Val and John’s thoughts about the way our board should function
Stress busting and empathy.
MWSA has had many personality conflicts and resignations over the years. Although many volunteer organizations share this phenomenon, I’d like to address this issue as we begin our duties as a board by sharing a few observations, suggestions, and expectations (rather than waiting until our first meeting in December).
We all care about MWSA and often have strong feelings and opinions. We’re also human, so we’ll sometimes disagree. Let’s do our best to keep our cool, resolve our conflicts, and collectively make it to the end of our terms together!
If you have a problem, please email or call me. If I’m the problem (recognizing that I’m often the bull in the China shop), please email or call Val. In my opinion, open communication is the key.
Board Communications. The danger of “Reply All” and overflowing inboxes
MWSA board deliberations have often occurred via almost interminable back-and-forth email trail sessions for the past decade-plus.
Many board members were included in the reply-all trails even though they weren’t involved or interested in the topic under consideration.
Often, new topics were introduced into the email trails and subsequently lost in the shuffle. Example: email initially titled "December Board Meeting" includes discussions about the conference and/or other programs and initiatives.
Then, once things were somewhat hashed out, reconstructing the dialog and decision-making—which required going back through scores of emails—has proven almost unworkable.
To address this issue, Val and I have agreed to try out a new system using the administrative section of our website. The words you’re reading now are posted in this new section.
The communication is not one-way. Everyone is encouraged to share their opinions via the comment section included at the bottom of this blog entry (and every topic/subject you see in this section—note the topics to the right of this page).
Board Meetings
Board meetings are not the time to learn about an issue for the first time and then vote to do something.
A considerable portion of board meetings are dedicated to passing information that, in many cases, might be better handled via read-ahead material.
Often, topics of discussion and read-ahead material were disseminated only a day or two (or even a few hours) before the meeting—not allowing much time to digest and consider the issue(s) at hand.
Several times, it became apparent that one or two board members did not read materials before the meeting. Val and I aren’t pointing any fingers. Instead, we need to insist that we publish agendas and provide details early enough to allow everyone time to prepare and be ready. Armed with the necessary info, it’s then up to board members to be prepared for each meeting.
Agendas and minutes
Val, Jim, and I have created a single document to hold the agendas and minutes of the entire year’s board meetings.
We expect this new document will make it much easier to record what we’ve already done and prepare for what we’ll do in the next meeting.
The agenda and minutes document is now posted on our admin page (see link at the top of the admin page or click here). Although the two most recent entries are still in draft form, you can check today and see the minutes from our September meeting that you’ll be asked to approve during our December meeting. You can also check out the current proposed agenda for December (which is very much a draft as I write this).
More details will follow, and you can expect us to do a quick run-through of our admin page during December’s Zoom meeting.
Online voting to handle pop-up/time-sensitive issues requiring board action, input, or buy-in
Although you’ll find out about these issues via email, Val and I would like to try to resolve them online via our admin page (rather than email trails) when possible.
As an example, I wanted to try to have the board approve Hugh’s and/or Dane’s conference fee reimbursement. I tried out the new online voting spreadsheet to get everyone’s input, but it didn’t go very well—only four of us voted. Likely, the problem was my failure to describe the process and what I expected.
Well cover this system and its spreadsheet later—certainly during our December meeting.
Board member portfolios
The duties of our board executive committee (president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer) are pretty well outlined in our bylaws.
At-large members do not have specific portfolios or duties, which are neither expressly stated via bylaws nor by tradition. Frankly, this has led to some board members’ involvement in MWSA being restricted to four one-hour-long board meetings each year.
Val and I would like to have each at-large member take on at least one additional portfolio during their term in office. Examples might be to either chair or contribute to communications, membership, social media, website, corporate sponsorship and donations, veterans’ outreach, awards, etc. If you’re already interested in helping in a specific area, please let us know. Otherwise, you can expect this topic to come up in December.
Board member participation/work
Since it’s our primary membership benefit and draw, our review and awards system is at the heart of what MWSA does. As important as our other programs are, if we were to cease doing reviews and awards, it’s unlikely that MWSA would survive very long without it.
Because 1) it’s central to our mission, and 2) checking out as a reviewer only takes about 45—60 minutes, Val and I expect all board members to be familiar with our review and awards system by becoming a reviewer. Reviewing a book or two would be nice, but I won’t hold anyone’s feet to the fire on that.
Val and I would also encourage all board members to contribute at least one content item (i.e., Dispatches/email blast/social media/website article) per year. Heck, we’re all writers; we should be able to commit to writing a paragraph or three per year for MWSA. 😉
Your comments, suggestions, and questions are more than welcome!