Category: Other Questions 2015 Q&A Group 1

Dan Lamson 2015 Q&A: Other Questions, Group 1

Elections Chair

Note: Dan has withdrawn from the race, but he completed his answers before withdrawing, so they will be posted to the site.

What kind of training would you like to receive for the position of Board member, if you could get any?

I think an important training for board members would be in communication skills, and how to deal with each other and the rest of the org. Kind of a group therapy thing where can learn together and bond over the experience. This kind of training would be team building as well as improve how we deal with each other and the org in general.

I’d also like to see some kind of apprenticeship with a sitting board member to go over the ropes and talk about how things are done. You could shadow them for a bit and see how it all works. I think this would a lot better than stumbling around, and probably would stop some mistakes from happening.

The Board originally had 7 members. This number was raised to 9 when we realized 7 members weren’t enough to manage the OTW efficiently, then lowered again to 7 due to low participation. As it stands, this election would bring the Board to a total of 5 members. Considering the number of candidates in these elections and the growth of the org so far, what are your thoughts on the number of Board seats?

I think the board could expand its membership again if it wanted to. I don’t see a problem with a 7 or 9 person board at all. I wouldn’t want to see it much bigger at the moment, because it is functioning more as an executive committee at the moment, and it’s not always easy to make executive decisions by committee on a good day. In the future, if the org has full time executive staff, I could see the board expanding quite a bit.

What do you feel is your responsibility if the Board you are serving on is poised to make a decision that you believe to be ethically or legally questionable? Conversely, how would you respond if one of your fellow Directors raised similar concerns about a decision you supported?

An interesting dilemma. If there was a decision before board that was legally dubious to one or more board members, regardless if it was my idea or someone else’s, I would suggest we loop in the org’s top notch legal team and ask their opinion. Once we had that we could move forward.

Ethics are a little murkier, because what is ethical to one person may be unethical to another. I would want a full discussion of both sides, even if I was the one with the accused unethical decision. I would say my piece and they could say theirs, and I would try to be as objective as possible. I always try to listen to those around me, because I know that other people can often have amazing ideas. Basically, I would want a civil discourse on the issue and try to reach common ground or an understanding between the parties involved.

Matty Bowers 2015 Q&A: Other Questions, Group 1

Elections Chair

What kind of training would you like to receive for the position of Board member, if you could get any?

Board needs training in a variety of areas:

  • OTW Tools: All Board members should know how to use tools necessary for their work, and have at least some familiarity with the tools used in different parts of the organization.
  • OTW Committees: Board needs to know how each committee works and what they are responsible for.
  • Finances: All Board members should know how the organization’s finances work, where the money comes from, current standing, what major expenses are upcoming, etc.
  • Board Responsibilities: New Board members need to know what exactly Board in general does and what each member’s role is.
  • Good Governance: New Board members should learn about how a volunteer organization works, as well as what their ethical and legal responsibilities are.

These are just a few basic training sessions every new Board members should be given. However, it’s highly unlikely the current new Board members will receive any useful training. Should I be elected, this will change. When I first joined as Support chair there was no documentation or training; after spending the first year in panic mode, I vowed to never leave any succeeding chairs in the same mess I had endured. As soon as I figured out what I was doing, I started creating chair training documentation. It didn’t take long to realize it’s not all that difficult; someone just needs to sit down and make it happen.

The Board originally had 7 members. This number was raised to 9 when we realized 7 members weren’t enough to manage the OTW efficiently, then lowered again to 7 due to low participation. As it stands, this election would bring the Board to a total of 5 members. Considering the number of candidates in these elections and the growth of the org so far, what are your thoughts on the number of Board seats?

Historically Board has had a difficult time filling seats. There are many reasons for this, which I won’t go into here. I think 9 was an optimistic number, but fairly unrealistic. If we couldn’t fill 7 seats, how were we supposed to fill 9?

I think 7 is an attainable goal; one that we may finally be able to reach. I am not happy that there will only be 5 members this year, especially when we actually have enough candidates to fill the remaining spots. If our goal is to have a functional, productive Board, we should be doing everything in our power to encourage growth, not limit it.

What do you feel is your responsibility if the Board you are serving on is poised to make a decision that you believe to be ethically or legally questionable? Conversely, how would you respond if one of your fellow Directors raised similar concerns about a decision you supported?

It is incredibly easy for insulated groups of people to talk themselves into making poor decisions. With no transparency, accountability, or discourse outside a select group of people, no one is able to intervene until too late. On a Board level, it’s important that we encourage transparency and give our fellow Board members, volunteers, and members a chance to hold us accountable for our actions.

It is absolutely my responsibility to ensure Board upholds the ethical and legal standards our volunteers and members deserve. As a Board member I will not condone anyone deciding they are above the rules or attempting to twist these rules to suit their needs.

