At 11:35 AM -0400 6/16/05, Thomas Narten wrote:
> > I hope you don't mean a term limit. Making chair appointments annually
> renewable might work - but limiting the pool of talent by imposing
> term limits would be self-inflicted damage, IMHO.
At least in the WGs that I know, there are a fairly large number of
people who would be capable of leading the WG. Clearly, this may not be
the case everywhere. I don't think a strict term limit is needed, just
an expectation that chair positions are temporary and time-limited, with
regular review and explicit re-appointment. Having the chair report to
the community at such intervals might be part of the re-appointment
process. Meeting milestones would presumably be part of the reporting.
IMO, there is a quite a lot to be said about the above.
What we really need to do is _change_ the current culture, in which
chairs are sort of assumed to have the job for life (so long as they
want it), and having ADs make (involuntary) chair changes is painful
enough that it mostly only happens in extreme situations.
This has been seen in multiple IETF WGs. The chairs were doing a
barely-passable job (or a bad job), but the ADs didn't want to
replace them because doing so would be an insult. The output of those
WGs were, in some cases, pretty terrible.
What would help is:
1) clear expectations of what the chair is supposed to do.
2) Regular/periodic performance review. I.e., is the chair doing what
is expected of them? Are there clear metrics that show this (like
concrete progress on documents, meeting milestones, etc.)
During the periodic performance review, it would be useful for the AD
to ask the WG "Do you as individuals think that the chairs are
meeting this set of expectations?" and "If not, do you think you
could do the work necessary to meet them better?" I think
self-nomination instead of other-nomination would help prevent
political schisms and leave it as "are you willing to do all the work
necessary instead".
And, yes, I know that the result of this could be insulting to some
under-performaing chairs, including me. On balance, however, that
personal insult is worth it if the result is better WG output under
more effective leadership.
A side-effect of this would be that, even if a particular chair is
not removed (such as if she/he agrees to meet the chair goals
better), the AD will have a larger pool of people who have expressed
interest in chairing. This could be useful for other WGs in the area.
3) regular/periodic review of what type of chair the WG actually
needs, and whether the current chairs are still the best for the
job. (WGs go through different phases, and the skills needed to
make progress during the various phases varies.)
I am not personally a fan of term limits -- they have significant
downsides. But I do think that we should be more aggressive in moving
chairs around, and the community should both demand results from the
chairs and put pressure on WGs to perform better when they are not
meeting expectations.
The performance review is input to the AD about the WG. If the WG is
floundering, most people don't think the chairs are doing a good job,
and no one is willing to take the lead, that is valuable information
about the work being done.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium
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