The last few weeks we’ve watched the drama unfold in regards to the PASS BOD elections. We’ve seen people attack criticize the NomCom, the board, PASS itself, the process and the decision of feeding of Gremlins after midnight. Thankfully the fireworks have died down and we can take a look at everything that has happened and make strides to move forward in a positive (and more importantly) constructive manner. Given that, I’ve been asked by my good friend Kevin Kline (Blog | Twitter) to respond to the following:
Many in the community seem to think that the PASS election process is badly broken. Do you think that PASS needs to implement fundamental and far-reaching changes to its election process, or does it only need some fine tuning? Please explain your thoughts?
I’m not going to recap the entire reality series-type drama that unfolded regarding the final slate of candidates but you’re more than welcome to read it yourself here. While I could rail on about how I believe Steve was slighted, unfortunately there’s nothing more to be done about it now so let’s look forward, shall we? The issue here is that the NomCom chose (and rightly so from my perspective) to follow the processes set in place for them and acted accordingly. Okay, fair enough. What we need to ask ourselves now is: “Is this process still appropriate for our organization?”
All together now…IT DEPENDS! Just kidding. Seriously though, up until now the entire (or at least much of) the process involved in electing someone to the board was hidden behind a veil of secrecy. Thankfully after last year’s elections issues the folks at PASS (and yes this includes both the board AND headquarters) worked extremely hard to change things for the better. This year we now have the PASS Elections Portal which offers much more transparency into the whole process than we ever had before. I think this move was a huge step in the right direction however much like Uncle Ben warned young Peter Parker, “with great power comes great responsibility”. Now that we have this transparency it introduces a new issue that wasn’t prevalent before: accountability. Prior to this year’s elections we, the community at large, didn’t have easy access to things such as the NomCom scores, process documentation, direct/easy/clear communication lines to those involved. That being the case this year you’re seeing the results of a very PASSionate community demanding answers to outcomes that quite simply don’t make sense to the masses. I think the one of the best posts/discussions to show this fact was Stuart Ainsworth’s (Blog | Twitter) post addressing issues raised directly. As a small aside, HUGE kudos to Stu for meeting the community head-on and not being afraid to answer questions. I think we all owe him a big ‘thank you’ along with the other NomCom folks who openly communicated and helped clear up what they could.
While Stu’s post somewhat answered lingering questions the problem remains that there were things with those scores that simply “didn’t add up” when viewed publicly. This is where the danger in transparency comes in. People are going to question your methods and motives. Now that I’ve rambled on for a couple of paragraphs though we need to come back to the question of the process. The official process can be found from the elections site (pdf) so you can read the wording yourself. Ok finished reading it? Good, we’re all on the same page now. So far we’ve heard NomCom folks state that they had a very specific procedure to follow. Ok…well I’m looking at the procedure wording and it still doesn’t explain what happened this year. Unfortunately this is where the arguments start breaking down due to the only answer starts becoming “can’t talk about it due to privacy”. Again the veil impedes the view. So how can we improve “the process”?
The process currently states that the NomCom is as such:
Finally, the NomCom meets to pick the interviewees on the list they think should be the candidates. This is the slate. The NomCom must always strive to put a minimum of (n+1) candidates on the slate, where “n” = the number of available slots – that means the slate should contain at least 4 (3+1) candidates. However, if the NomCom is in strong agreement that n or <n (“n” or “less than n”) candidates are of sufficient quality to go on the slate, it has the right to present n or <n candidates to the Board of Directors. (e.g. If the NomCom has good reason to believe that only 2 candidates are good enough to serve as Directors – where 2 is clearly less than 3 – it has the right to put only 2 candidates on the slate.) The responsibility for this decision falls on the Chair of the NomCom. This situation is less than ideal and the NomCom will strive to avoid at all costs.
Ok well what I’m reading here is that the NomCom still has the power to submit more or less people to the slate than is needed/asked. That being the case this reads more like Pirate Code from Pirates of the Caribbean wherein Captain Barbossa explains, “the code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner .” Maybe we should follow Captain Barbossa’s sage advice and realize that some of the wording we try to stick to are more guidelines. Perhaps we need to just really re-word the official documentation rather than the process as the process itself makes sense in the grand scheme (for the most part). Are there tweaks we can make? Absolutely!
