[Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

Thu Aug 27 10:35:52 UTC 2009

Hi Thomas,

one year ago when I run for the board election I came with the same 
proposal as you. Meanwhile I have changed my oppinion. The problem is 
that this would not work out.

I totally agree with you that voting is the minor part of the board 
decision making process. Actually in many cases it is only for the 
protocol and formality. The really big part is before voting, while 
discussion. Here you are totally right.

There are a lot of differences between a board member and an advisory 
board member. The most important difference is the dedication. As a 
board member you MUST attend board meeting, you MUST take part in 
discussion. As an advisory board member you are not obliged to do that. 
Naturally, if we have an issue and we feel lack of expertise, or simply 
because we want to get more input from more sources, we go out and ask 
members of the advisory board. This is for example why some of our 
committees has advisory board member in it. This is also why the 
advisory board would play a crucial role in the strategic planning. But 
it is totally different between that expertise is already inside of the 
board or if the expertise must at first be asked from outside of the 
board. The best examples you can see are Stu West and Jan-Bard de 
Vreede. Stu with his technical and financial expertise is simply there, 
in every meeting, in the board mailing list, we don't have to go out and 
ask someone from the outside, especially because these expertise are 
really direly needed in every meeting and most of our topics. The same 
is it with the organizational expertise that Jan-Bard brings into the 
board both in how an ordinary procedure should look like as well as how 
discipline must be excercised in the board. This is the reason why they 
are asked to be on the board again and again and why they hold so 
important offices in the board. Indeed, my experience with both of them 
is why I have changed my opinion. I don't know Matt that long yet, just 
met him in one board meeting. But I do feel that in this one meeting he 
gave very interesting and important insights. For example how 
measurement of success should look like. There are also other reasons 
why we need expert seats. One is that sometimes you are in a discussion 
and stumbles over something where you didn't see the need of an expert 
before but where you feel really thankful to have one in the board. 
Naturally you can say, hey, we need here an expertise, let us at first 
ask someone in the advisory board and then make a decision. This 
actually happend in the past year more than once. But this is a slow 
process, you would go out and e-mail that person, she or he would 
answer, there would maybe more questions that you would ask again, or 
the board must first discuss internally and then ask again. This is 
totally different as if you have already that expertise in the meeting 
and can directly go forward. I also need not to mention that it is 
totally different to talk with someone from face to face or via e-mail 
and we cannot fly all advisory board members whose expertise are needed 
in to the board meeting.

As I said before I had the same idea as you last year. But some times a 
change of perspective or new experiences show that the idea doesn't work.

Greetings
Ting