[Kzyxtalk] Structural change: Requre Board to Communicate with Members

[Norman de Vall]

Organizations eventually have their own DNA.  You could change all the members 
of the board and you wouldn’t see much change.  Same thing happens in Congress.
We’d have a more pro-active open board if the members were chosen at random
from the membership if they were willing to serve.  Sort of like the Grand Jury.

The objective of most organizations is to maintain the status quo.  But like
people, they go through an aging process and if change does not happen 
they will disappear.  Most businesses, public and private, over time have either 
“re-structured” themselves, gone into bankruptcy, been merged, bought out,
or collapsed.  I once offered to share a book on this subject with the 
then GM and was rudely rebuked.

 

How would you know if you’d met the 5% requirement?

> On Mar 21, 2017, at 5:14 PM, John Sakowicz <sako4 at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> You have my vote, King.
> 
> From: "King Collins" <king at greenmac.com>
> To: "kzyxtalk" <kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2017 4:53:03 PM
> Subject: [Kzyxtalk] Structural change: Requre Board to Communicate with        Members
> 
> To KZYX Members and Board
> 
> Re. Structural Change
> 
> It seems to be very hard to get this across:
> 
> Years of watching and recording events as KZYX board members come and go, has convinced me that:
> 
> It is not all that important which person is elected to the board, whether that person is a person of good character and or appears to be interested in the station. There have been many good people, and I think of most of them as friends.
> 
> All those on the board, with few exceptions, over the years have been a good people, caring people, fine people. Yet somehow these good people just flounder along, seldom ask the right questions and go with whatever prevailing wind blows through the boardroom. And the same centrist hierarchical wind has prevailed since KZYX was founded by Sean Donavon, or certainly since the time I was on the board 
> 
> The only way that things will change in the direction of more control by  the local membership, by the local people, is a Structural Change in the way the board is organized. In particular KZYX, which defines itself as a member controlled organization should have a requirement, a structural requirement, a bylaw  that REQUIRES board members to interact, frequently and regularly with the members who elected them. 
> 
> That has never been tried in any serious way. If board members had to present themselves, and their plans, not just once but regularly, in front of the members, those with good ideas will have a chance, and those who are weak or ineffective will reveal themselves.
> 
> Whereas in the current process the board meets in secret and the public never get to know what board members are like and how each contributes to the discussion or even what is discussed. Who knows what happened? Those who are weak and ineffective, or tired, or just going along---may very well continue forever and nothing will change, and indeed nothing has changed. (See The Secret Life of KZYX, written in 2005, when I posited the existence of "Centrist" and "Egalitarian" tendencies.)
> 
> Act Of The Membership by means of a Ballot Initiative.
> 
> For membership control, it comes down to how such structural change can be accomplished. There are other ways than electing individual board members. There is something called an Act Of The Membership, which can be a Ballot Initiative, passed by a majority of the voting members, establishing a new bylaw which to require the board to interact directly with the membership (as specified in the bylaw, perhaps a regular radio show, opening the closed board list serv, a public email listserv, or other means). 
> 
> That would be a structural change that directly challenges the current process of secret meetings, closed board listserv and very infrequent board meetings with limited opportunity for public interaction and refusal of board members to even answer questions from the floor.
> 
> For a Ballot Initiative To Require Board Members To Communicate Regularly With Members
> 
> --king collins
> 
> P.S. The Ballot Initiative can be forced (to be put on the next election ballot) by a petition signed by 5% of the members. 
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