One of the first things I tell all my new staffers is that I am not always right; they are encouraged and expected to question my decisions and actions. As a Board member, I will do everything in my power to encourage transparency so that people will be able to point out when I’m making poor or uninformed decisions.

Katarina Harju 2015 Q&A: Other Questions, Group 1

Elections Chair

What kind of training would you like to receive for the position of Board member, if you could get any?

I think all Board members should have some training, at least, because it would help new Board members be effective as soon as possible, instead of trying to figure things out as they go along. I believe that some sort of overview of the whole OTW should be offered, because of course all Directors are familiar with the organization, but depending on what committees Directors have served on, their view of the OTW might be partial. They are not likely to be acquainted with all projects and ongoing major discussions and efforts. There should also definitely be some training on finances; not every Board member needs to be an expert on the matter, but they do need to know the basics of how to read financial reports and have discussions about finances. Of course Board members should also receive training on what their roles and responsibilities are in their new position, which would be helped by having clear policies, in addition to the bylaws and the applicable laws, on what those responsibilities are.

The Board originally had 7 members. This number was raised to 9 when we realized 7 members weren’t enough to manage the OTW efficiently, then lowered again to 7 due to low participation. As it stands, this election would bring the Board to a total of 5 members. Considering the number of candidates in these elections and the growth of the org so far, what are your thoughts on the number of Board seats?

Considering the fact that I have witnessed Board members mention that there is a lot of work expected of them, and the undeniable truth that currently a lot of projects tend to get stalled when they go to Board for approval, I’m not entirely convinced that reducing the number of seats at this time was the best move. If there was reason to reduce the number of Directors to seven, then this was still not the best time to do it, as it now means that there will be one year with only five directors. Since the OTW seems to still be growing, I don’t think that having only five Board members in office is the best thing for the organization at this time.

What do you feel is your responsibility if the Board you are serving on is poised to make a decision that you believe to be ethically or legally questionable? Conversely, how would you respond if one of your fellow Directors raised similar concerns about a decision you supported?

It would of course be my duty to bring attention to the matter and argue for what I believe is right and best for the organization and its stakeholders. If the situation was reversed and such concerns were brought forth about something I supported, I would have to re-examine my own position on the matter and go through all relevant information until I could satisfactorily determine if the concerns were valid. I would not go through with the decision without having considered the issue, and if it turned out that the concerns were valid then I would have to recant my previous position.

Board should of course also consult the Legal committee on any issue like this. I think, generally speaking, having discussions as openly as possible, in view of the rest of the organization, should invite more viewpoints and hopefully help to prevent such situations from arising.

Atiya Hakeem 2015 Q&A: Other Questions, Group 1

Elections Chair

What kind of training would you like to receive for the position of Board member, if you could get any?

I get the impression, from past director comments, and a lack of information to the contrary in the Board section of the Internal Wiki, that new directors do not receive much in terms of training. If that’s actually the case, it’s something that should urgently be changed. We require the OTW committees to have training plans, and in my experience the productivity and morale of incoming volunteers is strongly affected by the effectiveness of the available training.

I think new Board members should get, at minimum:

  • Training as to the duties of the Board and the tasks for which directors are responsible, as well as the procedures used in making decisions on different types of issue (for example, committee proposals, budgets, personnel issues).
  • An explanation of the tools currently being used by the Board.
  • An overview of our current financial situation and accounts, and a basic understanding of how we keep the books.
  • An overview of approved and pending proposals from the OTW’s committees for the past year.
  • A briefing from Legal on the legal responsibilities of directors and any Org-specific legal issues that should be kept in mind.

The Board originally had 7 members. This number was raised to 9 when we realized 7 members weren’t enough to manage the OTW efficiently, then lowered again to 7 due to low participation. As it stands, this election would bring the Board to a total of 5 members. Considering the number of candidates in these elections and the growth of the org so far, what are your thoughts on the number of Board seats?

I think 7 is a reasonable number. 9 seemed difficult to fill, and is a more cumbersome size for a meeting. However, I think 5 is clearly too few. Having so few directors means that the temporary absence of even one is a major workload shift, and five is a very limited number of points of view. I also think restricting the number of directors to five for another year as part of the change from 9 to 7 is short-sighted, particularly given the abundance of candidates available.

One other issue I think needs to be clarified is how many directors constitute “⅓” or “⅔” of 5 or 7. These fractions are important, since they appear several times in the bylaws (for example, in Article V, which determines the minimum number of seats up for election each year), and are open to interpretation depending on whether one rounds the number up or down depending on the fraction, or simply truncates it.

What do you feel is your responsibility if the Board you are serving on is poised to make a decision that you believe to be ethically or legally questionable? Conversely, how would you respond if one of your fellow Directors raised similar concerns about a decision you supported?

If I thought a decision was legally questionable, I would consult with the OTW Legal committee; I would certainly hope that Board would be guided by their opinion on the matter.

