Ting Chen wrote:
Hi Thomas,
one year ago when I run for the board election I came with the same proposal as you. Meanwhile I have changed my oppinion. The problem is that this would not work out.
I totally agree with you that voting is the minor part of the board decision making process. Actually in many cases it is only for the protocol and formality. The really big part is before voting, while discussion. Here you are totally right.
There are a lot of differences between a board member and an advisory board member. The most important difference is the dedication. As a board member you MUST attend board meeting, you MUST take part in discussion. As an advisory board member you are not obliged to do that. Naturally, if we have an issue and we feel lack of expertise, or simply because we want to get more input from more sources, we go out and ask members of the advisory board. This is for example why some of our committees has advisory board member in it. This is also why the advisory board would play a crucial role in the strategic planning. But it is totally different between that expertise is already inside of the board or if the expertise must at first be asked from outside of the board. The best examples you can see are Stu West and Jan-Bard de Vreede. Stu with his technical and financial expertise is simply there, in every meeting, in the board mailing list, we don't have to go out and ask someone from the outside, especially because these expertise are really direly needed in every meeting and most of our topics. The same is it with the organizational expertise that Jan-Bard brings into the board both in how an ordinary procedure should look like as well as how discipline must be excercised in the board. This is the reason why they are asked to be on the board again and again and why they hold so important offices in the board. Indeed, my experience with both of them is why I have changed my opinion. I don't know Matt that long yet, just met him in one board meeting. But I do feel that in this one meeting he gave very interesting and important insights. For example how measurement of success should look like. There are also other reasons why we need expert seats. One is that sometimes you are in a discussion and stumbles over something where you didn't see the need of an expert before but where you feel really thankful to have one in the board. Naturally you can say, hey, we need here an expertise, let us at first ask someone in the advisory board and then make a decision. This actually happend in the past year more than once. But this is a slow process, you would go out and e-mail that person, she or he would answer, there would maybe more questions that you would ask again, or the board must first discuss internally and then ask again. This is totally different as if you have already that expertise in the meeting and can directly go forward. I also need not to mention that it is totally different to talk with someone from face to face or via e-mail and we cannot fly all advisory board members whose expertise are needed in to the board meeting.
As I said before I had the same idea as you last year. But some times a change of perspective or new experiences show that the idea doesn't work.
Greetings Ting
Incidently, in the context of the strategic planning process, I talked this morning with Laura and Barry from the Bridgespan Group, as well as with Eugene yesterday.
From what I understood, the Bridgespan Group is trying to interview all advisory board members to collect information and feedback for the work started on the strategic wiki (http://strategy.wikimedia.org).
I think that is an excellent way to make use of the Advisory Board member and I thank them for our implication in that process.
Ant