in breaking up (spinning parts off) the WMF we run the risk of creating
silos of information, knowledge and disconnecting one speciality from
another preventing cross pollination of ideas and innovation. It also
breaks the collaborative core of the projects which has created what we
enjoy and at the heart of our volunteer driven successes.
The movement works because diverse group, diverse cultures and diverse
ideas are able to come together through a shared principle, when the
movement has issues its because of fragmentation, them vs us, or closed
cabals acting out their own desires past experienced shows our greatest
failures are when we act in isolation and secrecy.
Before spinning of parts or isolating programs from each other we must be
looking at ensuring that which has given us the greatest success and which
is at our heart the collaboration, the sharing, the diversity are not
disrupted because no matter how much is rebuilt the distrust will linger
long after the experiments have failed
On 20 March 2016 at 02:44, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Mar 19, 2016, at 7:41 AM, rupert THURNER
<rupert.thurner(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
at the end it all boils down to
money. spending all money available and wanting more money never has
been a problem. if there is dissent it was always about who has the
say what the money is spent on, and where it is spent. i am convinced
if we get the responsibilities right, the dissent will stop, and the
output will be better.
sizing organizations and distributing responsibilities on a global
scale seems to be a very difficult task, close to the soviet empire's
task to plan its next 5 years. one could argue to resolve it via
setting a financial targets, just as multinational companies do. two
simple long term key performance indicators might already do the trick
for the wikimedia movement: first "maximum 50% of the money is spent
on persons whose life depend financially on the movement", which is
employees, or long term contracting persons, organizations,
foundations, enterprises. and second, "50% of the money stays in the
country where it is donated." the rest will auto-organize, and
auto-change. finding intelligent spending for the rest of the 50%
should not be a too difficult task, there is sufficient universities
and students around the world who would be happy to compete for this
money. the success, means and outcome will change over time, in areas
and ways nobody can predict today. the 50% are a made up number, a
little bit influenced by public spending of 40% - 50% in many
industrialized countries nowadays. it seems people accept such a
ratio.
I... This line of thinking worries me.
In Programming / IT / information companies, there are a number of well
known examples of organizations with legendary ineffectiveness measured on
a per dollar or per employee basis.
Logic of "we will just control or manage the money flow" is focusing on
the wrong end entirely. We need organizations that are effective, and
secondarily (for a host of reasons) which people enjoy working in. Neither
of those is a result of any accounting focused reform or management
approach.
George William Herbert
Sent from my iPhone
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