[Foundation-l] Future board meeting (5-7 april 08)

[Sue Gardner]

phoebe ayers wrote:
>
> I find personal attacks
> completely offensive and of no value -- but at the same time, I would
> very much like the Foundation's employees to be able to (politely,
> civilly, and in a non-personally disparaging way) call things like
> they see them, if they find themselves at odds with a general WMF
> decision. Like any community members, they should be able to make
> their opinions respectfully known in public fora. I would hate to
> think that there was even the potential for this being infringed upon
> for the sake of -- what, precisely? Keeping our public image clean?
> Legislating civility? I very much hope that there is a crystal-clear
> understanding among all parties that constructive criticism is still
> acceptable.
>
> -- phoebe
>   
I agree with this, Phoebe. I believe -and I hope- that everyone on the 
staff understands that polite, civil, constructive criticism is not just 
acceptable, but encouraged.

In my view the primary importance of this kind of agreement lies in the 
conversation that precedes its signing.  It's unusual for an 
organization to value transparency as much as we do - and so IMO, 
particularly as we grow a little and bring in people who may be used to 
different environments, we will want to have explicit conversations 
about what transparency and openness mean to us and why they're 
important.  For example - we don't want yelling or name-calling. We 
welcome whistle-blowing. We want to protect people's personal 
information such as staff home addresses and donor names. We welcome 
constructive criticism and open dialogue.  Etc.