I believe Andy “The SQL Godfather” Warren (Blog | Twitter) wrote in a recent PASS update post about his view and how things could change for the better. In there he states that the NomCom followed procedure and anything less than that would open things up to a new world of trouble and I agree with him. So again, is it the process or the WAY the process is worded that is causing issues here? There are things that could definitely stand to be reworded for clarification. For instance, in the ranking for interview we’ve got Steve Jones being ranked in the average of 2 for Leadership. Really? Okay, I’ll bite. We need a CLEAR definition of what exactly they mean by “leadership experience candidate has demonstrated”. In my eyes being the community leader for the largest SQL Server community website on the planet tends to hold weight. I’d like to know what it is about this category that would cause members to vote so low (or so high in other cases). To be fair and balanced let’s look at another category and candidate. Under education Douglas McDowell comes in at perfect 4.0. What exactly are they looking for in terms of “education”? Does Douglas hold a PhD and everyone else is lower? Does this relate strictly to academia or other areas?
Earlier I mentioned this process isn’t broken and works for the most part and I feel I need to explain that a bit further. As of now the process is that we have a NomCom that sifts through all of the potential candidates and weeds out the weaker applications and comes up with a batch of candidates they feel (again based on given criteria worded in existing process documentation) are strong enough to move forward with. From there they take that batch and interview them with another ranking formula. After the interviews the applicants are ranked, sorted and based on those rankings another smaller batch emerges as those up for candidacy. Now this is where breakdowns occur, in my opinion. Here the NomCom is able to modify the batch of candidates to be either more or less than is stated in documentation (again we should defer to the Pirate Code on this). Here is where NomCom could say “numbers don’t add up, let’s talk” and fix this. Where this year’s rancor is coming from is that we seem to be missing the piece of the puzzle where (or if) this occured. Now we have a final slate presented to the board. Again, here, the board can look at the slate and say “good, good…errr this doesn’t seem right, you sure?”. Once more we haven’t seen anything from the black box of the board on this, all we know is that they approved the submitted slate. This final slate is what will be presented to the community and from there a general election will be held.
Now the process itself makes sense and potentials are vetted multiple times before we finally get our final candidates but something kind of seems “off”. Maybe it’s me but maybe there needs to be a more balanced check system. As it stands you only have two bodies that ping-pong a decision back and forth. Would adding a third body like our government system be a better way to check this? Perhaps that third body can get results scrubbed of personal data (e.g. name, employer, location) and only be presented with answers and they do rankings based on those. This blind ranking system can then be matched up with what NomCom finds and the board can make decisions based on aggregation of those results? This third branch could be made up of purely community folks so there is no percieved bias of board influence. Barring that we COULD have a board member on in that group but with no voting rights and their role is simply to moderate. Again, just bouncing ideas. Would this be too much to deal with? Do we really need to go to these lengths to please the masses? Only time will tell.
Outside of the election process itself I’d also like to take this time on my digital soapbox to encourage the board members as well as HQ to please PLEASE don’t be afraid of communicating with the community. Blog, Tweet, interpretive dance. Take a note from Andy Warren and see that it’s OKAY to publicly state your thoughts and opinions. Even if you feel your ideas may be “less than popular” at least you’re doing something more than the percieved nothing. In this age of transparency and numerous communication avenues (blogs, twitter, forums, mailers) there really is no excuse for not reaching out.
After all of this ranting and word vomitting, I’d like to 1) commend you if you’ve actually gotten this far and 2) Invite you to voice your own thoughts. If you’d like comment here on this blog or take the talk to the elections portal forum. It’s a new day in PASS and with the right people in place and the support of this amazing community I think we could transform this organization into something truly wonderous (as if it’s not already awesome enough). Thanks for your time, I’m going to go ice my fingers down now from writing this mess…
Though things have died down a bit since the initial backlash, the recent development in the PASS board election process is still the talk of the town. I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a number of folks about this, and have read some excellent blogs and other opinion pieces from those on both sides of the debate. I traded some e-mails with Kevin Kline, a longtime member of the PASS board of directors, and he asked an interesting question:
“Many in the community seem to think that the PASS election process is badly broken. Do you think that PASS needs to implement fundamental and far-reaching changes to its election process, or does it only need some fine tuning? Please explain your thoughts?”
