Structure

[TheDoc]

Hi everyone,

I’m not sure I’m fully qualified to comment here but sod it here’s my 2 pence worth.

I fully agree with Joe that TE are in a spectacular position. Great team, huge community and a player base every other nation envies. The crux of the matter is how to tweak how things are structured so everyone has equal chance of giving an opinion and changing how we do things.

Personally I side with Phil and feel that an unbiased other doesn’t help here. A committee may work but I understand the issues of who gets on it and how your elected it seems a bit convoluted and could potentially lead to the situation we’re in just with a committee in place.

I’d be happy with the idea of bringing ideas to the table, a debate, then a decision by vote on the issue based in TFF. It seems open and fair.

[Purplegoo]

Seems sensible to me, Alex.

[mubo]

20 seems ok to me. Prevents stuff getting passed without engagement.

I still prefer a committee though. I don't think we'd struggle for 5 who have an opinion (8 voices on this thread so far, more on the others). I think it's much preferable to wading through suggestions/posts on here every so often.

There's so much time wasted with posts about eligibility, minimum games, captaincy, EO team, and voting/change requirements with no consensus/action. We have literally been doing this for years. I'd be happy to trust a representative executive committee to make decisions on my behalf. Or even to make those decisions if I were on the committee.

I think it would also clarify role of captain, leaving them free to worry about selection only.

[Pipey]

On Phil’s idea of allowing anyone the opportunity to make a suggestion and bring about a vote if enough people support it – this is a great idea in principle, highly inclusive and transparent, precisely what we’re after. What concerns me is that it will need some sort of coordination or else we could have 10 different votes on 10 different ways of doing things (going by Podfrey’s “Calling All” thread for example), some could be contradictory or very similar. Who decides when a “revote” is too similar to the last one? All of this could be confusing, could be off-putting and fail to focus people’s attention.

So I see why Mubo moots a committee, so we get leadership and clarity.

If we think a single NAF community leader guiding the democratic process is problematic, how about a committee comprised of NAF community leaders i.e. tournament coordinator staff? This way we could avoid more elections, more bureaucracy. These guys are in place to coordinate so it seems appropriate that they would lead on such things.

[Joemanji]

Asking someone from outside the English community seems like a really topsy-turvy way of doing things. They are never going to be as responsive or invested in the process as actual English people.

[Purplegoo]

Either way, our regional tournament staff aren’t appointed with this job in mind. They may not be the most appropriate people to do it, they may not want to do it, and as Joe says, they will have varying levels of investment. If it is to be a committee (not that I back that idea), at the very least it needs to be an elected body that is keen to do the job.

I take Nick’s point that a committee taking the decisions away from the community at least gets us through the nerd forum inertia we commonly suffer from. But I think that would come at the cost of engagement, and if you put a mechanism in place where votes are triggered when meeting a low bar, you get movement anyway. We primarily suffer from inertia now because we have nothing structure-wise, not because what we do have doesn’t work. I also take Bren’s point that we may find we have various, similar but different proposals on the same theme, but I think you solve that with a second round of voting. I would like thing x to change in y way. Well, me too, but in z way. OK then - does thing x change (vote)? Thing x is changing, vote on what to (simple majority likely all that is needed here). I don’t think one further vote brings us to a tedious mess.

Time for a potentially controversial opinion - I don’t feel that the role of captain is too broad at present, as have been suggested in various places. I feel we currently have a captain that is very selection focussed, and that’s fine, but if there was an election with 2+ candidates and a boisterous Q&A next time, I think we would likely favour a captain that wants to do more than Dave does in the run up to an event. I didn’t find the time investment to be too much when I did the job, it’s really not that much of a big deal. Again - this is by no means a poke at anyone, least of all Dave. He did a tremendous job in Sweden and I’m expecting the same again in Cardiff; internet posting is just not his thing.

Appreciate I’m adding to the cyclical nature of this now. Just a hobby horse, and one I’ll park.

[Joemanji]

Not sure how a committee making decisions in private increases engagement or transparency either?

