Draft: Update language on engagement in decision-making guide

[afshin]

Questions to answer ❓

Background or context to help others understand the change.
The new decision-making guide contains language about the threshold for decision-makers' participation. This pull request updates that language as per this discussion (in comments).

A brief summary of the change.
This change softens the engagement requirements of members of decision-making bodies.

What is the reason for this change?
The discussion of #98 led to this as a proposed suggestion that merits discussion.

Alternatives to making this change and other considerations.
This is a subject that needs discussion. The alternatives are to accept the language that passed the original vote, accept these changes, or propose a different option.

The process ❗

The process for changing the governance pages is as follows:

• Open a pull request in draft state. This triggers a discussion and iteration phase
  for your proposed changes.
• When you believe enough discussion has happened,
  move the pull request to an active state. This triggers a vote.
• During the voting phase, no substantive changes may be made to the pull request.
• The Steering Council will vote, and at the end of voting the pull request is merged or closed.

The discussion phase is meant to gather input and multiple perspectives from the community.
Make sure that the community has had an opportunity to weigh in on
the change before calling a vote. A good rule of thumb is to ask several steering council
members if they believe that it is time for a vote, and to let at least one person review
the pull request for structural quality and typos.

[mpacer]

Thank you for making this PR, I think this helpfully modifies the engagement section to be more inclusive.

[willingc]

@afshin Let's go ahead and move this to a vote.

[afshin]

We talked about this PR in the last couple governance calls and didn't call a vote on this PR because we've been treating it as a placeholder for discussion.

These specific language changes flip the crux of the automatic quorum maintenance mechanism and it puts the onus on team members to approach an individual who has not been meeting the quorum requirements. I would invite people who have voted on this issue before voting has begun to attend this week's governance call on Friday (9am-11am PT) to talk about it.

My own vote on this would be No if we put it to a vote as is — because an automatic engagement mechanism seems fairer to me than requiring team members to ask their counterparts if they wish to continue — but that is immaterial to the question of whether we should vote on this.

@willingc, do you still propose we open this to a vote given that context?

[ellisonbg]

One of the ideas in our new decision making process is the following:

Teams should not call a vote to short-circuit an ongoing discussion that is still productive in terms of exploring ideas and feedback.
Decision-Making Guide

While the Steering Council is not yet following the new decision-making process formally, we created this guidance as an attempt to formalize the best practices of our current model.

In our Friday meetings, we have been vigorously discussing these issues. Those discussions are still coalescing and producing useful new ideas, even though we haven't reach consensus.

I propose that we leave this in a draft status until those discussions finish exploring the options. I echo Darian's invitation for others to attend the Friday meeting to participate in the ongoing discussions.

[willingc]

@afshin Thanks for the additional context that this is being discussed in the Friday meetings. We don't need to open a vote yet.

because an automatic engagement mechanism seems fairer to me than requiring team members to ask their counterparts if they wish to continue

I think we see this in a similar way. I would expect that the attendance metric is kept for the board and SSC groups on an annual basis. Everyone should get a "do you wish to continue" note (even if 100% attendance) as it provides formal off-ramps for board members. When a board member feels guilty about stepping down even if it is in their best interests, engagement in governance often suffers.

Attendance is important for healthy boards.

Yet, I recognize that privilege does impact who and how often members can attend meetings. Even for the Friday meetings, it's difficult for many to attend for a variety of reasons.

While I can't speak for @mpacer, I personally feel that we're trying to soften the wording to be more accepting and inclusive when it comes to time commitments. As to what will be best, I have no idea. There's always an option to remove attendance completely depending on how long terms span for different groups. The ultimate goal is healthy and inclusive governance in practice.

[SylvainCorlay]

Some thoughts

• I think that having quorum requirements is necessary to a functioning governance. SSC and BoD positions are an important job for a project of the size and importance of Jupyter. A lot depends on it, and we can't be in a situation where most of the board just doesn't show up for consequential decisions. A major feature of the new governance model was also to decouple such organisational positions from recognition, with the distinguished contributor award.

  A feature of a board-led organization (rather than an organization having a single leader for example) is that a board is more likely to collectively do the right thing than any single person. In my experience with NumFOCUS, we have almost always met quorum. We often disagreed during conversations, but generally ended up voting unanimously... It would not work if only 3 out of 7 members really participated in the conversations.