I’ve been careful not to write too often about this out of fear of belaboring the point, but I think Kevin’s question (and some of the other responses already offered up) illuminate a path to help the community heal its recent wounds and find a better way to do things in the future. To that end, I’m glad to share my opinion.
It’s STILL The Process
I can’t emphasize this enough – I believe this to have been a process failure, not a people failure. I blogged about this just after the story broke, and I pointed out that I believe this to be a deficiency in the institution rather than a bunch of folks making bad decisions, or worse, conspiring to keep a particular person out of the leadership of PASS. It was, and still is, my belief that some personal biases contributed to the end result, but I don’t expect that there was a conspiracy to exclude anyone. I greatly appreciate the work of the NomCom, especially the members who were selected from the community (those who are not board members). They put in a lot of hard work, stuck to their guns on the decision they made, and took it on the chin for the sake of the integrity of the process. While I still feel that their decision was not in the best interest of PASS, I thank them for their service and applaud their willingness to politely engage their critics.
Where Do We Go From Here?
With the blame placed firmly on the process, let’s get back to Kevin’s question. Where do we go from here? Do we rip out the plumbing and start over, or can we just repair the leaky pipes? Before we answer that question, let’s look at…
The Good
Yes, there are things that I like about the current process <gasp>. For example, let’s pretend for a moment that the election process has no vetting whatsoever, and anyone who throws their name in the proverbial hat will appear on the final ballot. Yes, you’ll find folks like Steve Jones, Jack Corbett, Geoff Hiten, Allen Kinsel, and others who are highly qualified, but you’ll also end up with folks who simply run because there’s nothing to lose. The existence of a proper vetting process will encourage applicants to self-screen to some extent, but the absence of such a formality could greatly increase the number of unqualified applicants. There are a couple of risks with having no qualification process: First, the truly qualified candidates will be lost in a sea of other names, and the voting process becomes as low-tech as “which one of these people have I heard of before?”. Second, the odds of an unqualified person actually making it onto the board are quite high, which is a risk for the future of the PASS organization. I am in favor of having candidates pass through a screening process, and I think the theory (not necessarily the current implementation) is sound.
Another positive is the amount of progress made towards transparency. What used to be a black box now permits a good deal of visibility by the community, and even though some parts of the process are cloaked from public view, I think PASS as a whole is committed to improving the transparency of their processes. There is still lots of room for improvement, but it’s safe to say that improvements have been made.
The Bad
We could go on and on here, but most of the dialog would be centered around once core question: Who is qualified to run for a BoD position? Hopefully we can all agree that last year’s selection process was a mess, when candidates including Tim Ford were excluded while another with no knowledge of the PASS mission or community was deemed to have been qualified. This year’s process resulted in the exclusion of a candidate who is the epitome of the SQL Server community. So maybe he had a bad interview (we are allowed to know that “something happened” during the interview, but nothing more) – it happens. Moving forward, the NomCom needs to have the flexibility – no, the responsibility – to look beyond just one interview to better judge the candidate’s abilities and contributions.
The NomCom doesn’t need to go away – it just needs new rules of engagement. The mission needs to be refined and simplified: Eliminate the unqualified candidates. Let’s set some reasonable minimum qualifications of education, leadership, volunteerism, and organization, and judge the candidates equally and fairly across those axes. Beyond that, let the community decide whom of those qualified should be on the board.
Bent or Broken?
Bent. I think there’s enough sound logic to salvage this process, but we must remember the lessons learned these last two years. The process isn’t fatally flawed, but it does need to be resuscitated.
Obviously, the angst over the 2010 PASS elections still lives on for some, and some of you are probably ready to move on to more immediate concerns, but as for me, I’m stuck here trying to figure out what I should learn from all of this. I do think we as a community need to move forward, and to that end, I’ve agreed to participate in Kevin Kline’s series on the PASS elections process, and answer the following question:
“Many in the community seem to think that the PASS election process is badly broken. Do you think that PASS needs to implement fundamental and far-reaching changes to its election process, or does it only need some fine tuning? Please explain your thoughts?”
Learning from the experience…
I don’t want to keep rehashing the past, because it’s been done (here, here, here, and here, to name a few; if you want a LOT more reading material, the elections site has a bunch of blog entries). While there are lots of lessons to be learned, and ideas to be discussed, I think there are two key points that are not stressed enough:
Our discourse as a community has been healthy, and
Nobody involved in the process has walked away clean.
