[Community-Discuss] Evaluating Performance of the Board

[Noah]

1. Membership to the board has never been permanent as different
individuals are elected to the board at different times from different
regions with different interests.

2. Considering the strategic plans that where set years ago?
- Have the goals been met this far?
- What has been achieved by both the board and the organisation since the
plans were defined?
- If we where to go back to those goals and evaluate each of them, would we
then be able to measure the performance of the board and the executives?

PS: Answers can only come out of the previous approved strategic plan which
contained the defined vision and goals of the organisation and how they
would be achieved. Its not by looking at those goals that we can evaluate
the board and the executive as far as performance is concerned....

Noah
On 29 Dec 2015 11:15, "Owen DeLong" <owen at delong.com> wrote:

> >> That’s very hard to do. If you ask 10 different people what the AfriNIC
> board
> >> should have as their number 1 priority, you may well get as many as 12
> different
> >> answers.
> >
> >
> > hard but not impossible. one way or another, board agrees on some
> > priority and its fruit/result can only become evident in 1 - 2 years
> > time. i am interested in the simple weekly rituals board engages in to
> > makes sure that priority will be attained and/or if it should be
> > adapted.
> >
> >
> > very rough example:
> >
> > priority: i want to publish a book by 2017
> >
> > a good indicator (predictor?) can be: how many words do i force myself
> > to write every day/week
> >
> > logic being if someone is consistent in writing a 500 word every day,
> > they are more likely to achieve the goal of writing enough for a book
>
> Sure, but you’re missing the idea of how a board is supposed to work.
>
> In this case, you’re talking about how well a goal is executed.
>
> That is how you evaluate the CEO and the staff. Evaluating the board
> involves
> a determination if the goal that they directed the CEO to pursue was the
> correct
> goal for the membership and the community. Further, one wants to evaluate
> whether
> the board gave the CEO the tools/authority/latitude/resources necessary to
> execute
> those goals.
>
> Now wha I’ve said in the preceding paragraph may be controversial to some.
> I don’t
> have an MBA or any sort of credential, so just following my ideas blindly
> probably
> isn’t the best thing to do.
>
> However, that’s my best understanding of the role of a board and how they
> should be
> evaluated.
>
> If you evaluate the board on execution, then a good staff and CEO will
> cover very
> well for a lousy board and you can get fantastic execution of really bad
> goals and
> plans.
>
> Definitely not what this community needs IMHO.
>
> >> As I have said a few times in this thread, attempting to dictate the
> basis on which
> >> others evaluate board candidates is unlikely to produce a useful result.
> >
> >
> > I agree with you. I am not asking for criteria to evaluate individual
> > candidates, rather looking for ways to evaluate performance of the
> > board as the whole which you go into below :-)
>
> Well… Actually I intended that to be guidelines about how I go about
> evaluating the
> performance of individual candidates. OTOH, boards are small enough groups
> that it’s
> hard to separate individual performance from group performance. If one
> individual is
> not performing well, they will drag down the whole body. If the body is
> performing
> well, then it’s a pretty good indication that each of the members is also
> performing
> well.
>
> >> If you are asking for advice on how you should evaluate board member
> performance,
> >> then I would suggest the following:
> >>
> >> 1.      Consider what you think should be the primary things AfriNIC
> focuses on.
> >> 2.      Look at the minutes of board meetings and voting record of
> board members.
> >> 3.      Compare the data from item 2 to your thoughts on item 1 and
> decide
> >>        whether you feel that the actions in item 2 match the goals in
> item 1 or not.
> >
> >
> > this is a reasonable place to start with the caution that what afrinic
> > focuses on determine largely by it strategic plan. not sure if that is
> > responsibility of board or ceo but i assume board must at least
> > approve a plan produce by staff. so in a way, community can hold board
> > for ensure that the strategy is fit where afrinic want to go.
>
> The strategic plan is the responsibility of the board, but remember, the
> CEO
> is a member of the board and he should definitely have a lot of input in
> that
> process.
>
> Think of it like this… The board is the steering committee. The
> visionaries.
> They have the responsibility to select the destination and set the mission
> goals.
>
> The CEO and the staff are the captain and crew of the ship. They have the
> responsibility to chart the course and steer the ship safely to the
> destination
> while achieving the other mission goals along the way.
>
> > so, i what about following informations that are tracked and reported
> > regularly on public website and at meetings
> >
> > a) Monthly or quarterly board meeting attendance record i.e. % of
> > board members that attend each meeting not who attended or did not
> > attend
>
> Contained in the minutes.
>
> > b) Number of resolutions
>
> Contained in the minutes
>
> > c) Voting record on various issue raise in board meeting
>
> Should be contained in the minutes.
>
> > d) Issues of focus (as determine from resolutions/minute i.e.) will
> > tell us what board spend most of their time on
>
> Should be contained in the minutes.
>
> > as you indicate above, these actions above here should correlate to
> > achieving the priorities. if they don't  ... then something wrong.
> > also combination of priorities should get afrinic towards its mission
> > (better service to region, financial sustainabilite, etc etc) ...if
> > not then priorities are wrong
>
> Yep.
>
> > i admit board job is voluntaire so we cannot measure thing out of normal
> duties.
>
> A volunteer job should be evaluated like any other job. Sure, to get
> volunteers to
> continue to work as volunteers, sometimes you have to cut them some slack
> or provide
> some perks as incentive. In my case, ARIN treats me very well and I get
> some pretty
> nice travel opportunities as part of my service to the ARIN community.
> OTOH, I don’t
> expect that I am not held to a high standard of work in what I do there
> just because
> I am a volunteer. Indeed, I would not even hope to get re-elected if I was
> not doing a
> good job of representing the ARIN members that elected me.
>
> >>> should we add that check and balance formally to responsabilite of
> governance
> >>> committee? i belief good performance and good governance go hand in
> >>> hand.
> >>
> >> The devil is in the details here. We should not, IMHO, make the board
> accountable
> >> to a committee that effectively serves at the pleasure of the board.
> That creates
> >> a number of conflicts of interest around how the committee is selected,
> how
> >> the committee performs its duties and how the committee can communicate
> >> with the community and the membership.
> >
> >
> > +100 governance council in my opinion should come from community &
> > members and report to community and members and not board. the council
> > can then use a set of measures like suggested above (plus others) to
> > do their work.
>
> I disagree. Setting up a secondary committee that takes direction from the
> membership (and/or community) is a recipe for disaster and fractious
> dysfunction
> throughout the organization. It’s like hiring two captains to pilot a ship
> and
> then having one of them report to the owners of the ship and having the
> other
> one report to the passengers. No good can come of that.
>
> >> The governance committee, IMHO, should be focused on issues of process
> and
> >> procedure to ensure that the processes and procedures in place are
> serving the
> >> community and provide adequate controls to ensure that the governance of
> >> AfriNIC does not stray too far from the ideals of the community without
> the
> >> community being able to apply necessary corrections.
> >
> > indicators will be
> >
> > - how many times was process A executed this year
> > - how many times was there violation/compliance
>
> Not really. Those metrics don’t really tell you anything.
>
> It’s quite a bit more complicated than that and if simple metrics would
> tell us
> what we needed to know, we wouldn’t need a committee to sort the issues
> out.
>
> > uhhhh. ....... seems like lot of work  ..... but that's price of good
> > governance.
>
> Yes… It’s even more work than you think, but, yes, it is the price of good
> governance.
>
> Owen
>
>
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