On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 2:36 PM, Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Mostly reasonable enough. My point on positions was
that since this board
was only going to be around for three months it might be more efficient to
assign tasks on a task by task basis rather than a role by role one,
particularly as assignments of tasks should require much less discussion
than assignment of roles. This certainly does not mean that we'd be in an
"everyone thought someone else would do it" situation, as those task
assignments would be a matter of public record. A task based approach also
keeps at least some collective responsibility for things getting done for
the whole board, which to me seems right, since if we fail, we fail as an
ensemble. It also means that when the job of one "role" can be parallelized,
it will be.
I don't see the task and role based approaches as necessarily
exclusive. There are some roles which we are legally required, or
strongly advised, to create. Beyond that, there are tasks we are
aware will be required and will be ongoing (such as membership and
communications). If one or more board members wants to take
responsibility for an overview of these, and probably doing the main
share of the work on them, then it seems sensible to formalise it as a
role; this doesn't preclude the board in future mandating someone else
to take on part of the task, or the person taking on the role from
asking other members to assist as needed.
Meanwhile, there are many specific tasks which will not be ongoing
concerns, and even if we wanted to avoid a task-based approach, it
would be difficult to avoid it for all of these.