For the first point, I think we’ve been able to keep our disagreements civil; there have been some comments made from several key contributors to the discussion that have been more cutting than others, and I have said some things that I should have kept to myself, but all in all, I don’t think we’ve burned any bridges that can’t be rebuilt. The only lingering meme that continues to bother me is the occasional “community-vs.-PASS” theme that is implied in some of the discussions; I’ll talk more about why that bothers me in a bit, but I fear we too easily fall into the trap of needing to define an invisible “Them” to be an antithesis to our “We”. We is Them, and They are We.
The second point was driven home to me like a dagger to the heart in a response from Andy Warren to a dialogue in the comments section of Brent Ozar’s post on the issue:
Agreeing to disagree is seldom satisfying, but often necessary. I’m entirely biased about my views on this, but I think it’s easy to forget the pain that continues along with this discussion. Replace the name of SJ with yours, and imagine how it would feel to be left off the slate (fairly, unfairly or otherwise), and then have a conversation continue that seems to imply a great failure during the interview, but no details emerge. Do you defend yourself or lay low? What if you allow the inner details to be published, but they are not?
We don’t agree on the way things worked out. Ok. I think we should let things heal a little more, then have the values and process conversation that we should have had last year – one that I’ve admitted I should have helped to make happen. Yell at me. Yell at the process. But I think we’re at the point where we leave a good man to tend his wounds and we try to do better next year, or we have the entire conversation and let the chips fall where they way on each side. I vote for moving forward.
Not my place to tell you not to talk about it, and much of this has been good conversation. But please remember my friend is not an abstraction. Actually, I wish I could say that better. I know that you don’t he is an abstraction, but I’m not sure that this conversation, right now, helps any of us.
I’ve been so busy defending what I perceived to be attacks on the character of the Nom Com or the quality of my work that I’ve forgotten what it must be like to be in Steve’s place, and for that I’m truly sorry. I don’t regret my choice to point out what I think are inaccurate statements about the process, but I should have tempered my comments with more grace than I did. That being said, I think we all need to step back and realize that nobody was completely happy with this year’s election process; obviously, the controversy was not a desired outcome by anyone on the Nom Com, the Board, or the membership at large. So how do we fix the process moving forward?
Is the process irreparably broken?
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: I think if you look at any business that has an electable Board of Directors, the nominations process is similar; the Board appoints a committee to find qualified candidates, and then votes to approve or reject the slate. The elections process should be simple, but fair; I don’t think that a Board of an organization need be run like the federal government (with election cycles dictating workflow). That being said, I think there are lots of opportunities to tweak the process, and learn from our mistakes.
Tweak 1: Standardize the qualifications for a Director
I think PASS made strides this year, but there should be very specific minimum requirements for a seat at the table. Andy Leonard and K. Brian Kelley both made excellent points about the inadequacy of using a ranking system to evaluate certain concrete measures like Education and References. If we must use a ranking system, then the criteria for the ranks need to be carefully defined, like so:
Applicant must have a Bachelor’s Degree (or equivalent University degree).
Add 1 point for a Master’s Degree in any subject.
Add 1 point for a Doctorate Degree in any subject.
Please note that the above example is merely intended to illustrate specific ranking criteria; the definition of Education itself warrants more discussion than I have time for in this post.
Experience with PASS is another great example of a objective measure that needs standard ranking; how long have you been a member? What volunteer roles have you performed? Is experience as a chapter leader more or less valuable than experience on the Program Committee? Whatever standards are chosen, they should be well-defined and applied evenly from year to year; if an applicant doesn’t change their behavior from year to year (i.e., an applicant with little PASS experience in year 1 doesn’t get involved in year 2), they should have the same score.
Applications should be made available to the public, as well as the ranking using the standardized questionnaire described above; the general members of PASS should feel confident that the scoring system used to evaluate an application reflects the applicant’s ability to meet the minimum requirements.
However, I think that discussions within the Nominations Committee, including interviews with the applicants, should remain opaque: a black box. I know others think that the Nom Com should be completely transparent, but I think that the job of the Nom Com is to probe areas beyond the minimum qualification, and in order to do so, the members of that group need the ability to ask questions that may not be appropriate for general consumption. I think this protects both the applicants and the volunteer interviewers (what if I, as a volunteer, were to ask a really stupid question? Should I be vilified on the Internet by the membership?). But here’s the rub: the interviews need to be recorded.
