State of the V:EKN - May 1

Jeff wrote:

More importantly, those [Inner Circle] positions are not defined vis a vis the National Coordinators, who clearly play some role in their election.

Moreover, it disturbs me that the NCs are not being consulted on this important structural matter.

Pascal wrote:

You do realize you're stating something and its opposite in two consecutive sentences?
Or do you mean that one of them should be read as what you think it is/what you think it should be?

To clarify:

On the Main Menu on left side of this web site, the roles of Princes and National Coordinators are defined. There is merely a list of Inner Circle positions, not a description of what they do.

It is clear that the NCs played some role in electing the V:EKN Chairman. However, that CRITICAL duty is not listed in their role responsibilities. In fact, if the V:EKN were to actually be run as a professional operation, there would be much more detailed descriptions of every role, who elects who, etc.

I view the Inner Circle as somewhat of a "Board of Directors" of the organization. I do NOT view them as cabinet ministers beholding singly to the Chairman. This is a structural/process critique, as have most of my comments throughout this situation. Johannes clearly thinks that the Inner Circle members are beholden only to him.

THIS IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM.

I am not critiquing Johannes personally with this statement, nor the members of the current Inner Circle. But, there needs to be a structural check on this power. The National Coordinators *should* official selecting/electing the Inner Circle members (including the Chairman) to a fixed term of office, and reserve the SOLE POWER to dismiss them (since their authority is derived from those who elected them...good old Rousseau).

It is irresponsible for the National Coordinators to invest in a single individual sole authority to run the organization in any way they see fit. This is just "common sense" good governance. That is every corporation has a Boards of Directors--to oversee the CEO. Even small organizations need a well-defined structure.

I have been on boards of organizations much larger than the V:EKN. I was President of the Board for a K-12 independent study charter school which received millions of dollars in funding from the State of California. As part of that board, I had to deal with several lawsuits against the school and its employees (and by extension me personally, though the incidents happened well before my tenure) for not following processes which are matters of federal law in the United States. PROCESS MATTERS.

This is not about ego. It never has been. Go back and read about all the process issues I have raised. I listed 10 process points in my response to the official IC response which have never been addressed.

But, if you want to make the V:EKN a better organization, then try to figure out what is right and make it happen. I strongly believe that the people who are in charge (and again, this is not a personal critique of them, but of the power that their offices should have) SHOULD NOT be making these changes without their constituents HAVING THE FINAL SAY.

to be honest, since I hadn't taken much thought to it, I had just kind of assumed that the NCs elected/nominated the IC (probably a few positions filled by default with no challengers), and that the IC then elected someone among themselves as chairman.

Having the NCs elect a chairman who then has sole discretion over the IC seems a bit....feudal, almost. I guess if the NCs don't like how the chairman is acting the NCs could appoint a new chairman?

My other main concern is with this from Johannes "Also we are not removing Eric from the IC, we move the storyline position into the design team. He quit the design team on his own free will so this step is only logical."

My reading of this is, you're not firing Eric. You're moving the role he had out of the IC into the design team. So whoever is in that role is no longer in the IC, and it just happens to be Eric. But, since Eric quit the design team, and that's where his position now is, he's out of the VEKN structure altogether. That sounds really underhanded to me. I am sure that when he quit the design team, he did not intend to be quitting the IC or other VEKN positions, yet you're trying to make it sound like it was his choice to leave the IC.

There should have at least been an IC vote about removing Eric from the IC. That way there'd be some oversight, and as an added bonus, since Eric himself would have gotten to vote as an IC member at that time, he would have known about both the intent and the result well before reading about it on a public post.

So, to sum up, I agree with Jeff that the VEKN structure needs to be better defined, and have greater oversight controls in place over the powers of the chairman. Hopefully the work that the new Scribe is doing is a step in the right direction here.

johannes wrote:

No it wasn´t his choice, it was ours. Sorry if that came out not very clear.

We realized two things :
- We need to move the Storyline into the DT
- We don´t want Eric on the IC, because he is working against the V:EKN

It was really just "handy" that it fell together. I would have considered keeping him on as Storyline guy, but since he was unable to work under the DT leader Ben Peal before how would that work now?

Well, you would have been a lot better off to actually say from the get go "we fire Echiang and move its position to [XXX]". Burning some heretics is just a decision that I may find good or bad, but it happen from time to time, and it's bound to happen.

Trying to hid thoses acts create bad rumours, give the impression you're trying to cover your ass, and give the impression you're abusing your power regardless of whether you're abusing it or not. Also, it create even more bad blood between you and Echiang than a simple and "professional" firing, while being able to reconciliate may in some case be what you need to do in the future.