason. I do wish we had managed to give an update of some sort before this, though, or even come to a decision earlier. Saying that, though, I want to be clear that this is not at all the fault of our new Elections Officer — jennyst has been doing stellar work — but we overall as a Board failed to support her adequately in being more timely with responses and moving discussions/decisions along faster: she can't push us all by herself. We should have remained more aware of people's need to at least know what was up on this issue, and planned for communication to happen at regular and timely intervals.

For that, I want to apologize for my part in the collective delay and silence. But I'm definitely glad to have the decision and post now, and glad to hear your thoughts on it!

(The official post linked above actually started life as a "here's what we're considering" draft rather than the post facto update it is now; we just finished our vote before the post was done. So the bottom line is we still started writing too late.)

[renay]

Do you know how happy I am to see an incumbent Board member say these things? I've been doing whatever the virtual form of screaming is since mid-2010 that we were going to end up where we are now, that eventually we were going to run out of people willing to take up leadership mantles because they know they won't be supported.

I am dubious about adding Board seats. My concerns rest with the ability of Board to say as a group, "We have to stop growing and focus on established projects." and "We have to learn to let go." When I requested a halt on workgroups, stressed out of my mind that we were continuing to add lead positions, when those leads are just chairs under another name, I was surprised that Board accepted it without argument. That was a step in the right direction. But it has to apply to everything.

However, I remain unconvinced that adding the seats won't simply result in exactly what we're seeing right now: Board members doing more staff work than Board work because we're already hurting for leaders and there are no people to step in and people who refuse to step in. I worry it means Board members will chair committees and then will be their own liaisons, leaving no recourse for staff members to agitate for change or feel like they have the ability to challenge decisions or the status quo. This utopia of Board members being equal enough to serve as on-the ground leaders does not yet exist. The walls are still, effectively for volunteers, up and impossible to see through (i.e. meetings are only available to staff; volunteers still have to go by only minutes). This equality and the ability for Board members to know what hat is appropriate will probably not exist for years. The way it stands now, if this happens and we fall back to the old ways of people not letting staff work go, it will continue to bottleneck growth. As has happened and continues to happen, it will lead to an unrelenting grip on the projects claimed by Board members (because those motivated to run for Board have high ownership over their projects), and it will hurt the enthusiasm and retention of our staff who want to do work and create positive changes, not be continually and repeatedly blocked because their leaders are Board members and there's no where else to turn. This behavior often isn't malicious, but the nature of our hierarchy makes it seem that way.

If we're serious about decreasing the trend in Board members also filling other key org positions — and from Board discussions throughout the term, this is the direction we're headed — this means that whoever we draw into Board will leave behind gaps, the very problem we're already having.

Emphasis mine. This would be nice, but I also think it's unrealistic. I see people who ran for Board doing the same work they were doing as staff on top of Board work. They haven't let go of the staff work because nothing requires them to. They're invested, and rightly so, because they've given energy and time, but in some cases, it's hurting us greatly. Unless what you present in this quote actually happens, I honestly don't believe it will be a positive change at all. It will just be more of the same.

[ira_gladkova]

Yes, this is a problem!

I mean, you already know I agree with you. I've been in agreement for years and trying, from the inside, to make changes. I have not talked about it publicly though, and I can only imagine that this silence only made it worse for anyone who felt Board was — well, that Board was anything but part and pinnacle of the problem. That sort of silence from above does nothing to help morale, and I'm sorry I did not say more earlier and more loudly.

I think it's time to propose an amendment to my previous wording again:

At this stage, it would be more accurate to say that Board members stepping up will leave gaps not so much in positions but in people-hours. The shoes might not be empty, but they sure won't be full.

If that's a more accurate statement, much of what I said before still remains true, because this is just another face and facet of the overall problem of succession management and workload allocation.