The interviews should NEVER be released to the general membership, but once the slate has been presented to the Board of Directors for approval or rejection, the interview tapes need to be included as part of the recommendation in order to give the Board full insight into why the Nom Com chose to recommend or deny certain candidates. The board should then accept or reject the slate, and if they choose to reject the slate, decide how they’re going to move forward; the discussions surrounding the slate should not be released, but the vote should. That way, if the general membership felt that the process was unfair, they could contact the Board members and move forward with resolving the issue.
Tweak 3: Maximize member involvement
I think one of the hardest problems to tackle in this discussion is the issue of member involvement; as I mentioned earlier, the theme of “community vs. PASS” is a difficult pill for me to swallow because I see every member of PASS (including the Board) as member of the community. I also realize (as a chapter leader) that there are many members of the community which are not PASS members, and members of both subsets that are not active in many of the social networks that were abuzz with concerns over the process.
Let me back up and clarify: I’m a chapter leader for AtlantaMDF, and at one point, we had nearly 1500 SQL Server Professionals on our private mailing list. These were people who at one point had registered for a meeting of ours; I’d consider them member of the community. Are they PASS members? Maybe. Are they active on twitter, or active bloggers? Dunno; my experience presenting on these topics leads me to believe that the vast majority of SQL Server Professionals are NOT involved in social networking. Kendra Little had a similar take on the problem of uninvolved membership (I stole the graph from her):
Voting stats from the last few elections would probably back up this idea; although I don’t remember the actual numbers, I do remember thinking that the voter turnout was abysmal compared to the number of people that PASS claims as members (remember that membership is free). Sort of like the same feeling I get when I think that AtlantaMDF invites 1500 people every month to come to a meeting, and 75 do; I’m grateful we got 75, but we’re missing a lot of interaction from 1425 other people.
So how do we involve the membership? I think that Chapter Leaders (including Virtual Chapter Leaders) should be randomly selected and asked to serve on the Nom Com every election cycle, and the number of Chapter Leaders should always outweigh the number of Board seats by at least 1. Why Chapter Leaders? To me, they represent the local faces of PASS, and are the most likely ones to understand the pulse of the community. Why not bloggers, tweeters, or columnists? Although I think that social networkers provide a great service to the community, they don’t necessarily have an official relationship with PASS. PASS serves the community, but I think the election process needs to be membership driven.
Involving the membership via Chapter Leaders on the Nom Com should (I hope) instill some trust in the process, even if the interview process yields an unpopular result. It’s a lot harder to accuse the Nom Com of predetermining the outcome of an interview because of their ties to the Board if the Nom Com consists of a majority of non-Board members.
Summing up.
I have several other ideas (such as the possibility of a Chapter Congress), but many of them require drastic overhauls of how PASS does business; that’s simply not feasible. I think many of the problems of the last two elections can be easily resolved with a few minor tweaks. However, the first step is the conversation, and that conversation needs to begin well before the election season. It’s easy to be upset about the outcome, but in order for real change to occur, we (the community) need to step up and participate in the conversations. I am eagerly awaiting the chance; are you?
Much has been voiced about the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Nominating Committee’s decision to not put Steve Jones (blog, twitter) on the ballot for this year’s Board of Directors election. I’ve watched this controversy unfold with great interest, biting my tongue to keep from making rash or reactionary comments one way or the other.
I’m currently working on a guest blog post for a series that Kevin Kline (blog, twitter) is starting on the election process. In the coming days my guest post will appear on my site and on Kevin’s blog. I’m hopeful that Kevin’s series will help to provide some good, creative, and perhaps even actionable discussion around the PASS election process.
In the meantime, there has been one aspect of the brouhaha that I’d like to call attention to that may not be immediately obvious – the passion we all have for the community.
Aw, Come On Man!
It’s been said that the opposite of love is not hate; it’s apathy. Love and hate are strong emotions. If you love someone or something, you do it with a passion. Likewise if you hate something, you have a certain fervor about it. Whether there is love or hate, strong emotions abound and you care deeply about it.
Where there’s apathy, though, there is a lack of caring, a lack of passion or fervor. There’s an emptiness and the once loved/hated object ceases to have relevance in your life. It’s a sad state, apathy.
