Brian,
I can appreciate that the new NM SM probably has extensive
experience with board meetings and agendas but I would respectfully note that
along the same lines as Paul Simon’s famous song “50 Ways to Leave Your
Lover” there are also “50 ways to conduct a board meeting”.
None of them are more right or more wrong than the others, there
are just many acceptable ways to conduct business.
This is just that our way and it has worked extremely well
over the years. The process of using a committee structure to perform the leg
work then reporting the results to the general body for action is an age old
proven way of efficiently and effectively conducting business and that is why
it is utilized by over 90% of businesses and organizations today.
73 Joel W5ZN
From: Brian
Mileshosky [mailto:n5zgt@swcp.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2008
7:29 PM
To: arrl-odv
Subject: Board meeting agenda, SM
question
All –
First, does anyone have an agenda
for the last board meeting in electronic format? If so, can someone
please send it to me?
We had a swapfest today and I was
talking with
I explained that the agenda is
pretty general, and the meeting is predominantly committee and officer reports,
which then result in motions depending on the discussion that takes
place. I don’t know of a single motion (at least in my time on the
board) that have been prepared in advance of the meeting, much less specific
topics of discussion (outside of committee reports) such as the regulation by
bandwidth topic – which was promoted as being a topic of the board
meeting in advance. After offering this explanation his comment was to
the effect of “that’s not a good way to run a board meeting.”
Now, he’s a great guy, brand new to the section manager job, not aware of
how board meetings are conducted, and probably getting opinions from other
opinionated section managers.
As for his “that’s not a
good way” comment, I don’t know any better way to conduct our
meetings unless we have a separate pre-meeting to cast things in concrete
before we have the real board meeting.
Does anybody have a better
explanation I can provide him? I’d like to share our agenda with him so
he sees how general it is, with nearly nothing on it for advanced discussion
other than the scheduled discussion of reports.
On a separate note, I think offering
the SMs a summary of board decisions was a wise move, and we should consider
giving them a heads up of what’s to occur at future board meetings
– as is appropriate, depending on the topic, and depending on if we
ODVers know what’s to be put on the table – so they don’t
feel isolated.
Thanks and 73,
Brian N5ZGT