[speedingbullet]

A lot of what has been said here makes sense to me. In particular:

The need for structure (Goo)

The preference for a committee (Team England Executive) rather than numerous votes (Mubo)

Asking someone from outside the English community seems like a really topsy-turvy way of doing things (Joemanji)

A 20 coach minimum for a vote to count (Leipziger)

I also believe Pipey is spot on in that sometimes things only get done if an enthusiastic individual “grasps the nettle”. Having a Team England Executive allows this to happen but with structure. A member of the Executive could take on a particular task or more likely in most cases they would make a decision to delegate to an enthusiast and then monitor / approve the progress / results.

The smaller the Executive the more efficient it is likely to be. 5 people has been suggested but would 3 suffice? The brief could be for the Executive to strive to make consensus based decisions but in the absence of consensus the 3 members would vote and a 2 to 1 decision would carry the day.

In the interest of openness the Executive could be required to publish their decisions on this forum. Not lots of writing but brief summary notes. In the case of a split vote on the Executive the individual votes of the Executive should also be published. Minimum 6 monthly rhythm of meetings and published decisions but this could become more frequent if the Executive sees the need.

What would the Executive do? Decide what events Team England would compete in? Arrange accommodation for Team England at events? Provide information on travel arrangement to Team England events? Arrange Team England training events? Select the Team England Squad for any event from the pool of volunteer coaches? With the Captain then selecting who from the squad is in the team or, in the case of EuroBowl / EurOpen, who plays in which team? Arrange Team England shirts? I’m sure there are also other tasks too.

If selection is part of the brief for the Executive then I suggest the Team England Captain should be one of the Executive. The other members could be selected by community vote at the same time as the community votes for the Captain? One of the Executive could be reserved for an English member of the NAF staff if there is a volunteer from that group. There are so many options in this!

I suggest the Executive should not be empowered to change their own Charter. If the Executive thinks the Charter should be changed then the Executive would draft a new Charter and the community would then vote on whether to accept or reject the new Charter.

Should the vote on Charter changes be 50% or 66%? I don’t know! You could use both values. For example: < 20 voters means no change; 21 voters to 40 voters requires 67% to support a change; > 40 voters requires 50% to support a change. Or is that just overcomplicating things?

[deeferdan]

A lot of what has been said here makes sense to me. In particular:

The need for structure (Goo)

The preference for a committee (Team England Executive) rather than numerous votes (Mubo)

Asking someone from outside the English community seems like a really topsy-turvy way of doing things (Joemanji)

A 20 coach minimum for a vote to count (Leipziger)

+1 to this review of what's been said so far. The idea of a TE committee tied in with the team selection makes sense too. 5 members with at least 3 active on the team currently and one the captain would make sense for a committee too, tying things in with the selection to reduce the amount of bureaucracy.

Ultimately though, I'm just happy to see this happening and would endeavour to ensure engagement and promote it from others.

[Maverick]

Ok I apologise now, for those that don’t know I’m happy to play devils advocate, however none of what I say is meant to belittle or antagonise in any way.

It appears there is a general consensus that for a wider community engagement change is required however most posts seem to try and reduce the ability to change,

Take for an example a conversation I had over this weekend just gone, with the limitation of captains only being from those who have previously attended a eurobowl there is a very limited pool from which to choose even more so when factoring in those willing to stand.

Change is not a bad thing however change for changes sake can be, I read a lot of comments about wanting change without disrupting the status quo too much, unfortunately if we want to move the community forward tough decisions on changing the status quo may have to be made

All of the above has been posted under the influence so take with whatever pinch makes it palatable

[Pipey]

@Deeferdan - agree it's great to see these conversations happening. A welcome step forward.

@Maverick - I also share a concern that some suggestions (namely 67% requirement to change the 2009 selection policy) are effectively barriers to change

@theDoc - not qualified?!? Everyone can have their say equally, that's the point!

Should the vote on Charter changes be 50% or 66%? I don’t know! You could use both values. For example: < 20 voters means no change; 21 voters to 40 voters requires 67% to support a change; > 40 voters requires 50% to support a change. Or is that just overcomplicating things?

