Wikimedia Conference 2015/Programme/7

7: Board Governance

How to move forward

Tim (WMDE) presenting

What was this session about?

3 Chapters and one member of the WMF Board of Trustees presented their ways how to handle governance issues in their organisations.

What are the next steps to be taken?

Nobody took the official lead for this topic.
Tim Moritz Hector (chair of the board of WMDE) and Abraham Taherivand (chair of the transition committee), published a document of lessons learnt on how Wikimedia Deutschland managed its Executive Direction transition phase.

Who is the person to reach out to?

Reach out to Cornelius, the Program and Engagement Coordinator for the Wikimedia Conference, if you’re interested in the topic and would like to further work on it.

Photos

see the Commons category

This session documentation was approved (partially) by one of the speakers.

Session Documentation

Original Description

Speakers from four different movement organisations (WMF and 3 chapters) talk about how they have dealt with governance challenges their organisation has faced over the last year. Then a facilitated small-group workshop where participants share their current issues and perspectives.

Desired Outcome: Presenting learnings and experiences identifying common challenges. Participants get useful advice from peers about problems they face.
Audience: Board and staff of Wikimedia organisations
Session Format: 30 mins - updates on challenges faced/overcome from 3-4 organisations, then group workshops; 90 min in total
Speaker: Christophe Henner (WMFR), Alice Wiegand (WMF/Board of Trustees), Tim Moritz Hector (WMDE), José Flores (WMMX)

Summary of the session

Over the last year, several Wikimedia organisations struggled with board governance issues, so the topic was quite important for many Wikimedians. Two Board Governance Workshops were held in London (in March and August 2014).

Wikimedia Deutschland

The session started with Tim Moritz Hector, chairperson Wikimedia Deutschland, presenting the way his chapter handled the transition phase and change of its Executive Director. He explained that the main challenge around the transition phase was to involve people, but still keeping the board (able to be) responsible for the results. Tim further added the three main questions:

Who has stakes in the decision? (Members of the association, volunteers/community, C Level staff, the board itself and external advisors)
How to select the members of the team? (from the inner to the outer circle: board -> members / staff / community -> external advisors; e. g. community election for the community-representative, pick by the board for the member-representative)
How to deal with that team? (clear timeline, clear responsibilities, small work packages, documentation, clear communication strategy)

Finally, he presented WMDE’s three learning around the transition phase:

Don’t be shy to involve people – be bold and give them a significant role, even in difficult processes.
Communication: Honest and in small packages
Ask for feedback (within the team and external) and schedule the time to consider inputs.

Wikimedia Foundation

Alice Wiegand, member of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, told about her experiences with the Board of Trustees, especially about the recent ED transition (from Sue to Lila) and about the composition and stability of the Board itself. For the latter, time commitment and information flow are major issues. The central question is, Alice said, is about how do people come to the Board of Trustees and what do they bring with them. About this questions the Board of Trustees initiated a RfC on Meta. Alice three recommendation for Boards are:

If you make major chances, make sure to have a broad consensus
If you’re on the board and you don’t agree about a decision, say it out loud
Involve your stakeholders at an early stage

Wikimedia México

José Flores, president of Wikimedia México, took the third part of the presentation. He explained that his chapters was mostly driven by intuition instead of methodical processes. José told that it was important for them to develop objectives as all work was done by volunteers. He pointed out how important it is to track all activities and to document them (what did we do? what where the results? what was good, what went wrong?) and even the smallest activity had to be documented, classified and saved.

Wikimédia France

Christophe Henner, president of Wikimédia France, presented the experiences of his chapter. Christophe explained that a board should first ask „why“ and not „what“ to do. One of the most important learning within WMFR was there not all elected board members matched their "job descriptions", but stated it is difficult and sensible to discuss about who fits to the board (and who not), some people have better (or more) skills for being a board member than others. At the moment, the board of WMFR is shaping to the board that is needed and is looking for appropriate candidates for the next general assembly election ("managed democracy"). Furthermore, Christophe referred to the Board Handbook (in French) written by the volunteers and staff members of Wikimédia France.