• Like others on the thread, I like the idea of the having it be somewhat automatic - otherwise I don't think anyone will take it upon themselves to approach a member who has not met the requirements and ask them if they want to step down.

[Carreau]

I think that both approaches are reasonable. The proposed modifications do not cover what happens if the non-participation member does not reply, but it does not either prevent either a specific vote to remove/replace a non-responsive member from the board. I do understand the pushback as this requires extra work, but hopefully this will not happen too often, so for a once a year event I think that's fine with me.

…

On Wed, Aug 4, 2021, 15:16 Sylvain Corlay ***@***.***> wrote: Some thoughts - I think that having quorum requirements is necessary to a functioning governance. SSC and BoD positions are an important job for a project of the size and importance of Jupyter. A lot depends on it, and we can't be in a situation where most of the board just doesn't show up for consequential decisions. A major feature of the new governance model was also to decouple such organisational positions from recognition, with the distinguished contributor award. A feature of a board-led organization (rather than an organization having a single leader for example) is that a board is more likely to collectively do the right thing than any single person. In my experience with NumFOCUS, we have almost always met quorum. We often disagreed during conversations, but generally ended up voting unanimously... It would not work if only 3 out of 7 members really participated in the conversations. - Like others on the thread, I like the idea of the having it be somewhat automatic - otherwise I don't think anyone will take it upon themselves to approach a member who has not met the requirements and ask them if they want to step down. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#106 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AACR5TYUOB4ZFERYPT3PZ7TT3G33NANCNFSM5ATUDWWA> .

[jasongrout]

We had some discussion for 30 minutes or so about this during the governance meeting today. Here are a few thoughts I remember from our discussion (and I'm sure there are more that I'm either not remembering or may not accurately capture, so please chime in).

The sentence

If the individual chooses to step down, the individual remains eligible to rejoin the decision-making body in the future.

is somewhat ambiguous. It can be read as the individual has a shortcut to get back onto the decision-making body (i.e., this is conveying an extra privilege to someone in this situation), or it can be read as the individual is not barred from future participation if they go through the joining process like anyone else (i.e., just clarifying the individual is not forfeiting a right everyone else has). It was brought up that this distinction is germane to the discussion about the participatory requirement, in that if it is easy to rejoin, that softens the effect of the participatory requirement.

I don't think a person stepping down because of vote participation in a calendar year should be granted more privileges than someone stepping down for other reasons.

Another point brought up is that perhaps we have an easy way to take a leave of absence, where perhaps all the person's votes are the blank option during their leave of absence. That lets someone step away for a while without giving up access to the communication channels of the decision-making body.

[Carreau]

or it can be read as the individual is not barred from future participation

Another point brought up is that perhaps we have an easy way to take a leave of absence, where perhaps all the person's votes are the blank option during their leave of absence. That lets someone step away for a while without giving up access to the communication channels of the decision-making body.

I think that leaving the vote blank :

• Can give the extra impression the the person is not participating,
• Still put pressure on the person. Usually if you are not participating it's because you don't have time, and don't want more "you have not done X" on your todo list.
• Not being a voting member does often not prevent participation
• Make it harder to read the usual thresholds for proposition to pass or make it harder to track who is(n't) on the voting board.

So I would prefer not to do that.

[SylvainCorlay]

I don't think we should change "required" into "encouraged" which is the main change in this proposal.

Also, regarding what happens when participation requirements are not met, I prefer if things are somewhat automatic as discussed in the thread.

[willingc]

Another way that other organizations deal with absence is to state in their bylaws:

A board member:

1. missing 3 consecutive board meetings (which are on the set annual calendar - excluding ad-hoc or special meetings)
   or
2. missing 25% of annual meetings

shall result in a vote to remove the absent board member from the board. The remaining board members, at their discretion, may allow an absent board member to stay on the board.

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The "how-to" notify could be a policy issue and the process doesn't need to be spelled out in the bylaws themselves.

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This approach would allow the board to consider the reasons for the absences (illness, catastrophic circumstances, etc.). This gives the board latitude to consider why an individual, especially someone from an underrepresented group, has been absent.

While it may be nice to have concrete requirements, we should also consider that those with less privilege and time bring important and diverse perspectives to the board.

[SylvainCorlay]

This approach would allow the board to consider the reasons for the absences (illness, catastrophic circumstances, etc.).

+1 on including language on taking into account that someone may have special circumstances preventing them from meeting participation requirements.