Re: on "positive" organizational culture

[Jay Daley <[e-mail]>]

Keith

> On 7/03/2020, at 10:27 AM, Keith Moore <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> I want to state at the outset that this message is about organizational culture in general and not about anyone in particular in the past or present.

Thanks. I found this very helpful. 

> 
>> On 3/5/20 9:03 PM, Jay Daley wrote:
>> 
>> I prefer to aim for a more positive culture both by the way I contribute and by what I expect of others. The culture of an organisation is set by the worst behaviour people are willing to expect.

I meant to write ‘accept’ there not ‘expect’ so sorry for any confusion. 
> 
> I would state your sentence differently - the behavior of those who control an organization, in the long term, approaches the worst behavior that the community is willing to tolerate. 

I don’t agree that is inevitable. There are plenty of people out there, both in leadership positions and not, who have a strong moral compass or some other strong personal limiter and so will not bend.  That is not to say that I think safeguards should not be in place to prevent this - they should. 

The behaviour of leadership, while important, is not the sole issue - it is the behaviour of *all* of us that is important as we are all important in this community. Overly focusing  on leadership ignores the power of individual community members to set the culture of the organisation. 

>   This is because there will always be pressures on the leaders that tempt them to "bend the rules", and has nothing to do with the specific people who are in charge.
> 
> The problem with a "more positive" culture (if by that you mean one in which it's considered inappropriate to ask questions or air concerns)

I am not sure that I could have made it any clearer that is not what I meant. I’m quite happy to state it again that I think it is perfectly acceptable (the same words I used before) for people to ask questions or raise concerns. 

> , is that a lack of transparency is the perfect incubator for corruption.

I absolutely agree with that. Before taking this role my consultancy business focused mainly on open data. 

>    There is perhaps some room for fine-tuning, but it is not possible to have the best of both worlds.

You’re implying a dichotomy there that I don’t see or understand. 

> I would say that a positive culture for an organization like IETF is one in which every contributor has reason to believe that their contributions will be evaluated fairly and openly, and in which there is no reason to suspect that anyone is putting a thumb on the scale to favor one contribution over another for reasons other than technical suitability.

I completely agree as I explained above. I would add though “no *reasonable* reason to suspect” as paranoia or personal distrust also need to be mitigated against. 

> But those conditions absolutely require transparency, even at the expense of some discomfort.

I fully agree. One of the reasons I took this role is because of the embedded principle of transparency and the commitment of the LLC board to look at new ways of making things even more transparent. 

— 
Jay Daley 
IETF Executive Director
 
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> Keith
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>