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Well, having been the most recent "victim" of the long process for deciding on staff members (at least, staff members who have root), I didn't mind the process at all. I fully expected it to take longer than it did, Grex being what it is. I'm not sure that the process can or should be speeded up much. In the case of Party ADM, as Valerie pointed out, we don't really need to wait for the board, but the rest of it was sort of necessary.
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i believe it is appropriate for a staff member to be selected by the staff for each individual appointment process who would administer that process. then that staff person could set up a schedule including a period in which volunteers would be noted, a period in which appropriate skill assessments can be made, a period for appropriate feedback from other poeple with whom the appointee would have to work, and a deadline for final approval. setting and publicizing this schedule would eliminate a lot of the frustration of simply not knowing. also, i think it is healthy for the organization to establish a precedent of adhering to a schedule, allowing of course plenty of time within that schedule for unplanned delays which occur simply because this is a volunteer orgAnization and people have lives outside of it that have to take priority at times. this promotes accountability, along with the notion of taking responsility. Grex is a large and complex system, and as it grows it becomes more important to its survival to add more structure to its operations. there is more to this idea that i haven't expressed, but if there is interest then i'll be happy to explore it further.
Actually, M-Net openly asks for volunteers for staff positions, just
like Grex does. Some of the comments in those volunteer items have,
unfortunately, been rather pungent. However, the M-Net Board actually
discusses the candidates, and makes the appointments to staff positions,
in closed session.
I'm with Eric on the necessity of posting a schedule and sticking
to it.
I wouldn't go so far as to say a schedule is *necessary*, but I think Eric is correct that a schedule might alleviate some of the frustration.
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Which means what -- no more than 6 weeks time lapse between the decision to appoint new nominees and the time for everyone to have met to discuss it? Lessee: say we decide on the fouth Thursday of a month to appoint new staff positions. There would be 2 weeks before the next staff meeting to take nominations. Staff can then discuss the issues and watch the finalists for the next two weeks. Then they make their recommendation at the next board meeting and the announcement can be made the next day. Four weeks. Move the date we decide we need a new staffer to the day after a staff meeting and you add two weeks total. That sounds about right because the staff and board may not be familiar with the best people to fill specific positions. The delay, frustrating as it is, gives us a chance to get to know them. It actually increases the chances of someone relatively unknown getting appointed since there isn't as much need to stick with people who are known quantities as there would be if the decision had to be made in a hurry. I'd say the best way to handle the frustration is to say "it takes 6 to 8 weeks for our decision making process. We'll either make an announcement of the appointees at that time or publicly discuss the issues that are causing a delay. I think discussing the appointees publicly is a bad idea. In most cases there are too many fine candidates for the positions available, but occasionally the staff has information that isn't (and shouldn't be) public knowldege that would cause them to hesitate until they know a person better. I'd hate for a good potential candidate to be raked over coals publicly because they aren't quite as ready as another person. After all, they might very well be the very best choice next time around when they have that little bit more experience. If people have said unpleasant things about them during their first nomination for staff how likely are they to be willing to submit a second time?
There will always be wrong selections and injustices - that's the poor society we live in. YOu deal with it if you're not in the 'know'...otherwise you fall to pieces. No use falling to pieces over such things.
Yes of course there will be the occasional wrong choices made. That's inevitable and I'm not suggesting that we should extend the discussion indefinitely so we can get intimately aware of everyone's tendencies, traits, and quirks. Six weeks seems about right to me because it has the frame of regularly scheduled meetings to limit it but is long enough to do a little research. The problem with staff just dealing with not being in the know is that they have a responsibility to the rest of us to protect GREX from people who might be malicious or terminally clueless enough to take it down in a way that will take hours, days, or months of staff time to recover from. Almost no one would do that, either intentionally or not. But that one in a million is worth watching out for just because the very act of being cautious reduces the chances somewhat of that sort of person being nominated in the first place. I guess what I'm taking too many words to say is that caution, even though it may not be really needed in any specific instance, is always a good idea. So far we have a pretty good track record of getting good people involved. I'd just like it to stay that way.