As I told bookshop in a comment on her post, I do think that given the current setup, expanding Board is likely to be the option that causes the least overall pain and upheaval. I've seen a lot of people say that from a project management perspective this is not a great solution, and I can't disagree — it's not a great solution. If I could do over the whole thing from the start, we'd keep a small Board and have completely different rules for what kinds of staff work Board members can do and basically have an entirely different system in place. But we're working with a deeply flawed and unstable system here, and given the system we have, I think adding members is not a great step towards fixing it, but a workable step. We need so much change that there is no realistic way to do it all at once without alienating and hurting a lot more people — or not even all at once. Somewhere, some load-bearing support has to remain standing to keep things afloat while the mighty shuffle goes on underneath.

So I guess I'm saying you are not wrong to be dubious. I am myself dubious! But this is the option that makes me the least dubious that is still likely to get us somewhere at reasonable speed.

Here is something that gives me hope: by and large, the people interested in running lately have increasingly been showing concern over these very issues (look at last year's crop!). I think this is an increasing trend: we are becoming more self-aware, and anyone running is more likely than ever to know about these problems (or, realistically, be entirely too intimately familiar with these rpbolems) and to care about changing them. I think these sorts of people are also more likely to give up positions, or at least to work towards succession planning in a reasonable way.

But that's basically a big basket of optimism and unicorn farts. I can offer three small — not denying the small! — but concrete things, plus steal one of yours:

- Board talked at the beginning of term about trying to lessen staff/chair/Board/liaison overlap. We agreed that this is something we should work toward throughout the term and in general. We have, at minimum, a basic agreement we can point back to and make an effort to enforce with each other. (And there is less overlap than there could have been, as a result.)

- We are right now having a discussion about workload and positions. This involves each of us listing all of the positions that we hold in the org and examining our own and each others' lists. I'm hoping this exercise will yield results, but at the very least it's damn healthy to do it.

- We've turned down some opportunities and commitments because we felt we needed to get our house in better order first (for example, there was an OSS sponsorship opportunity that we turned down for this reason).

- As you said, we easily okayed the workgroup formation moratorium.

These are tiny. I know. But I think they do point towards a (slow, ponderous, all the descriptive words reminiscent of elephants and/or snails) cultural change within Board towards assessing our positions and conflicts of interest, taking stock of the org's position, and being willing to slow down a little rather than okaying all the shiny awesome things.

These sorts of things are what keep me hoping and working I'll be trying to post more to discuss these problems and show the work being done. (And I can keep cheering as you work on the Code of Conduct! Is it our turn soon >.> ) And I can only hope, in the end, that all put together, it helps.

[julia_beck]

I worry it means Board members will chair committees and then will be their own liaisons [...]

Sharing that worry, and that's why this is the first thing I'm talking about when approaching potential candidates: if you're a chair or doing vital committee work, find you successor now, even before declaring candidacy. Because I think a candidate needs to show that they're actually able to fully commit to Board, now that those commitment issues are much more public.

[jennyst]

It's also worth noting that we now strongly encourage board members who are chairs to have a separate liaison, as we've done with Finance, unless there are strong reasons not to. In previous terms, the default was the other way around. So that risk is also improving, though I know we do still have several committees without a separate liaison.

[renay]

I hope it will also apply to current Board members and their projects, because from my perspective that is even more serious than the future Board members giving up their chair seats and their lead seats. We're in crisis right now.

Both have to happen for any good to come of this. I know it's a matter of willing and available hands, but start training now. Ask the the people who are there and invested and already working. And that means letting go and it's scary (I know, I've done it). It means trust and letting go and accepting that things will change and maybe not in ways you particularly like. But it will be fine and if it's not, we'll learn. Until we start trusting each other to lead in good faith, we will never have any new leaders.

When I see this happening, and see that we have a slate of candidates who will not be chairs/leads or will be giving up their chair/lead seats upon taking their Board seats, I will happily eat my words about my despair over this plan.