If I felt something was ethically questionable, it would be my responsibility to argue strenuously against it to the best of my ability. I think one important change to help reduce the likelihood that directors will engage in unethical behavior is to increase the openness of Board deliberations. Not only may concerned individuals outside Board have useful perspectives on the ethics of a decision, having to publicly own their positions should put pressure on directors to consider those positions more carefully.

As a director, I hope I will be able to benefit by receiving input not only from my fellow directors, but also from the rest of the Org’s volunteers and from OTW members. If concerns were raised as to the ethics of a decision I supported, I would of course consider them in depth to see if they had merit. Hopefully such concerns could be received before the decision was finalized; if not, it might be necessary to work to reverse it.

Andrea Horbinski 2015 Q&A: Other Questions, Group 1

Elections Chair

What kind of training would you like to receive for the position of Board member, if you could get any?

Well, I got a great deal of on-the-job training from being an OTW director for the past three years, and I got something of the advanced course in the same from joining the Board of the Ada Initiative, which is and was extraordinarily well-run. If I compare what I know now with what I didn’t know in October 2012, I think the most important thing I didn’t know and/or wasn’t told was the nature of the board’s role of governance, which at the time was something people who were already on the board didn’t really talk about. I think a lot of the decisions the board struggled with then and in my first year would have been a lot clearer had we all been much more conscious of our responsibility to the OTW’s mission as such. In the short term, I would recommend that everyone be familiar with what non-profit boards do and what their responsibilities are (the National Council of Non-Profits has some good resources on these matters, but there are a lot of sites that discuss them) and that everyone read and understand the OTW bylaws (ours are a bit complex, but it’s okay to be confused by the legal language and to ask questions about it!). I also hope that beginning with next year’s election we’ll be able to onboard new directors with a global overview of the organizational finances, which we don’t currently have the structure to do but which we are working to put in place as soon as possible. I would also recommend that people be familiar with the way the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia operate, as in many ways that organization and project are now our closest comparisons, which puts OTW in an unusual but quite positive position among non-profits.

The Board originally had 7 members. This number was raised to 9 when we realized 7 members weren’t enough to manage the OTW efficiently, then lowered again to 7 due to low participation. As it stands, this election would bring the Board to a total of 5 members. Considering the number of candidates in these elections and the growth of the org so far, what are your thoughts on the number of Board seats?

It’s not really accurate to say that the number of seats was lowered due to low participation. The Board decided this year to lower the number of seats back to the original seven because the decision to expand to nine had been made to deal with the workload imposed by the liaising system. Over the course of the last two years we’ve pared liaising back radically and are on course to phase it out entirely in accordance with the strategic plan, and since we elected three directors last year, switching back to seven seats this year enabled us to elect two directors this year and next year, thus restoring the original three/two/two seat election cycle with no extra effort. Another reason was that we do share the concerns about the Board being radically asymmetrical relative to the rest of the organization–which is to say, an official complement of nine seemed to be too many relative to the OTW’s current size and structure. Furthermore, having contested elections is a goal in the strategic plan and reducing the number of seats made that more likely. I voted in favor of reducing the number of seats to seven and I think it’s an appropriate number for all the reasons stated above. For now, I think five directors next year will be just fine, assuming the Board doesn’t appoint anyone to one-year terms, and that increasing to a full complement of seven after that should also be fine. I would advise seeing how things go with an actual full complement of directors for at least a few years before contemplating further changes, but since the number of seats is ultimately at the Board’s discretion, there’s nothing barring future boards from changing the number of seats again should they deem it appropriate.

What do you feel is your responsibility if the Board you are serving on is poised to make a decision that you believe to be ethically or legally questionable? Conversely, how would you respond if one of your fellow Directors raised similar concerns about a decision you supported?

I’m struggling to come up with a scenario for a “legally questionable” decision–either a course of action is legal or not (and in any case, like the man said, “whenever there is any doubt, there is no doubt”), and the Board routinely consults with our organizational counsel about prospective decisions, so this scenario really does seem unlikely to me. Our decisions are between legal courses of action with different benefits and risks to the organization. That said, if the rest of the Board were poised to act illegally after I had done my level best to convince them otherwise (which I think unlikely, given that acting illegally is not in the organization’s best interests to say the least), the only choice is whether to resign in protest before, if necessary, becoming a whistleblower. The question about ethically questionable decisions is murkier, but has essentially the same response: am I willing to stay despite the Board making a decision I find unethical, or is it of sufficient gravity that I feel compelled to resign immediately in protest? Which is in the organization’s best interests, in my judgment, and where is the balance between them and my own need to act in accordance with my principles and to have my efforts be worthwhile? Ethics are ultimately a case-by-case proposition, since they’re for what you do when you’ve found the devil in the details of particular circumstances, so I can’t say any more specifically than that. The answer to the converse is simple, however: listen to them seriously, with an open mind, and do my level best to seriously question my own intentions and judgment in the light of their concerns. Based on the results of that examination, I would either conclude that I was wrong and change my mind, or not.