Chair appointment community involvement, transparency, enabling objections and handling them

[frivoal]

When team appointments of Chairs are done as part of a new Charter, AC Reps can Formally Object as part of the Charter review. In case of a Charter Extension, which may at the same time change the Chair, AC Reps can initiate an Advisory Committee Appeal. That seems enough to provide an opportunity for oversight, but there’s currently no way to Object to a change of Chair at other times. Maybe we should allow Formal Objections to Chair changes, or some other process, such as ratification by the AB.

[dwsinger]

I think in the process re-write, we're saying that the AC can appeal "any decision". An AC appeal seems awfully heavy for objecting to a chair choice, and humiliating for the chair. I think we need to trust the team to pick decent chairs, or to work with the unhappy people quietly.

[TzviyaSiegman]

I agree with @dwsinger. AC is likely not well-informed about who/why a chair is chosen as well. Not all decisions are well-made by committee.

[dwsinger]

Noted that this seems orthogonal to director-free; request to move this to the general process.

[dwsinger]

It should be clear that making public, formal, complaints, about specific people (chairs) should be very much a last resort, and that more discreet methods should be tried first (talk to the team)

[frivoal]

@dwsinger, is your proposal to add a sentence near the definition of Formal Objections saying that any decision can be objected to, followed by some indication that people should attempt more diplomatic approaches first?

If so, I can try and draft that.

[michaelchampion]

There has to be a way to hold the team accountable for bad decisions, e.g. chair selection. Of course we hope these cases are rare, and yes people will be embarrassed, but we can’t assume the team will always do the right thing and that the membership has no recourse if they don’t.

The appeal path would seem to be: first to the CEO, then to the AC (current system) or Board (once a legal entity is established). Appeal to the AC or Board is indeed heavyweight and there should be a high bar on getting such an appeal heard (e.g. the 5% of the membership explicitly requesting a decision be overturned, and language strongly suggesting diplomacy/mediation first), but it needs to exist as a check on the power of the Team.

[dwsinger]

Let's see if I can clear up.

a) Yes, any formal decision can have a formal objection.

b) The recourse process if you don't like a chair appointment is (a) to talk to the team member for that group, and escalate up the team as needed; (b) to raise an FO, and if that doesn't result in satisfaction, you can (c) raise an AC appeal against the FO decision. Ouch.

[frivoal]

Made a pull request to attempt to address this: #299

Feedback welcome.