[Foundation-l] Would you consider being on the Board?

[Michael R. Irwin]

Brion Vibber wrote:

>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>  
>
>>A bigger stacked Board micromanaging the community will leave us in the 
>>future right where we are now.
>>    
>>
>
>I'm curious.
>
>What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do* that will be better?
>  
>
There were some other posts that had some interesting ideas so I will be 
concise and off the cuff.

The Board and Management could acknowledge that the Projects manage 
themselves according to approved procedures and core values and focus on 
delivering a robust, adequate infrastructure.  If a problem is 
identified  the Board or manager  should  have a project point of 
contact .... say a project mailing list ????   where they can go to  
request appropriate attention.

By placing the burden on the Board, management, and/or employees to come 
convince consensus driven, roughly democratic groups of interested 
volunteers there is a problem to be resolved our project leadership, 
local expertise, and community structures would regain some relevance.

The Board could respond in a timely manner to project proposals and 
other activities requested from the communities of volunteers.    The 
easiest way to kill any initiative in any organization is to simply keep 
iteratively requesting unjustifed rework.   Wikiversity is basically 
defunct via this technique.

Any decent secretary or executive assistant could set up a suspense 
prioritized action queue and coordinate emails between the Board members 
so that any given activity that was accepted for action by the Board 
goes back out with a decision within a reasonable period of time.   Say 
a month.  This assumes that communications procedures are nailed down 
and followed by the Board Members.

>What are examples of things a hypothetically ideal management would do *right*
>that the present management is not?
>  
>
Eliminate uncertainty by making decisions in accordance with due 
process.   Notice this requires some due process to be defined.   
Wikiversity has been blindsided repeatedly after it tackled new 
requirements levied by the Board.  Nobody likes to play rigged games 
where others can change the rules arbitrarily.

>
>I suspect this would be a much more productive discussion than constantly
>claiming the board is "stacked" -- which of course it is, intentionally and
>openly so. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that; this isn't a
>democracy, it's a business (even if a non-profit one) and the board's job is not
>to represent the users, it's to ensure that the company implements its goals (as
>stated in the bylaws).
>  
>
I disagree.   It is predominantly a participatory informal 
"democracy/committee" process in the projects and the volunteers in many 
cases are voting with their feet and manhours.   Our micromanagers cry 
here on the mailing list that nobody wants to participate or help do the 
drudge work.    Apparently nobody wants to preemptively participate in 
effective policy making rather than wait and come cry about decisions 
when they are finally made by somebody else.   Basically the projects 
have no way to ratify any policy that cannot be arbitrary overturned.

Further, there were a lot of people who donated a lot of time before 
Jimbo stacked the Board.  He was not the only stakeholder or 
philanthropist with a vested interest at the time of that unilateral 
action.   Like it or fork it is not an appropriate response when other 
stakeholders cannot match the hardware or bandwidth requirements.   
Great sound bite though.

A further problem is that the bylaws were written to express Jimbo's 
goals, not those of the community at large.   People keep claiming there 
is no cabal.   I would very interested in exactly how many people 
participated in filling out the initial paperwork for the Foundation.   
Further, it is Jimbo and only Jimbo who interprets those goals.   
Wikiversity is a natural fit with the existing projects and the slogans 
and bylaws yet it is not being implemented despite overwhelming 
community support.

>
>If there's something that management needs to *do* which will actually be better
>served by a new management structure or new board members, then by all means
>let's talk about it, but let's not put the cart before the horse.
>
>What first, then how.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>  
>
What would be a redefinition of our concepts of customers and 
suppliers.   The projects are the Wikimedia Foundation's customers who 
create the information the Foundation wishes to be delivered worldwide 
to other customers/users.   Yet the projects are treated as property 
which can be controlled by Board.  

The Foundation needs to manage the infrastructure and let the projects 
manage themselves.   The large successful projects will fall right in 
line with the overall principals of neutrality and freedom of 
information because it was the successful articulation/evolution of 
these that feuled Wikipedia's explosive growth.   The projects that 
drift inappropriately will fail and fade.  I agree that the Foundation 
must enforce the core principals that were articulated to receive 
project approval for Foundation hosting but this must be seen as an 
impersonal, neutral, enforcement by the Foundation, not a possibly 
arbitrary or biased or uninformed judgement by a single individual.

Standard tasks should be defined where possible with specific scopes and 
procedures.   People like credit.   An effective manager should  be able 
to devise a way to give credit to the volunteers or paid staff as they 
completet the tasks he has prioritized or scheduled.

Let us consider the old saw:  lead, follow or get out of the way.   A 
problem right now is that many of the volunteers have little or no idea 
when "leadership" at the top Foundation level has gotten out of the 
way.   Every thing slows or stalls until somebody invites leadership to 
come microdecide and as a result the Board gets ever more overloaded.

How is an interesting question.  

Unstacking the Board would immediately solve many problems at the 
strategic organizational level.  It would restore credibility to the 
Board with some factions while reassuring the projects that there was 
truly an entity that could restrain Jimbo from running amok on Wikibooks.

It would also begin to define the Foundation as an entity independent of 
Jimbo that will be capable of surviving indefinately.   Notice this is 
required to meet future committments to deliver free information made 
while requesting donations from participants creating and using the 
information.  The Foundation has a clear Fiduciary responsibility to 
those donors who sent cash in good faith even if it values the time of 
our other philanthropists at zero responsibility or committment.

regards,
lazyquasar