Response about the Governance Task Force, Tecker, and Money

Daniel Gilmore asked, on MPol:

Well, I'm baffled. Isn't this the exact issue we just gave The Tecker Group $30,000 to help us with? As I recall (correctly) it was Recht's baby; now, he's the seconder on Elissa's proposal.

Regardless of who gets the fame and glory of being mover sand seconder, the AMC as a whole was very much in agreement that something needs to be done to make our governance structure leaner and more efficient and modern.

WHAT, pray tell, happened to our thirty K? I was told last year that even a 5% savings on a $600,000 NO budget would equal what we spent on Tecker (yes, I passed my grade school arithmetic courses; i concur) BUT I haven't seen the savings yet. 

I’m not sure how to address this question; I don’t recall thinking that Tecker was going to come in and tell us how to spend less on stuff. The AMC decided it wanted to have Tecker, and the Finance committee prepared a budget which arranged the money so we could, even if it meant giving up various other things, like updated bookmarks, new office chairs, an extra travel day for a staff person to the AG, whatever. We didn’t take funds from one specific National Office expense pot and put it in the  Tecker pot. We fiddled with all the numbers according to the priorities set by the AMC until the bottom line was something we felt we could live with. So I can’t tell you what, specifically, we gave up in order to have Tecker work with us.

And NOW we're doing a "task force"??

Please -- Robin, Elissa, John R -- someone -- tell me just what we've done with Tecker's 30K (or more) of advice, and when we plan to do with the new task force's recommendations. Is this or is it not covering the same ground we just covered with Tecker?

Ok, understand that you’re getting just my personal answer, that I’m not speaking for the AMC, and that I’m not on the planning committee. I’m basically supportive of the whole planning schtick, however. I think a Board of Directors should look ahead and give thought to long-term directions and goals and whatnot. On the other hand, I admit a hefty skepticism about the process, probably because I’m not as conversant with the modern business buzzwords and feel more comfortable just rolling up my sleeves and doing stuff... but that’s just me.

Anyway, what did we get for out $30K? We had Tecker folks come spend a few days with us, giving up some pretty good leadership development types of training. They walked us through many exercises that resulted in the AMC writing and approving a mission/vision/strategic plan, which we’ve actually referred to many times since. They drummed into our heads the process for gathering and analyzing facts and data and discussing “mega issues” before crafting motions—a good thing, I think. Before, someone would just propose an idea and we’d all chatter about it then vote—all too often emotionally, but rarely would any of us have the sobering objective data at hand with which to make really informed decisions. They gave us templates for how to develop background papers for “mega issues,” which we have used a few times. They gave us lots to read about leadership, planning, and roles of directors and staff and members. They rah-rahed us and pumped us up. We were to have had one more chunk of... training from them, including a detailed look at our governance needs and how to improve them, but we had to cut that session with Tecker from the budget because of the lawsuit. So now we have a GTF to do the job, instead.

Was the $30K worth what we got? Everyone has a different answer to that. Me, I’m on the fence. We got good stuff from working with Tecker. The AMC is working together and less emotionally than it used to. On the other hand, that was a lot of money. Too much? I dunno. I don’t know what other organizations spend for this sort of training. Did I personally vote yes for bringing Tecker in? Yes, I did, but skeptically and only because at the time of the vote we were in good financial positions (as in before the lawsuit).

Was it worth the cost in hindsight? Again, I’m kinda on the fence. I don’t know how to do an objective cost-benefit analysis of such a thing.  I’m not sure I got much out of it, which used to make me think I was being really dense for not groking what they were talking about, until I realized that my problem was that I’d been doing this plan-gather data-analyze before deciding approach all along (remember the Local Group Funding Report?). I just never used the fancy buzzwords for it. Well, if Tecker has made at least a few other national-level leaders start to think this way, then perhaps that is a good thing.

What will we do with the recommendations of the GTF? Um… I cannot answer that. I hold on to the hope that we will see some major bylaws changes on a ballot in the near future that will create a very different Board of Directors. I sure as hell hope we come up with something more than “kick off the past chairs and let everyone vote for the currently appointed officers.” If you are curious, I wrote a big long post about my thoughts on governance restructuring back in June.