I agree...it does me no good, though:)
Yeah, and then there is always one in every bunch (me) who feels secrecy is not always the best way to go and is usually used to meet the needs of those making the decisions not to protect the applicant. Candidates should be able to hear what is being said about them and respond, if necessary.
there is a reasonable balance of the needs of the candidates for a private process and the needs of the seerved for a public one... i, for one, don't see the need for a public process when the honor and intentions of the deciding body are not in question. at the same time, i don't think that the process should be hidden as a habit, or on principle. i am content to leave it up to the board to determine what they should make public and what not, *in the specific case of Grex under present conditions.* this is subject to potential future change, and by not codifying anything unnecessarily, it makes it easier to adapt in future, should it prove desirable.
All the way with G-R--E---X!
I agree with Misti. It is a bad idea to debate staff candidates' qualifications in public. On M-Net the BoD has gone out of its way to make sure these talks are in private so that candidates' feelings are not hurt.
It is the usual practice to make appointments in closed session. The reason is not exactly to not hurt candidate's feelings but rather to let those making the appointments discuss personal and private aspects of the candidates without making them public - to protect personal privacy. It does also serve to not hurt candidates feelings if the "negatives" have to be discussed, but that is not the practical reason for doing it.
Exactly. But Grex has never been subject to doing things the "usual" way. We've always kind of looked at what would be the best way to go and then used the excuse of "why not give it a try?". So far, that kind of bravado has worked amazingly well. One way to kind of select for staff who feel strongly about Grex being open and unsecretive is to make the staff selection process as open as possible. The criteria shouldn't hinge on subjective "I kind of like this person more" or third-person anecdotal evidence anyhow. I hold no hope that staff would ever embrace this concept because, frankly, it takes a very disciplined and mature decision making group to work within an open selection process.
The "usual" practices are what has been found to be most effective over many years and organizations. Actually, Grex does most things the usual way....but likes to deny it. Organizations do most of their selections for apponintments in closed session because of all the train wrecks that result from not doing so. I have never seen a "very disciplined and mature decision making group" in my life. Groups consist of human beings.
A staff person needs to have the following abilities:
(1) technical ability to actually do something useful
(2) ability to deal with stressful situations, often involving
upset people, in a graceful and responsible fashion.
(3) ability to get along with, and work well with, other staff members.
There's of course tons of other stuff; grex staff need to have
reasonable initiative to solve problems, ability to present problems and
possible solutions, willingness to bring real policy decisions to the
users, etc. Those are obvoius subrequirements to the above however.
There is a more intangible ability that a staff member needs as well
however, and that is the trust and respect of, and for, the other grex
staff members, as well as the board, and the users in general. This
last quality, trust, is absolutely indispensible, without it, nothing
happens.
Unfortunately, trust is something that is virtually *impossible* to
measure in any kind of public selection process. Just look at any
politician. An additional problem, especially for small organizations
such as grex, is simple voter apathy - people just *don't care* so long
as things run smoothly. This makes it easy for small special interest
groups to gain an unhealthy ability to influence things - for instance,
look at the "new right/christian fundementalist" success in smaller
venues such as school board elections, in some cases, by sponsoring
candidates who don't reveal their true colors until after the election.
Even quite aside from all of these various problems, there's a very
basic problem here: the members at large here on grex do not have the
time, interest, or physical ability necessary to get to *know* the
various staff candidates *nearly* well enough to evalute the 3 factors I
listed above, technical, stress, & compatibility, of each potential
staff member.
Now, a common solution to some of these problems is to elect a few
people, and then have them appoint or hire other people, as needed, to
do things. This is how the federal government works, more or less.
Even here, it's interesting to note some of the problems and fixes.
Once upon a time, for instance, it was the practice that as each
administration came in, it fired all the old civil servants, and hired a
brand new bunch of cronies to fill all the cushy jobs. This led to all
sorts of problems. Firstly, the new bunch of cronies didn't know how
*anything* worked. So they'd have to start all over, from scratch, to
*learn* how to run a government. Secondly, the cronies were selected by
factors such as how good they were to the political party or candidate,
not how qualified they were, so, usually, the cronies turned to be
completely incompetent in their new post. Often, they were crooked to
boot (you didn't think it was selfless altrustism that motivated them,
did you?)
The solution we've tried *historically* to follow on grex, is that grex
*STAFF* somehow finds people, evaluates them on the above points, and
basically hires them. For some things, this is absolutely the right
solution - if grex staff needs somebody to run out to meijers Right Now,
and buy a window fan, is there any reason to make this process any more
complicated than necessary? For other things, notably positions
involving long term trust and responisiblity, the trend has been for
staff to recommend a candidate to the board, who then actually appoints
the person. This is in fact a requirement for root access. Now,
provided grex staff does its job responsibly, the advantages are
obvious; people are selected who *should* be capable of working with
other grex staff members well, and because grex staff are as likely as
anyone to be interested in things getting done, they are also likely to
be technically capable, and have useful judgement and social skills.