If nothing else, the latest PASS controversy has proven that people in the community have deep-seated emotions about PASS. It’s shown that PASS is a relevant and important player in the SQL community.
So in that respect, I’m glad that this election debate has stirred emotions and passion in most people in the community. If it hadn’t, I’d have been really worried about PASS and the community as a whole.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Now let’s see if we can turn this into a positive experience that, while difficult to go through, makes PASS and the community a stronger and more vibrant place.
Look for a post with my opinion on the election process soon. After that, I’ll get back to the “So I Got Promoted, Now What?” series.
People have been screaming from rooftops for a month now about the PASS election process, ever since a beloved member of our SQL Server community was shunned in his bid to run for the PASS Board of Directors. The community has reacted vocally. PASS has reacted defensively. And unfortunately much of the back and forth has been speaking “at” each other rather than “with” each other.
Watching this has been almost as bad as watching someone burn bacon! Almost.
Kevin Kline (blog, twitter) has asked a number of leaders in the community to participate in the discussion through a series of guest posts on his blog. I believe that he’s trying is to bring the various sides together in a constructive way. With all of this passion in the community, we should be able to improve things. This is my contribution to the series.
Before going further, however, I’d like to first frame the discussion by describing the essentials of the debate as I see them. There are certainly a lot of nuances, however insomuch as the different facets can have one voice, I’ve tried to capture that. There will be, of course, deeper issues and varying opinions. And it’s entirely possible that I’ve missed the point altogether.
The Community Side
Steve Jones (blog, twitter) has proven himself time and again to be a staunch advocate for the community. His qualifications for community leadership are unmatched.
He’s a renowned SQL Server expert and Microsoft MVP
He has the media experience that PASS once coveted
He’s a good businessman with a proven track record of success
He’s a polished speaker and regular blogger
He frequently donates his time at conferences, SQLSaturdays, and User Group meetings
He’s wildly popular in the community
Steve would easily navigate the Nominating Committee (NomCom) and most certainly be elected. So I thought when I wrote a recommendation letter that accompanied his application.
Like most in the community, I was utterly shocked when I learned that he didn’t make the final cut. Many, if not most, in the community were outraged. And rightfully so. The NomCom rejected someone that the community obviously wanted, someone who would most certainly have been elected if allowed to be on the ballot.
But, this isn’t about Steve. This isn’t even about the election. This is about PASS putting itself before the community that it supposedly represents.
The PASS Side
For the past few years, PASS has taken quite a bit of heat from the community to be more transparent in its processes and decision making. The community doesn’t want a benevolent dictator; it wants peers who are willing to lead on our behalf because we don’t have the time or inclination . That message was made clear years ago.
Since then, PASS has worked really hard in this area and has made clear progress in many, many ways. Its finances are posted for all to see. Unabridged meeting minutes are published on the web just a few days after each board meeting. More of the board members and key volunteers blog about their PASS activities than ever before. We asked for transparency and we’re getting it. All we have to do is log on and look at the information as it’s made available.
The NomCom, which has bore the brunt of the community’s ire for the election controversy, is a prime example of the newfound transparency. The NomCom is charged with vetting each candidate and presenting a slate before the board. Before the NomCom was formed, the procedures and guidelines under which it was to operate were created and distributed for review. After a series of reforms and tweaks, the NomCom was given its marching orders and asked to do their job.
After weeks of work, the NomCom, a group of our peers that we’ve entrusted to do the grueling grunt work for us, reached a conclusion using the formulas and procedures given it. The NomCom members realized that their conclusion would be questioned and controversial. And they paused to reflect on that.
The question: Should the NomCom discard the quantitative results and replace them with on its own subjective feelings? Should it do what it felt the community really wanted by disposing of the pesky procedures that had been so carefully refined?
To do that would have really opened the doors to allegations of PASS being an old-boy-network . To discard the rules at its own discretion and pick the candidate it thought best would be the height arrogance.
The NomCom was in a pickle. Stick with the approved procedure and eliminate a popular candidate? Or dispense with the approved procedures and make a subjective call? You can’t win with those as your two options.
So they made the call to accept the wrath they they knew was sure to come. They stuck to the approved procedures set forth in the NomCom’s mandate. The integrity of the process is too important to toss it aside. It would be a huge step backward in the quest for transparency to do anything else.
I thank the members of NomCom for serving. I also commend them for doing what they believed to be the right thing even though they knew it may not be popular. That takes guts. It takes character. It takes integrity.