[julia_beck]

You're preaching to the choir. It's just, look. This is really difficult and frustrating for me, because I don't want to be doing any of this chairing and leading work. I've had hele's successor in Translation all trained up (and yeah, I didn't want to chair, but hele left, so what was I to do) -- I recruited her in November, just like I handed over I&O into Andrea's able hands. It went great, wanted to hand over in June. Then job emergency -- she went on hiatus. Exactly as The Horde hit. The other likely candidate? Disappeared on me. Survey workgroup? Ugh. Let's not talk about that, let's just say that was a grave political error on my part to think that I could just hand over the administrativa, and I'm still paying for that now. (Also, one of my most dependable people? Disappeared on me.) So I hear what you're saying, *I did it*, and so it's triply frustrating because *it still didn't work out*, and I have to be my own emergency backup. (Translation: entirely made up of people who started in *May*. Survey: everyone is at least as booked as I am.) Plus all these disappearances, it's getting me down. (It's probably me! Who knows.)

But the show must go on, right. And so I cut back on the work I do, say, in Translation except for the bare minimum (training the new people) and I feel awful. I just have to hang on and hope that my co-chair will come back and take over the reins as she said she would, and hope that I can somehow salvage survey (ha ha ha).

So you bet I'm speaking from very bitter experience when I urge candidates to, yes, start training now.

As for current Board, again, I can just say that the ones who would need to hear this most are not likely to, and for the others (say, Kristen and me) it's just so much more complicated and painful than what you write, cf. above.

[helkalantto]

Thank you for this post, Ira. To see that these things are talked about gives me hope.

I left the org a couple of months ago. I felt mentally paralysed and completely unable to do my work. I initially thought that it was all because of my depression, but since then I've come to the realisation that I was wrong. My depression was certainly a factor, in that it shaped the way I reacted to the stress of the work. However, something triggered that response, since I was otherwise quite well.

I've come to the conclusion that over the two years I'd been an OTW staffer, I'd slowly burned out on that work. I agree with you that it's systemic problem inside the org. People didn't have time to properly mentor newcomers. Moreover, the necessary mentoring structures simply weren't there. The combined effect of those two things was that it was like being thrown off the deep end and told to swim.

I miss the org, and I now feel a glimmer of hope. I feel like it might be possible for me to return at some point. I don't mean that the org has to be perfect for that to happen. Just, there needs to be awareness that we have to work on this. The feeling that nothing is changing -- that is one of the most debilitating feelings.

[ira_gladkova]

Thank you so much for your comment here, and please accept my apologies for the belated response!

I'm so sorry to hear about your experience. I can definitely sympathize with depression intersecting with org work, and I'm deeply sad that there were not better support systems in place for you. That sort of lack of mentorship and definition is something we're definitely aware of and working on now, but that doesn't retroactively fix the many negative or outright terrible experiences people have had.

That said though, the change is slow. As you're no doubt familiar, there's this constant feeling of things being on fire and needing immediate attention, which makes longer-term issues seem less urgent and easier to leave by the wayside. Of course, that's one hell of an optical illusion. These long-term structural issues are, in my opinion, the most on fire. Conflagration city!

It's not completely possible to set aside everything else and work on this, but it's been an explicit focus for me and other Board members this year to keep this issue in the forefront, check in regularly, drag up action items as often as we can, and work all year on defining roles and responsibilities. The latter in particular has, I think, been showing a lot of progress: pretty much every time we're run across a role or task lately, there have been cries of "document this! explain it!", and many of us are encouraging the same attitude in the committees we liaise. This is not the same as building solid mentoring and support structures, but I think it's an important step: lack of clearly set out job descriptions, expectations, and avenues for recourse are one of the things killing us right now. And we're definitely working on it.

Thank you again for commenting, and I hope you can feel better soon! Please let me know if there's any more information you'd like to ask about. If you're interested in sharing specifics about your experience, please feel free to message me and talk — it really helps to hear from people for whom the system didn't work so that we can improve it. No obligation at all, of course, but the offer is there if you're interested! Be well, and be welcome back if ever you want to return!

[helkalantto]

Thank you! I have sent you a giant wall of text as a PM. I used my fannish account because it was easier.