RE: [council] Council as process manager

["Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Very good adds to the list of policy management tasks Mikey.

Chuck

From: Mike O'Connor [mailto:mike@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2013 5:31 PM
To: Gomes, Chuck
Cc: avri@xxxxxxx; Council GNSO
Subject: Re: [council] Council as process manager

i'd like to join this parade. and add a couple of ideas to the discussion.

a wise colleague educated me about the profound difference between project 
management and functional management.  projects have a beginning, middle, end 
and party.  functions are things that are managed with the idea that they will 
be doing roughly the same thing for a long time.  i think that distinction is 
one way to think about the difference between the Council (the functional 
manager of an ongoing policy-making process) and the working groups it sponsors 
(which are projects that are managed by Chairs and staff).  i like Avri's list 
because it begins to catalog things that we, as functional managers, ought to 
be doing.  here are a few more items for the list.

launch and wrap up working groups

this first one is the one that skates right to the edge of the difference 
between a legislative and managerial body.  as a Council, we accept the 
finished product of working groups that we've launched.  that means that 
sometimes we may conclude that the work isn't done yet.  in that case, i'm in 
the "send the work back to the working group to be completed" camp rather than 
the "complete the work FOR the working group" view.

celebrate working-group workers and work

when the WG report is done, we accept it.  and we should celebrate it.   we 
should go out of our way to acknowledge and congratulate the people who've done 
all that work.  we should figure out ways to reward all that effort so that 
people will return to do more of it.  i'm for recognition -- parties, buttons, 
bling, awards, plaques, pictures, handshakes, announcements, press releases, 
etc.  indeed, it should be our hope that we approve all the reports that 
working groups bring to us -- a rubber stamp, if you will.  but when we give it 
our approval, we should do more than apply the rubber stamp -- we should take 
the time and opportunity to show how well the WG process (that we are stewards 
of) is functioning.  this, after all, is the process and model upon which our 
collective credibility lies.

increase the size of the pool of capable participants

it seems to me that WE are the body that is responsible for ensuring that we 
have a broad and deep pool of capable participants in working groups.  sure, 
all those administration efforts (global outreach, digital engagement, etc.) 
are charged with increasing ICANN's reach, but we're the customer of those 
efforts and we could help them by being more actively engaged.

we are also customers of our respective constituencies and stakeholder groups 
-- since that's where WG participants call home when they're not on a WG.  
that's also the target of the "inreach" process.  it's where new people are 
familiarized with the process and policy issues of the GNSO.  and where people 
could be groomed, in small steps, to be effective participants in the WG 
setting.  so i think we also need to champion SG/Constituency efforts to 
recruit, retain, grow, polish and prepare participants for the WG process.

ensure roughly equal effectiveness across all SG's

from the Council perspective, i'd like to see all Constituencies and SG's be 
equally effective in providing good folks for WGs.  otherwise we're supervising 
a process that has systemic imbalances between strong and weak participation 
depending on point of view, resource availability, etc.  there are a number of 
interesting puzzlers in this one.  who better than us to figure those out?



i can go on and on like this, but you get the idea.  i agree with Avri and 
Chuck that there's a lot of interesting, and essential, work that we get to do 
as the managers of the policy-development process.

mikey


On Nov 30, 2013, at 10:10 AM, "Gomes, Chuck" 
<cgomes@xxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:cgomes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:


Thank you very much for this very excellent message Avri.  I definitely do not 
think you are wrong on this.

As most of you know, I have been a strong advocate for the policy management 
role of the Council in contrast to a legislative role and I still am.  But I 
think I tended to minimize the management role instead of emphasizing its 
significance.  These thoughts by Avri motivate me and hopefully all of us to 
realize the importance of the policy management role and to strive to perform 
it better.

Chuck

From: owner-council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:owner-council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
[mailto:owner-council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>] On Behalf 
Of Avri Doria
Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2013 10:50 AM
To: Council GNSO
Subject: [council] Council as process manager

Hi,

During the one day session we had in BA, I spoke of the managerial role of the 
council as its primary, though not only, role. Several people seemed to equate 
that, with me advocating a rubber stamp process.

I do not see it that way at all. I see the managerial role as difficult and 
challenging. But perhaps I should explain what I mean by a council doing the 
management of process role.

I believe that the well accepted adage, a meme if you like, is that with the 
last reorganization we moved away from a legislative council to a management 
council. Management of a policy process is a difficult and involved task.

For example when i think of a managerial process i think:

it involves careful observation of the process by the liaison looking for 
issues that need to be remedied before they become significant. Whether it is 
an issue of insufficient diversity or the inability of a chair to understand 
the points made by a member or faction in the WG. And it involves work to 
ameliorate the situation. Perhaps by the liaison alone and perhaps with the 
help of others in council.

I can also imagine many times when a WG wastes weeks trying to understand what 
the council meant by "it may recommend x" in is charter, the liaison could 
bring the question to the council for discussion and elucidation - they don't 
need to wait for the WG to surrender to confusion and ask; liaisons can work 
pro-actively to help (to be clear, help in a neutral supportive manner, not 
direct).

It involves reading a lot of issues reports, draft reports etc... .With 
sufficient understanding to ask the critical questions and to make sure the 
implications are understood as well as they can be. We need to understand the 
issues, of our SG/C a well as of the community in general, well enough to ask 
the questions others may ask and make sure those answers are contained in the 
reports.

It involves the vision and cottage of sending issues back to WGs, when 
something needs further work or when the ICANN consensus seems weak or 
ambiguous.

It involves doing the WG post analysis to understand what might need to happen 
to make future working groups better/easier, less of a forced march.

It may also include understanding the processes we need to follow when the 
Board sends back one of our recommendations for further consideration, 
something we hope they will do rather than deciding issues at their own 
pleasure.

This is the sort of stuff I thought the council would be doing in its new role, 
and to me it looks like a significant , not rubber stamp, type of role. I 
thought we were responsible for making sure our process works and it's defended 
(another one of our roles)

Though perhaps I am wrong and this is not what we needed to learn from our last 
review/reorg, in which case than it might be a topic for our review ToR.
Avri Doria


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