[HamWAN PSDR] director responsibilities

[Rob Salsgiver]

A director is a leadership position with a responsibilities.

a)      Execute duties specified in the job description

b)      Be an active advocate for the mission and goals of the organization

c)       Have skills and contribute time and effort in one or more areas of expertise needed by the organization (examples:  technical, marketing, finance, administrative, logistics, fundraising, etc)

d)      Be accessible and responsive to members, customers, vendors, shareholders, etc.

 

These are obviously generic.  Other duties and responsibilities may exist that are more specific to the organization.

 

HamWAN is young and evolving as an organization.  There are some ways things are done today that will have to evolve and mature as the organization continues to grow.  Voting and approving expenditures are one example of this.  A single approval without a quorum requirement is simply not acceptable from a checks and balances perspective – there are too many opportunities for fraud and other abuse.  This is NOT saying that I believe this has or will happen, it is ONLY an observation of current structure and potential risk.  Although this is not acceptable, HamWAN would not be where it is today if it operated this last year with a quorum requirement.  There were too many votes where only one or two directors bothered to cast a vote.  Future officers need to be more engaged, and a majority should be required to approve actions.

 

There are many brilliant minds active in the project.  Many I will freely admit are far beyond my abilities on a technical basis.  That doesn’t mean that these same highly skilled individuals are the best candidates to be board-level leadership.  There are many other tasks that need to be done at the director level that are, quite frankly, BORING to many of the more technically gifted individuals in the group.  The time requirements for these other tasks also would take away from the time they can volunteer in their much more valuable technical fields. 

 

This does NOT say that technically savvy people CANNOT be directors – each person has to balance their skills with their available time.

 

Last year I performed a couple of connectivity tests from prospective high-value client sites.  I held off on making a pitch to those organizations because for a while, Bart went MIA when things got busy for him, and it was unclear who could (or would) pick up the pieces and be able to make decisions when he was unavailable.  I was simply unwilling to risk MY credibility at the time to pitch HamWAN as an organization when I couldn’t get questions answered.  If I sign up high-value and/or paying client sites but can’t guarantee who will respond when they have a question or issue, that is a problem!   This is another one of those things that must be addressed as HamWAN continues to grow, and I believe it will.  It is definitely another example of something that should be on the radar-scope of anyone looking to take a director position.

 

Enough for now – I tend to get long as it is.  I’m open to questions and discussion of the issues if anyone wants.  This is NOT meant to be a finger-pointing or blame exercise, so don’t bother going there. Thank you all for your contributions to the HamWAN effort.

 

Cheers,

 

Rob Salsgiver – NR3O

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.hamwan.net/pipermail/psdr/attachments/20140215/766f1f0e/attachment.html>