Re: on "positive" organizational culture

[Jay Daley <[e-mail]>]

Keith

Again thanks for that.

> On 9/03/2020, at 3:04 PM, Keith Moore <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>>> 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.
> (Again, I'm not talking about any specific persons here.)
> 
> Even people with strong moral compasses will occasionally "bend".   Those with weaker moral compasses will "bend" more often.   Some people will not even see the same decisions as having a moral or ethical consideration.
> 
> People with more political skill may be able to negotiate better compromises than those with less skill.   If those with such skill are also wise and well-intended, that's great.   But sometimes politically skilled and/or well-intended people make unfortunate decisions, as we all do.
> 
> Individuals also have personal biases which may affect their decision making, in ways that are not well-aligned with IETF's goals.  Sincere and thoughtful opinions can differ about that alignment.
> 
> All of these factors are always present to varying degrees. Over time,  the mistakes tend to accumulate, as unfortunate decisions made in the past become used as justifications to demand additional unfortunate decisions.   It is _very_ difficult for even the best-intentioned, wisest, and most politically skilled persons to buck that trend.
> 
> It would be extremely unwise for IETF to adopt an organizational culture that presumes we can always have leaders with strong moral compasses, considerable political skill, wisdom, good intentions, and no harmful biases.   We have generally been fortunate, I believe, in often having very good leaders.   But we should know better than to presume we will always be so fortunate.
> 
> That's why IETF's organizational culture needs to be one that is both crafted and maintained by the whole community, not dictated by its leaders.   And that's just one reason why IETF's expectations for behavior between contributors (and leaders are also contributors) need to favor openness and transparency.

I fully agree and if I’ve said anything that suggests I feel otherwise then please let me know.   Of course, in case it’s not clear, my part in that is limited to the LLC and our interactions and the policies we set for ourselves and contractors.

> 
> 
> But back to a statement you made in a note to Randy Bush:
> 
>> There is a big difference between people asking questions, making recommendations, providing alternative analysis, challenging decisions, etc and impugning motives, deliberately misrepresenting people/processes, plain insults, etc. The former is perfectly acceptable, the latter is never acceptable.
> 
> I am largely in agreement with this statement (and have used similar words myself).   I certainly don't find personal insults acceptable.   When someone misrepresents a person or a process, my general assumption is that it's more likely to be a misunderstanding than deliberate.  (But deliberate misrepresentations do sometimes occur. )
> 
> I also agree that it's not appropriate to impugn others' motives - at least not without citing supporting evidence and even then it should be done only as a last resort.    But we should not be so naive as to assume that people never have inappropriate motives. The problems I have with such accusations are: (a) it's very easy to misunderstand someone else's motive and for the accusation to simply be wrong; and (b) discussions about motive almost always serve as distractions from development of better technical solutions.   So at least in most IETF contexts, it seems better to try to keep the discussion in the technical realm.   For instance, if a proposal is motivated by a desire to use the standards process to gain an unfair technical advantage over competitors, it almost always will do some harm to Internet users - and that harm may be easier to demonstrate than the motive.
> 
> But sometimes inappropriate motive does rear its ugly head.   IMO current IETF processes are not well-designed to deal with these cases, but I'm not sure what remedy to recommend.
> 
> 
> Where you and I might disagree is in use of the word "positive" to describe the culture that is needed.   For IETF to function well, it is essential to have technical disagreements and criticism of technical proposals.   These disagreements and criticism are often unpleasant, because the process of examining potential flaws in one's own proposals is itself unpleasant.   The process is unpleasant even if everyone is being respectful, so it's not a surprise if discussions sometimes get heated.   But it's only by exposing such flaws that we can fix them, or discard proposals that can't be fixed.   And many people understand that it's more important to ultimately get good results than to have their own proposals win.   It's even possible to be happy that someone else has found a better way, and good engineers know that.
> 
> I've also seen cases (both inside and outside of IETF) in which a demand for positivity has been deliberately used to suppress input that those in leadership positions didn't want to have aired.
> 
> Bottom line: I believe that for IETF to be able to do its job well, transparency must be more important than a vague notion of positivity.   Or, to put it differently, I prefer to emphasize a different kind of positivity:  I believe we as a community should commit ourselves to producing solutions of benefit for a broad spectrum of Internet users, and our norms of interacting among ourselves should be defined in furtherance of that purpose.

I also regard transparency as absolutely critical.  What I am talking about is just how much more can be achieved if positivity is added to that.  So not a choice between the two, but the combination of the two.

The best way I can explain the difference in our views here is to ask you to visualise or recall a process where everyone involved had confidence that everyone else wanted a positive outcome (perhaps 'win-win' is a better phrase) and where everyone was able to put their ego aside and not think of an idea as their own proposal, but just one possible way of many.   When that level is reached then neither 'robust' nor 'unpleasant' seem appropriate descriptions.

Analogous to your explanation that a moral compass without safeguards behind it has an inherent risk of broken behaviour, my view is that safeguards alone without a very clear desire/aim to take things to that level also has an inherent risk of broken behaviour. 

Jay

> 
> Keith
> 
> 

-- 
Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
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