Esther, sorry this got cut off, with your permission, I will take the opportunity to
finish this and respond to Roeland's comments.
>>> Esther Dyson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 03/07 6:00 PM >>>
>would love to read the rest of this....
>Esther Dyson
>Interim Chairman, Initial (thinking) Board <g>
At 12:19 PM 07/03/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Forwarding:
>
>First, let me say that ICANN is to be credited
>for its actions on the DNSO front. While I may not
>ultimately agree with the position taken, it is reassuring
>that the board appears to have actually thought about
>what they were doing and to try to reach some kind of
>compromise. A positive step.
>
>OTOH, there is an increasing title level of use going
>on here that is on the one hand absurd and on the other
>hand troubling. It is the use of titles of people working with
>ICANN and the ever increasing references to "staff" making
>recommendations and formulating positions.
>
>The reason it is absurd is that, given the nature of ICANN
>and its history, this seems quite pretentious. I simply
>must raise a quizical eyebrow when Molly Shaffer Van Houweling receives
>about three different titles over the course of a year, now culminating in
>"senior advisor" (I personally want "Lord High Grand Poobah" or "Delegate
>of the Lawyers Who Say NI!").
>
>What is disturbing, however, is the way ICANN is constantly shaping itself
>as administrative agency. The use of "staff" to create policy
>recommendations and process information, the designation of everyone by
>title, with a title denoting hierarchial status, are all reflections of
>agency structure and mentality.
>
>When Apple first formed, the board and managers treated titles as a joke.
>People went around with business cards saying things like "Wizard Behind
>the Curtain" and "Software Ghod". As the organization ossified (and become
>less effective), it started insisting that its employees act
>"professionally." Real titles, connoting real things, came in. With this
[Continuing . . . .]
came a growing rigidity and a return to traditional heirarchal modes
of management.
The issue of titles is, in one sense, a small thing. Taken as a single
data point, it is fairly inconsequential. Indeed, it is sometimes simply
a cheap way to reward people when you cannot afford to pay them.
(Gene Roddenberry once told the story how they could not afford to give
the "Star Trek" actors raises in the third season, so they promoted
everybody's characters. DS9 later did the same thing.) Taken in the
context of other ICANN behavior, which has tended increasingly toward
top-down fed. agency and corporate mind-think, it is one more rather
distressing straw in the wind.
First, lets start with the generic term "staff" being used more and more
frequently as referinbg to some undisclosed body of people doing
analysis and making policy recommendations. "Staff" in an agency context
has a very specific meaning, although this can vary a bit from agency to agency.
Staff are a support arm designed to make policy recommendations, usually
incorporating a public interest analysis seprate from that of any of the participants
in the proceeding (at FERC, staff are a named party and have a separate, published
position that the Commissioners treat as an independent submission. At the FCC,
staff do not publish opinions, but provide recommendations and analysis.)
Nor is the use of the generic term necessary.
Does ICANN really have such a large staff at this point that it cannot thank them
individually? Again, in the list of flaws of ICANN, it is a mere triffle. Yet
to the exten ICANN is increasingly (and perhaps unconsciously) adopting
the role and manners of a regulatory agency, it is best that such trends be nipped
in the bud.
This brings me to Roeland's point. Roeland wrote:
"When someone asks their staff to do something, then what do
you call it? Do you suggest that the person take personal credit
for the actual work, even though they haven't executed it themselves?"
Of course not. I would rather see people thanked by name. For
example, I understand from people who were in Singapore that Molly
Shaffer Van Houweling did a truly heroic job getting things
together and keeping them functioning, as did other members of the
Berkman Center. Let them be thanked individually. Surely they are
not yet such a faceless army that we must refer to them generically as
"staff." If someone does a summary of comments and presents the
Board with a legal analysis, let that person be named and given suitable
credit. Attributing such work to "staff" creates an institution.
I also disagree with Roeland's statements regarding titles as defining
"Roles and Responsibilities." Titles define heirarchy. I have served
in a variety of positions, at DOE and elsewhere, all with the rather non-
descript title of "staff attorney." While this certainly helped to clarify
that I was at a certain level in the organization, it did nothing to
tell people what I actually did.
I will also refer to the generally anti-heirarchal trends in managment
as defined first in Hammer's "Re-engineering the Corporation."
I do not believe that you need heirarchal titles and detailed job descriptions
to be a "real" corporation. [Others will, of course, disagree. There is no
"right" answer. OTOH, if ICANN purports to be a flat organization in the
Internet tradition, it should adopt a flat corporate model rather than a
heirarchal model.]
Harold