Once a democratically agreed charter is in place, 67% seems reasonable to me.

Perhaps we should start with a vote of confidence in our nine year old policy which was never democratically sanctioned. If it gains majority approval then that should be our base. If not then we start from scratch.

Time for a potentially controversial opinion - I don’t feel that the role of captain is too broad at present, as have been suggested in various places. I feel we currently have a captain that is very selection focussed, and that’s fine, but if there was an election with 2+ candidates and a boisterous Q&A next time, I think we would likely favour a captain that wants to do more than Dave does in the run up to an event.

I agree here Phil regarding the captaincy role. I've mentioned before that Eurobowl captaincy brings with it the responsibility of sharing information and gathering opinions about Eurobowl within national communities (Eurobowl Charter, eurobowl.eu). I don't think it's too much to ask if you're prepared to take on the priveleged position of selector that you should initiate discussions about team matters, gather thoughts on structures, selection etc. Dave (Lycos) is a friend but I would have to be quite critical about his failure to do this. He hasn't met the requirements of the charter.

In many ways this is a problem with the system. Lycos came to the role uncontested, and that's in significant part due to our restrictive rules on captaincy (as Maverick points out). Only a handful of former players are eligible. An uncontested captaincy could easily happen again under current rules.

There's no guarantee the boisterous healthy debate you (and I!) are hoping for will happen. Allowing any Englishman or woman to be a captaincy candidate, with the English community deciding democratically, would make this much more likely.

One elephant in the room is that if we had a captain elected fairly by the community and who was engaging with that community as they should then we might have less need for committees etc. We might have the required leadership already.

This is a bit tangential away from creating useful structures in the here and now, but worth saying. Maybe we can avoid these problems in future with better rules on who can be captain.

[PeteW]

We could declare purplegoo King of bloodbowl, and then laugh at him as he tries in vain to find a way to keep everyone happy. Lol.

[Leipziger]

Lots of good ideas and interaction so far. Is the next (first) step to decide how people want to progress things as a community?

Vote/committee/Captain with ultimate power etc?

Once we have a consensus on an agreed decision making process, we can progress to tackling any proposed changes/arranging a timeframe for when prospective changes can be suggested/debated?

[Pipey]

@Leipziger - agreed!

If we get leadership from a committee or similar, then I would've thought their job would be to guide the democratic process i.e. make decisions on what the community should vote on, rather than just deciding on policy unilaterally based on their interpretation of discussions. Right?

The Goo system (structures, but, I believe, still requiring informal group coordination) could work but may involve more debates like these, might be long winded, lacking clear direction. Feels like ultimately a person or persons will have to take a lead to move things forward in any case. Could end up being the loudest voice in the discussion which perhaps isn't the best way.

I'd still say some things can happen (and traditionally have happened) organically and don't need votes - practice days, travel, shirts, even the EO developments etc.

[Podfrey]

Currently away on our wedding anniversary, so will post more when able.

The Charter is an artefact of a bygone era when there was no EurOpen and had a slack handful of contributors. It served in the past, but needs updating to reflect today.

I personally dislike a 67% for public votes as it means it only needs a relatively small minority to prevent change that they don’t like. This is not democracy in action. All other votes (NAF officers, TE Captain, etc) are highest wins. This could be tempered by mandating a minimum number of votes.

I personally do like 67% for a committee of 3, or 60% for a committee of 5. NAF has done this for the benefit of its members; why would a correctly appointed TE Committee not be able to do the same for TE members?

The discussions feel like they are boiling down to one vote for the community: How do you want TE to be lead going forwards?
A) Annually elected single individual (possibly TE Captain, possibly not) as sole decision maker, governed by an updated Charter
B) A group of 3 or 5 elected committee members acting as a group decision maker, governed by a new Charter
C) All decisions to be voted on via TFF, governed by a new Charter on frequency of votes and quorum

Whichever way such a vote went, it is vitally important that (as mentioned), the Charter is not drawn up by those whom will be governed by or subject to it.