On Friday, October 18, 2013, Andy Bierman wrote:
Hi Adrian,I have asked you and other ADs several times if Assistant ADs would help.The answer I got was "not really, but a well run directorate really helps.".I think the IESG does an excellent job of reviewing documents.I would not want to increase throughput by simply reducing quality.But I know ADs who have said they wish the job was only 40 hours/week,because it can be more than that.Staffing critical-path full-time positions with the best peoplein the industry for free isn't as easy at it used to be.Why not double the number of ADs in each area and instead ofevery AD reviewing every draft, have 2 ADs from each areareview each draft? (Cut the AD hours in half somehow)Andy
Speaking as a TSV AD, and we all know what that means :-)
What I said pretty openly in the Orlando TSVAREA discussions about ways to make the AD responsibilities more manageable, and what I told last year's Nomcom privately, was that I really want to try SOMETHING, rather than just keep doing what we've always done.
Let me be clear that I've talked about this with Martin, and with other ADs, but I'm only speaking for mysel, and I'm not proposing that this year's Nomcom do anything differently - I'm thinking about next year, when we'll also be reviewing the leadership positions.
The suggestion to add ADs is one that's plausible to me (unless one really believes that no matter how many WGs are in an area, and no matter how many docs they produce, "2" is always the perfect number, except for GEN).
The devil is in the details, of course. Let's start with whether you could do that when the Nomcom process to add an AD because of a workload spike takes the better part of nine months, but there áre other devilish details that even I can think of.
What I would ask, is that people who care about this start by cataloging proposals that have been made previously, so we don't start from ground zero. I'm remembering, off the top of my head, a proposal to two-level the IESG (add ADs until the task is manageable in each area, but only one AD sits in the telechats), and a proposal to separate the charter and management responsibilities from the document approval responsibilities (so, something like a formal cross-area review steering group that Nomcom would likely be in charge of staffing). I'm sure there were others.
I'm seeing many folks expressing interest in this who I didn't notice during previous discussions, and think level-setting would be helpful.
To be clear, I'm very conscious that I'm still learning my job, and I don't think I'm competent to evaluate what WOULD be helpful yet. But I'm also optimistic(*) that SOMEthing would be helpful.
My plane is boarding, but best wishes as you think about suggestions.
Spencer