And it’s people who possess those characteristics that we want leading the community.
So Who’s Right?
To me the answer is obvious: both sides are right. On the one hand, I’m very frustrated that the candidate for whom I wanted to vote wasn’t on the ballot. I cast my ballot yesterday and it felt a bit hollow.
Yet I would have been equally, if not more, angered if the established process had been subverted to put Steve on the ballot at the expense of one of the other candidates.
The NomCom is not at fault here. The PASS Board is not at fault here.
At fault here are the procedures that governed the election process. I have every confidence that those procedures were far better than in prior years. Yet in this case, as extreme as it may be, they fell woefully short.
Where Do We Go From Here?
I think that the one thing on which we can agree is that we don’t want to find ourselves in this predicament twelve or twenty-four months from now. We want to learn from this, take corrective action, and move forward.
So what do we need to do to ensure that this doesn’t happen again?
Acknowledge that it was the process that failed and stop pointing fingers at our peers
Take heart that we have a slate full of good candidates even if our preferred candidate was left out
Accept partial responsibility for the community and get more involved
Should we throw the baby out with the bathwater and dispense with the NomCom? I don’t think so, but it’s a conversation that should take place.
Should we refine the existing procedures to handle situations like this? We must be careful in codifying too many things since situations will arise in the future where flexibility is required.
We need to have these conversations.
A Note About Transparency
Many years ago when Kevin Kline was the VP of Finance for PASS and I was Director of Logistics, we shared a cab to the airport after a Community Summit event. During the ride, we talked. I remember telling him that as a member of Ducks Unlimited, I receive an annual financial statement from the conservancy. It contains detailed information about the group’s finances. Knowing that makes me feel good about giving to the group.
I commented that as Directors of PASS, we should provide that kind of information to our members. And if we are not comfortable delivering that level of detail, we should do something about our finances so that we are comfortable with it. It took a while, but we did. We changed management companies and implemented a lot of other changes for the better. We took the first of many steps toward better fiscal and procedural transparency.
PASS is no longer a monolith that speaks with one voice. It has truly made great strides toward being a group of our friends and colleagues who are willing to freely give of themselves for our benefit. That’s not to say that PASS has completed its journey toward transparency. It hasn’t, but it is much further down the road than it was just a few short years ago when Kevin and I had that conversation.
And this is another opportunity to further refine the way PASS works, for the better.
People have been screaming from rooftops for a month now about the PASS election process, ever since a beloved member of our SQL Server community was shunned in his bid to run for the PASS Board of Directors. The community has reacted vocally. PASS has reacted defensively. And unfortunately much of the back and forth has been speaking “at” each other rather than “with” each other.Watching this has been almost as bad as watching someone burn bacon! Almost.
Kevin Kline (blog, twitter) has asked a number of leaders in the community to participate in the discussion through a series of guest posts on his blog. I believe that he’s trying is to bring the various sides together in a constructive way. With all of this passion in the community, we should be able to improve things. This is my contribution to the series.
Before going further, however, I’d like to first frame the discussion by describing the essentials of the debate as I see them. There are certainly a lot of nuances, however insomuch as the different facets can have one voice, I’ve tried to capture that. There will be, of course, deeper issues and varying opinions. And it’s entirely possible that I’ve missed the point altogether.
The Community Side
Steve Jones (blog, twitter) has proven himself time and again to be a staunch advocate for the community. His qualifications for community leadership are unmatched.
He’s a renowned SQL Server expert and Microsoft MVP
He has the media experience that PASS once coveted
He’s a good businessman with a proven track record of success
He’s a polished speaker and regular blogger
He frequently donates his time at conferences, SQLSaturdays, and User Group meetings
He’s wildly popular in the community
Steve would easily navigate the Nominating Committee (NomCom) and most certainly be elected. So I thought when I wrote a recommendation letter that accompanied his application.
Like most in the community, I was utterly shocked when I learned that he didn’t make the final cut. Many, if not most, in the community were outraged. And rightfully so. The NomCom rejected someone that the community obviously wanted, someone who would most certainly have been elected if allowed to be on the ballot.
But, this isn’t about Steve. This isn’t even about the election. This is about PASS putting itself before the community that it supposedly represents.
