Andy, thank you for posting something I think I know how to reply to :-)
On Friday, October 18, 2013, Andy Bierman wrote:
Hi Adrian,
I have asked you and other ADs several times if Assistant ADs would help.
The answer I got was "not really, but a well run directorate really
helps.".
I think the IESG does an excellent job of reviewing documents.
I would not want to increase throughput by simply reducing quality.
But I know ADs who have said they wish the job was only 40 hours/week,
because it can be more than that.
Staffing critical-path full-time positions with the best people
in the industry for free isn't as easy at it used to be.
Why not double the number of ADs in each area and instead of
every AD reviewing every draft, have 2 ADs from each area
review each draft? (Cut the AD hours in half somehow)
Andy
Speaking as a TSV AD, and we all know what that means :-)
What I said pretty openly in the Orlando TSVAREA discussions about ways to
make the AD responsibilities more manageable, and what I told last year's
Nomcom privately, was that I really want to try SOMETHING, rather than just
keep doing what we've always done.
Let me be clear that I've talked about this with Martin, and with other
ADs, but I'm only speaking for mysel, and I'm not proposing that this
year's Nomcom do anything differently - I'm thinking about next year, when
we'll also be reviewing the leadership positions.
The suggestion to add ADs is one that's plausible to me (unless one really
believes that no matter how many WGs are in an area, and no matter how many
docs they produce, "2" is always the perfect number, except for GEN).
The devil is in the details, of course. Let's start with whether you could
do that when the Nomcom process to add an AD because of a workload spike
takes the better part of nine months, but there áre other devilish details
that even I can think of.
What I would ask, is that people who care about this start by cataloging
proposals that have been made previously, so we don't start from ground
zero. I'm remembering, off the top of my head, a proposal to two-level the
IESG (add ADs until the task is manageable in each area, but only one AD
sits in the telechats), and a proposal to separate the charter and
management responsibilities from the document approval responsibilities
(so, something like a formal cross-area review steering group that Nomcom
would likely be in charge of staffing). I'm sure there were others.
I'm seeing many folks expressing interest in this who I didn't notice
during previous discussions, and think level-setting would be helpful.
To be clear, I'm very conscious that I'm still learning my job, and I don't
think I'm competent to evaluate what WOULD be helpful yet. But I'm also
optimistic(*) that SOMEthing would be helpful.
My plane is boarding, but best wishes as you think about suggestions.
Spencer
(*) happily, my medication is working as well as Adrian's. Perhaps we
should add "being appropriately medicated" to the position descriptions we
send to Nomcom :-)