Most of the problems I can think of that we've had historically with
this system have involved people where the selection process went awry
(ie, "lack of consensus"), and where the persons involved turned out to
be, um, "pushy" in ways that turned out to be unhealthy.
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Or put more priority on getting the selection process to proceed.
It is not *necessarily* a problem if the selection process is
frustrating to candidates who fail the "ability to deal with stressful
situations in a graceful fashion" clause, above. If the goal is to
recruit qualified candidates, and dealing with stressful situations is
important, then the selection process may actually be doing a perfectly
good job of fulfilling its mission, if it is occasionally frustrating.
The first step in improving a process, is to answer what the process is
supposed to do, "correctly". The primary goal of the staff recruiting
process is *NOT* to be less frustrating to candidates. If that were the
only goal, then there are perfectly simple solutions to make it less
frustrating; for instance, the newuser program could just make each new
person a staff person, and one of the jobs of the treasurer would be to
mail off a pumpkin room key, and root password, to each new user on
grex. Alternatively, we could have the treasurer go out to the diag on
the first day of each month, and and hand out envelopes containing keys
& the root password, to each person to asks. (gosh, April fools day is
coming up, isn't it?) :-)
I think the *primary* goal of the staff selection process is to recruit
and "hire" "qualified" people. A *secondary* goal is to avoid scaring
off potential recruits, or to unnecessarily annoy unqualified
candidates. These are only important because you can't hire people
you've annoyed, and you don't want annoyed people causing unnecessary
problems.
Once the process has been adequate defined, then methods for improving
it can become a lot more obvious. To take a trivial example, although
Valerie says what I said above was "sensible", I think if we were to
tease apart some of what I said above regarding "technical ability" and
"stressful situation", we'd find that we have some surprising
differences in terms of what we would value in a potential staff member.
That presents some obvious problems in terms of coming to a consensus
regarding the suitability of a potential staff recruit.
Another improvement we might find we need to do would be to minimize the
"surprise" factor when recruiting people. When asking for volunteers,
for instance, we might make it a habit to include boilerplate that says
something like "grex staff reserves the right to reject any or all
candidates, or to pick somebody entirely different who never volunteered
publically". Or, if we come to a different understanding about the
purpose of recruitment, we might decide that it's important to require
that each staff member volunteer publically, or that it's acceptable to
recruit people we don't, in fact, trust, or that, as has been suggested
previously, it's just as important to be a "sysadmin" teaching type of
place as to be an end-user service, and therefore, recruiting manifestly
unqualified people is "most" important. [ This is why deciding what the
mission statement of the process is, is important - it makes it
*possible* to evaluate conflicting values such as ({service to users}
vs. {fairness of recruitment process}). ] In any event, if we can give
people a better idea as to what to expect, then they are likely to be
less disappointed if they are not, in fact, selected, or if the
selection process appears to be taking a long time.
I have a relative who works in the personnel department of a large law
enforcement organization. For a while, part of her job involved helping
to hire new recruits for the organization. It was quite fascinating to
hear what they did. For instance, one of the problems they had was to
identify folks who wanted to be hired because they liked the idea of
being basically bullies with big guns. You can't, of course, ask people
"do you want to be a bully with a gun?" -- so as I recall, they had a
very elaborate system designed to detect this kind of thinking, and to
quietly shunt these people out of the recruitment process.
Marucs, piss off! You've had a vandetta against me from day one...so, you can go to hell for all I care.
is that as in martha reeves and the vandettas?
RE #23 I believe you mean "Martha Reeves and the Vandellas," other.
<grin> Somehow I suspect he knew that and was making a pun out of a typo.
Maybe it was Martha Stewart and the Vandalias? *smile*
That bites.
I think if we just warn ppl in advance that it may take n weeks to complete the process, there will be no frustration factor. frustration comes from unmet expectations, so if we alter expectations to match reality, we shouldn't have any problems on that score. on line 1: s/may/will/ Related topic: I think staff, etc, should volunteer publicly, and that the staff/evaluators should take comments from the "public" in a private manner, such as a special e-mail address (or just the usual staff one).
You have several choices: