Dear Fellow Board Members,

While I agree with Director Norton’s first premise below (“no issue …more important …than to select a new CEO”), I disagree with certain other points in his posting.

a.  I disagree that the Board’s obligation is to “get this finished as soon as possible”.  I believe the Board’s obligation is to identify and hire the best available candidate for the CEO position in a “reasonable time frame”.  That, I submit, is what our members want and expect.  Executive searches — whether for for-profit companies or not-for-profit organizations are complex, time-consuming tasks, even when conducted by a very small search committee, located in a single HQ building, and having a full-time commitment to the hiring organization and the search.  In our case, consider our geographically distributed committee, many members of which have “day jobs”, and the rigors of adapting to COVID-19 these past few months.  IMO, the duration of this search is not unreasonable at all.  We fail to do our duty to the organization if we subvert the quality of the search for an arbitrary deadline.

b.  The statement “I’ve heard nothing from the CEO Search Committee” is hyperbole.  The Committee has issued periodic reports to members of the Board except for any who may, themselves, be candidates.  Since it is a search committee, the committee members must review and approve Minutes of its meetings before they are formally issued, so there is an inherent delay.

c.  There is no implied obligation on the part of a search committee to provide more than the statement of that committee’s creation requires.  In fact, I would argue that the more detail that is requested, the slower the useful work of the committee will progress.   

d.  Most importantly, there is absolutely no obligation for details of individual CEO Search Committee members’ rankings of candidates to be provided to the Board.  In fact, to do so would largely negate the many benefits that accrue to the search process by having a committee in the first place.  The tasking is on the committee as a group, not on its individual members.  

In case you don’t have it at your fingertips, here for reference is the enabling wording from this past January’s meeting:

This Selection Committee is tasked with

  • -  Collecting and screening a list of suitable CEO candidates;

  • -  Reducing the list of candidates down to 3;

  • -  Presenting these 3 candidates to the Board for consideration;

  • -  Organizing a Board meeting to select a candidate;

  • -  Managing the negotiation process with the selected candidate;

  • -  Providing bi-weekly updates to the Board of its progress, including, but not limited to,

    the job qualifications and selection criteria chosen and used by the Committee. 


       I am absolutely committed to providing the opportunity for candidate interviews by
the Board as promised. This will be in a timely fashion but with due consideration to the
present COVID-19 Pandemic and related concerns for safety that this situation demands.
I am in  complete agreement that we as a Board  must conclude this interview and CEO
selection process but we must do that only after the CEO interview process by the Board has
been completed.
       
          Please wait for a few days for the completion and Committee approval
of the CEO Search Committee Report to the Board for the July Board Meeting.  That
report will answer many of your concerns.

      Thank You,

          Kermit Carlson W9XA

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


On Monday, July 6, 2020, 8:20:52 PM CDT, Richard Norton via arrl-odv <arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org> wrote:


There is no issue on the ARRL Board agenda more important to the future success of the League than to select a new CEO. The Board owes it to the membership to get this finished as soon as possible.

The July Board meeting is less than two weeks away, and I've heard nothing from the CEO Search Committee. In fact, looking at the Dropbox files concerned with CEO selection, the latest thing I see is minutes of the June 11 meeting, something that happened almost a month ago. The minutes talk of a list of 10 candidates, and a letter to the Board after the last interview. I've seen none of this.

The Committee originally pronounced that it was working on a selection procedure that would involve in-person interviews of top-ranked candidates by the entire Board, or at least Board members who desire in-person interviews.

The virus pandemic has impacted the advisability of doing exactly that, and I hope we will 
make sensible changes to the previously defined procedure that will allow us to select the new CEO under present conditions.

I see the need to rely more heavily on the CEO Selection Committee members . They have conducted interviews and each member must have ranked the candidates. I hope we can depend on them to give us the benefit of their efforts on this task.

I request that:

1) The list of highest-ranked candidates be made immediately available to the full Board.

2) Each Committee member provide the Board with his ranking of each of the top candidates, and reasons for his ranking. It may be as simple as rating some qualifications from 1 to 10, and giving a score for each candidate for each qualification item. I do not know what qualifications the Committee has applied. If we can see a list of the qualification criteria used and the resultant grade, it should shed considerable light on each candidate.

I imagine that this work has actually been done by this time, and this request will only require forwarding to the Board.

Thank you to the Committee members for your work, and please provide the full Board with the information as soon as possible.

73,

Dick, N6AA


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