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.
no subject
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
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.