OPEN ISSUE: WG Chair Selection

[Margaret Wasserman]

At 10:44 AM 5/16/2003 -0400, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
>The other case is where the AD wants / needs to replace the chair when the 
>chair would not on his own step down.  (Presume the AD has already 
>discussed the causes with the current chair, but probably not the intended 
>action.)  The AD probably does not want to force the issue until there is 
>a good replacement chair available.  As such, making a public announcement 
>would be "interesting".

This _would_ be difficult in the case where there is only one chair.
If there are co-chairs, though, it might be okay to announce that
one chair is leaving, and then open that slot for replacement.  It
also might be possible to keep a pool of willing victims^H^H^H :-)
folks who are willing to be considered for WG chair slots within
an area.

There is also the possibility of bringing in a co-chair and then
retiring a non-performing single chair, but that could be painful.

>We can make personnel management harder if we want, but is that really a 
>good idea?

Yes.

I think that we should be willing to make some extra effort to
expand our leadership pool and make our selection processes
fairer and more inclusive.  Anti-discrimination and work-for-hire
laws also make personnel management harder in the corporate
sector, but they are worth it.

It is a lot easier to just give the leadership positions to
our friends and the members of our existing "trust network",
but that practice limits the pool of leaders and is known
to be discriminatory (people tend to be friends with other
people who are like themselves -- cultural background, age
preferred language, gender, interests, etc.).

I have hired over 150 people into various companies throughout
my career.  It _is_ much more complicated than this exchange
indicates.  And, doing it in a way that is fair and non-
discriminatory is even harder.  But, the results are worth
it.

Margaret