With regard to Sue, adding to the list of concerns about the sheer amount
of money is that she wasn't the executive anymore, so why was she being
paid like one?
Pine
On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 9:27 PM, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Gnangarra.
I'm familiar with Bridgespan, and when I worked as a strategy
consultant, I used the "starvation cycle" myself. It's a way of
framing the need for improvement differently from simply insisting
that 5% is saved each year, and instead using more meaningful
strategic goals.
This piece in no way explains why the WMF is in the habit of paying
its CEO twice what the UK Government pays its Prime Minister. I doubt
anyone believes that the WMF job is twice as stressful, delivers twice
the value, is twice as accountable or twice as hard.
If we were to bring some hard numbers into the WMF board to
/benchmark/ the CEO salary decision making process, compare the WMF
CEO package to that of charities of the same size to the WMF. Here's a
few facts from a survey of UK charities:[1]
* In the 100 highest paying charities, CEOs are paid a median of $235,000.
* Cancer Research UK have an income of $770m and pay its CEO, Sir
Harpal Kumar, $330,000.
* Barnardo's have an income of $400m and pay Peter Brook a salary of
$215,000.
* Scope has over 3,500 employees, an income of $140m, and pay Richard
Hawkes a salary of $200,000.
Probably the best comparative example from this handful is Cancer
Research UK (CRUK) as they are both in the technology and
science/academic sector and pay an almost identical CEO salary as the
WMF does. Their strategic goal is to find new cures for cancer
applying leading edge science, and run a massive programme of public
communication and education (including improving Wikipedia articles,
which I was lucky enough to help out with!). Their direct spend on
scientific research projects is over $165m,[2] more than a magnitude
larger than the WMF's spend on software development and with far, far
greater technical and ethical challenges.
The reason that the WMF rewards its CEO at the same prestigious level
as CRUK, is because they are trapped in the Silicon Valley bubble and
fixed in the belief that they must pay top executive salaries
competing with commercial Silicon Valley IT companies, rather than
comparing themselves to charities or educational institutions. If the
WMF board really want to shake up their strategy, they should start
planning to have some development and management teams in cities other
than San Francisco, if only to unlock themselves from their current
unrealistic group-think, and start behaving like a leading edge
professional educational charity, rather than a for-profit "breaking
everything is good" Silicon Valley dot com.
Links:
1.
http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charity-pay-study-highest-earners/management/a…
2.
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-us/our-organisation/annual-report-and…
Fae
On 6 June 2016 at 04:10, Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
this is worth reading
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3060455/future-of-philanthropy/demanding-that-no…
On 5 June 2016 at 16:23, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5 June 2016 at 02:28, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sunday, 5 June 2016, Greg Varnum <gvarnum(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> ...
> > Not to put too fine a point on it... But are you saying that Sue
remained
> > the most highly paid contractor to the
WMF, and at a significantly
higher
> > rate than when she was the actual ED,
until FIVE DAYS ago? That is,
well
> > beyond any 'transition period'
(and in fact longer than the
employment of
the person who replaced her)?
Yes, this jumped out for me. I can understand paying out a 12 month
golden handshake on the way out, and paying a previous CEO for a few
days or weeks support during handover, but continuing to pay out at an
eye-watering equivalent salary of $300,000 per annum, was a
super-duper bonus for Sue.
However this is wrapped up in the normal "nothing to see here,
move-along" WMF PR speak, these lottery prize level payouts have been
a terrible, terrible deal in terms of the WMF delivering on its goals
and values. I certainly did not see Sue saying anything in public to
help avoid or repair any of the WMF board's strategic disasters in its
highly public annus horribilis. I doubt that in truth she did much
more in private, sorry, it's just not credible that the WMF has all
its strategic manipulators hidden away in private rooms as if this
were a court for the Borgia family.
I am utterly convinced that the WMF would do exactly as well, and
possibly even better, by paying a CEO slightly less than it currently
pays it's head of legal, certainly it would be rather stupid to pump
up the interim CEO's salary by three times to match the celebrity CEO
salaries that the WMF seems to have locked itself into.
Fae
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