This week the PASS Board voted on and accepted the slate of candidates that was put forth by the Nominations Committee and I can’t get the image of Colonel Jessup out of my mind. People want answers. People want the truth.
But the funny part about all of that is when they do get the truth, they don’t always believe it. Even when Jessup admits to ordering the Code Red everyone in the courtroom is stunned. And when people don’t like the truth they start to dig deeper (or go off the deep end) and suspect that there is another reason to explain everything. Conspiracy theories abound on lots of topics:
We never landed on the moon.
Must have been a second shooter, no way one guy could pull that off alone.
A missile hit the Pentagon, not a plane.
The PASS Board meets at Area 51 and doesn’t like people who are critical of them.
I’ve been evaluating my peers in one form or another since I was 18 years old. It is never an easy thing. When someone gets turned down for anything they will want answers. They will want the truth.
Details for the PASS Election process can be found at http://elections.sqlpass.org/, and about the only thing you won’t find there are the transcripts/recordings of the phone interviews. When I first ran for the board in 2007 no such portal existed. Much of what you see there is the result of a lot of hard work that has been done very recently in an effort to be as transparent as possible about the process. Funny thing is the more information we are able to provide, the more information people want.
But the trouble we have here isn’t with the details included at that portal. The trouble here is that a line was drawn. And people want to know why the line was drawn. They want answers. They want the truth.
I have not had an opportunity to speak with the two candidates that were not included on the slate this year. The announcements came out yesterday and myself and the rest of the board were in transit to Nashville for a scheduled meeting. When we arrived in Nashville we didn’t turn on our laptops and start blogging. Instead we sat down and started having a very healthy discussion on “just what the hell happened”. Our conclusion? Our process isn’t perfect, but it also isn’t all that bad. We all agree that we can make improvements, but we haven’t agreed on what steps to take yet.
When you serve on the Nomination Committee, if you put forward a person’s name as a candidate then you do so with the assumption that they will be elected. So in order to get your name on the slate you must convince a majority of the committee members that you are able to effectively serve as a Director. It’s that simple, really. There is no mandate that a line must be drawn, it is just a matter of reviewing the candidates and answering this question: “Is this the right person at this time?” The scores help us see where the candidates rank against each other and help spawn conversations about the candidates, but in the end the answer to that question has to be “yes” by a majority.
Fail to convince a majority, and you fail to have your name on the slate. But that’s not the answer people want to hear right now. People want to know about how one particular candidate did not advance. And they are asking us to provide proof or evidence for why that candidate was not advanced. And we have to some extent. Have our efforts so far been perfect? Apparently not. The original emails to those two candidates were not well received, for example. But those emails also show that we have tried. Personally I believe that we shouldn’t send an email, we should place a phone call to the person and have a conversation.
And that’s where we are right now. I feel it would be *very* unprofessional for me to air any dirty laundry without talking to the candidates personally. So far one of the candidates has contacted me and asked for some feedback. I hope to speak with him next week. I don’t know if the other one will contact me, but I suspect we will talk at some point in the future. After those conversations happen, and if the people are willing to have all the sordid details posted on a blog for everyone to see, then I’ll do exactly that.
But what I will not do is simply post something as a knee-jerk reaction to events or be dragged out into an argument on the internet regarding what I believe to be a conversation that is best held in private first. I’m sorry if that doesn’t please all of you who want answers right now.
But after serving on the Board for the past two years I’d like to think that you want me on this wall.
We are human, and like all humans we are far from perfect. We are happy to learn from our actions and improve. And we are more than happy to listen to all recommendations for improvement.
So bottom line is that you should just let Steve be the sixth candidate. He wouldn’t have a problem proving his wit again
You’re doing a great job. The “win” in any vote in this day and age is to crowdsource everything. Of course, that leads to popularity contests, but then folks don’t have anyone to yell at.
I love your mix of serious contemplation and fun references here. It has been a serious discussion, but I do like to see the pressure let off from time to time.
I think there may be something amiss with our process if this is the goal:
“if you put forward a person’s name as a candidate then you do so with the assumption that they will be elected. ”
I think the best role for a nomcom is to screen those, who if elected, would be functional team members on the Board. So it would be perfectly fine for there to be 40 candidates for 3 slots. I don’t believe the role should be to whittle down the candidates to a list of elected people, or anything close to that.
In fact, I hate voting on elections where it is a one for one match of candidates to positions due to a committee selecting the candidates.
It appears to me that the NomCom in this go round did follow the process as it is is defined, but that the process and the rules still have room for improvement.
“I think the best role for a nomcom is to screen those, who if elected, would be functional team members on the Board. So it would be perfectly fine for there to be 40 candidates for 3 slots. I don’t believe the role should be to whittle down the candidates to a list of elected people, or anything close to that. ”
Well said Karen.
Having to ‘convince the majority’ of the NomCom is having a mini-election prior to the membership voting. NomCom’s process should be changed to removing people who are clearly unqualified, (like if I ran, they should cut me) and that’s it.
By the way Tom (& the rest of the Board), the Elections page is great, well done on that front!