Tired

[jennyst]

awatson wrote a great post on burnout recently. I've mostly been suffering from those symptoms too much to write in here, despite my early dreams. If you want more OTW news, renay and hl are also writing a bit from different perspectives.

Board is difficult. We have three people who can hardly ever make a meeting at the moment. I would say you can see from our minutes, but I'm having trouble getting a quorum to approve the minutes so I can post them. And it's getting to be holiday season, so it's only going to get harder. We can't really have the discussions of big issues that we need if only half the board are there. So we tick along on the admin side, and work on making specific committees more sustainable.

That's an uphill battle, too. We have had an unlucky year, with six chairs having to step down in the first six months of the year - that's significantly higher than normal. We've also had a lot of experienced staffers finally hit the point of "too much". So for those who are left, training newbies is balanced with keeping things running, and trying to fit in some long-term strategic thinking in the gaps. It's easy to think that all we need to do is train and mentor more people for future leadership, but mentoring is hard work, even if it's rewarding. There are people who say they have tons of professional experience, but then don't seem to apply any of the expected skills to their org work. Which applies to me some days, too - I forget that the day-job skills for dealing with difficult clients could be applied to fannish friends in the org.

The AO3 performance problems have slipped off the headlines, but behind the scenes everyone knows it's only a temporary reprieve - we need to fix the actual problems so they don't recur. And because of the stress that's causing, still no-one wants to talk about any of the issues that were raised publicly during the last election.

I wanted to end this on a hopeful note, but I can't think of one right now. I guess that's another of the symptoms of burnout. Anyone want to volunteer for Board next year?

Comments

[jennyst]

We already do it with a straight majority, but I didn't know about the only-people-who-attended thing. Does that mean if only 4 people attend, you only need 3 of them to aye it?

[hl]

I... actually don't remember how we did it for sure, but I've always thought the approval bit was to make sure everyone agreed it represented the meeting. So, really, only people present would've anything to say about it, no? K will know -- she did them last term.

ETA: actually, what I would do is to propose you start using the three day rule or a similar longer rule (say, a one week rule). You present the minutes, if no one says a peep in one week, then they're approved by default.

[ruric]

I second this! It's how I've always dealt with minutes from meetings I've attended. I tried to circulate the day after the meeting, then either the following Monday or Tuesday they were published. Worked like a charm *G*

[vom_marlowe]

Random passerby with NFP experience. Do you follow Roberts Rules of Order? If not, you might look into it. (If you do, all your questions will be thoroughly answered there.) It's the big, popular system of running meetings. It's handy in that having an outside, well-respected authority reduces emotional strain for people bringing up issues. Then it's not because you, personally, are upset about XYZ, you're just following rules. Which also makes it easier for those who are not following the rules to be given a face-saving way to change. Oh, I didn't before because it was just a casual thing, but with the new more official rules, I guess I better attend/let people know I won't make it/decide on a proxy/whatever. It also allows people to have a single place to begin building shared expectations. Just a suggestion--use what works for you, ignore anything that doesn't apply, etc.

[jennyst]

I'm not familiar with it, so thank you for the suggestion. A quick read on Google suggests it's mainly aimed at groups that meet in person - do you know of any who've successfully adapted it for chat-based meetings?

Looking at the stuff on minutes, at least some of it actively contradicts the advice of our lawyers regarding attributing positions within the board, and the procedure is cumbersome in places, so I doubt we'd adopt it wholesale, but it's definitely something to consider using parts of, so thank you.

[vom_marlowe]

I don't know of a system for online meetings offhand (ours are decided by our legal, too, and Thou Shalt Not Argue with Legal is a rule I always follow), but I'm sure there are some. Roberts is kind of the granddaddy of them all. You might try searching for 'alternatives to Roberts Rules of Order', or something along those lines.

[synecdochic]

I find it really surprising that Legal did not already write Robert's Rules into the bylaws -- the bylaws of the organization should specify the organization's parliamentary procedure and Robert's Rules are the generally accepted set. (You can't actually incorporate in California without your bylaws specifying which parliamentary procedures you'll use, for instance.)

The current edition of Robert's does contain limited support for asynchronous (ie, via email) or chat-based meetings, and there are many revised versions, discussions, and adaptations for online use. The best part about Robert's is that you don't have to answer each question that arises about parliamentary procedure; you accept Robert's (or "Robert's lite") as your guideline and then only specify where you're deviating.