The PASS Side
For the past few years, PASS has taken quite a bit of heat from the community to be more transparent in its processes and decision making. The community doesn’t want a benevolent dictator; it wants peers who are willing to lead on our behalf because we don’t have the time or inclination . That message was made clear years ago.
Since then, PASS has worked really hard in this area and has made clear progress in many, many ways. Its finances are posted for all to see. Unabridged meeting minutes are published on the web just a few days after each board meeting. More of the board members and key volunteers blog about their PASS activities than ever before. We asked for transparency and we’re getting it. All we have to do is log on and look at the information as it’s made available.
The NomCom, which has bore the brunt of the community’s ire for the election controversy, is a prime example of the newfound transparency. The NomCom is charged with vetting each candidate and presenting a slate before the board. Before the NomCom was formed, the procedures and guidelines under which it was to operate were created and distributed for review. After a series of reforms and tweaks, the NomCom was given its marching orders and asked to do their job.
After weeks of work, the NomCom, a group of our peers that we’ve entrusted to do the grueling grunt work for us, reached a conclusion using the formulas and procedures given it. The NomCom members realized that their conclusion would be questioned and controversial. And they paused to reflect on that.
The question: Should the NomCom discard the quantitative results and replace them with on its own subjective feelings? Should it do what it felt the community really wanted by disposing of the pesky procedures that had been so carefully refined?
To do that would have really opened the doors to allegations of PASS being an old-boy-network . To discard the rules at its own discretion and pick the candidate it thought best would be the height arrogance.
The NomCom was in a pickle. Stick with the approved procedure and eliminate a popular candidate? Or dispense with the approved procedures and make a subjective call? You can’t win with those as your two options.
So they made the call to accept the wrath they they knew was sure to come. They stuck to the approved procedures set forth in the NomCom’s mandate. The integrity of the process is too important to toss it aside. It would be a huge step backward in the quest for transparency to do anything else.
I thank the members of NomCom for serving. I also commend them for doing what they believed to be the right thing even though they knew it may not be popular. That takes guts. It takes character. It takes integrity.
And it’s people who possess those characteristics that we want leading the community.
So Who’s Right?
To me the answer is obvious: both sides are right. On the one hand, I’m very frustrated that the candidate for whom I wanted to vote wasn’t on the ballot. I cast my ballot yesterday and it felt a bit hollow.
Yet I would have been equally, if not more, angered if the established process had been subverted to put Steve on the ballot at the expense of one of the other candidates.
The NomCom is not at fault here. The PASS Board is not at fault here.
At fault here are the procedures that governed the election process. I have every confidence that those procedures were far better than in prior years. Yet in this case, as extreme as it may be, they fell woefully short.
Where Do We Go From Here?
I think that the one thing on which we can agree is that we don’t want to find ourselves in this predicament twelve or twenty-four months from now. We want to learn from this, take corrective action, and move forward.
So what do we need to do to ensure that this doesn’t happen again?
Acknowledge that it was the process that failed and stop pointing fingers at our peers
Take heart that we have a slate full of good candidates even if our preferred candidate was left out
Accept partial responsibility for the community and get more involved
Should we throw the baby out with the bathwater and dispense with the NomCom? I don’t think so, but it’s a conversation that should take place.
Should we refine the existing procedures to handle situations like this? We must be careful in codifying too many things since situations will arise in the future where flexibility is required.
We need to have these conversations.
A Note About Transparency
Many years ago when Kevin Kline was the VP of Finance for PASS and I was Director of Logistics, we shared a cab to the airport after a Community Summit event. During the ride, we talked. I remember telling him that as a member of Ducks Unlimited, I receive an annual financial statement from the conservancy. It contains detailed information about the group’s finances. Knowing that makes me feel good about giving to the group.
I commented that as Directors of PASS, we should provide that kind of information to our members. And if we are not comfortable delivering that level of detail, we should do something about our finances so that we are comfortable with it. It took a while, but we did. We changed management companies and implemented a lot of other changes for the better. We took the first of many steps toward better fiscal and procedural transparency.
PASS is no longer a monolith that speaks with one voice. It has truly made great strides toward being a group of our friends and colleagues who are willing to freely give of themselves for our benefit. That’s not to say that PASS has completed its journey toward transparency. It hasn’t, but it is much further down the road than it was just a few short years ago when Kevin and I had that conversation.
And this is another opportunity to further refine the way PASS works, for the better.
