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Tom Petch
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sarah Banks" <sbanks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2019 6:45 PM
IETF Community,
Since Heather announced her decision not to renew her contract as RFC
Series Editor (RSE), there has been a considerable amount of discussion
within the community. The RSOC has been watching closely, and we wanted
to take the opportunity to share some further thoughts.
It's clear to us that the community is unhappy with this outcome; we
share that feeling. We believe that our recommendation to put the
contract out to bid again in two years was part of the reason behind her
decision. In retrospect we would not make the same decision again, and
we apologise to both her and the community for the decision, its
repercussions, and the situation we now find ourselves in.
It was not RSOC's intent to put Heather in a difficult position, but
rather to address an issue that concerned both us and her -- succession
planning -- and we shared it with her in the spirit of transparency.
While we took care to communicate that this was not a reflection of her
performance, in retrospect, we should have handled it differently.
To give some more detail: a few months ago, we had a large concern
regarding the low number of responses to the previous RFP, and we
believed that we would have a problem if for some reason we had to run
that process again.
<tp>
I recall a discussion between us workers and a senior company manager
where we criticised the lack of response to a recruitment advertisement
to which the senior manager responded that they were seeking to fill
just one post so the perfect result would be just one response, a
suitably qualified candidate, who might just be the best candidate.
That has always stayed with me and comes to mind whenever I see
recruiters trying to create as big a list as they can, I imagine so that
they can exercise their skill in selecting from the list, something that
may not produce the best outcome.
Tom Petch
Because of that, we wanted to learn how to get more responses.
We convinced ourselves that the best way to do this was by exercising
the process in 2021. With the benefit of hindsight, we recognize that
this was a mistake.
We also convinced ourselves that Heather would understand the thought
process and agree with it. While we took some precautions to express
that our decision was not a judgement of Heather's performance, we did
not actually socialise the idea with her before making a recommendation.
That was very clearly a mistake. If we had discussed the proposal with
her, we would have better gauged her state of mind and understood the
accumulated tensions.
We remain concerned that the RSE position seems to be subject to an
unusual amount of tension. Currently, we are discussing how we can
gather information from the community (including Heather) to further
understand those tensions, and make recommendations with more positive
outcomes for the role and the RFC series. We're also discussing how we
can improve communication between the RSE, ourselves, the community, and
the other leadership bodies.
We are also listening to the community about the next steps to be taken;
in particular, coming to an agreement about whether the RFP process
should be run to find a replacement RSE, thereby gaining the benefit of
a smooth transition while Heather is still in the post, or whether
another process first needs to be run (e.g., to reconsider the role and
its relationship to other bodies).
If you have thoughts about that or want to discuss other issues, please
find an RSOC member this week; we want to hear from the community.
Finally, we'd like to thank Heather again for her dedication and long
service as the RFC Series Editor to date; she entered a position that
already had big shoes to fill, and in our estimation has enlarged them.
Regards,
Sarah Banks
For the RSOC
