From: les@sail.stanford.edu (Les Earnest)
Subject: The incredible shinking USCF Board (described at length)
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 21:32:37 GMT

Last January I grumbled about the decision of the USCF Board of
Directors to attend a special meeting with a management consultant on
April 4-5, saying that it looked to me like a boondoggle.  I had dealt
with a number of such consultants in my life and have developed
prejudices against that "profession" as a result, but I hereby retract
my earlier remarks.

The consultant somehow talked the Board into undertaking structural
changes that will take several years to complete but that should
greatly improve the health of the Federation and the sport.  I've been
saying mostly the same things to them for a dozen years, but they
somehow didn't get the message from me.

The primary changes that have now been agreed to by consensus are a
substantial reduction in the size of the Board of Directors, getting
them out of the business of monitoring and (mis)directing the staff
and getting them into the business of doing strategic planning for a
change.  Part of this plan is the elimination of the standing
committees, including the Technical Commission.  In order for these
changes to be fully effective it will be necessary to populate the
Board with a people who understand how to manage a corporation, unlike
most of the current directors, but things should get better even with
a subset of the existing bunch of yahoos.

The current organizational predicament of the USCF is a result of its
history.  Up until 1979, everything was handled by volunteer labor,
which consisted almost exclusively of directors.  Thus, as the sport
grew, so did the Board, until there were 35 directors in the
mid-1970s.  While that large a body can execute legislative processes,
it is too large to have rational discussions about anything -- typical
corporate Boards have 5 to 7 directors, even for large corporations,
for good reasons.

In 1980, I was able to talk the USCF House of Delegates into reducing
the size of the Board to 24.  That amendment was initially defeated
but passed by one vote after one of the delegates reversed himself and
moved to reconsider the issue.  My subsequent attempts at further
reductions have been consistently defeated, but the addition of two
athlete directors was properly approved.  Thus there are now 26
directors who spend most of their effort on looking over the shoulders
of a similar number of staff members and telling them what to do, even
though it should not be the directors' role to do that.

In order to bring about another reduction in Board size, it will be
necessary to convince the House of Delegates that it is a good idea.
Past efforts at doing this failed because certain self-serving
directors played on delegates' paranoia about not having their
interests represented by a small board.  I hope that argument will now
be rejected, given that there is now a consensus among the directors
that the Board is much too large.

I would like to see the Board reduced to 8 directors, but will
probably have to settle for 11 at this time -- one director elected
each year from each of the three sections (Central, East, and West)
and serving three year terms, plus two athlete directors elected for
four year terms each quadrennium.  Even if this reduction is approved
at the earliest opportunity (next September), the reduction in Board
size will not be completed until September 1994, when the terms of
directors who are elected this year will run out.

Hopefully, as the Board shrinks to a reasonable size it will begin to
address the strategic planning issues that it should be dealing with
instead of daily operations.  One of the main questions that needs to
be addressed is how to organize the USCF to deal with the increasingly
diverse components of the sport.

I believe that the Federation should become, in effect, a holding
company with separate, semi-autonomous subsidiaries.  For example,
there could be one group running the existing junior and senior USCF
competition programs and others for professional, collegiate, masters,
interscholastic, NORBA, and BMX programs.  It might even be desireable
to have a subsidiary that deals with the interests of touring and
commuting cyclists or to develop an affiliation with an existing
organization that does that.  The parent body would then be governed
by a Board composed of representatives of its component groups and
would be concerned mainly with allocation of financial resources among
them.

How's that for a grand, monopolistic plan?  Time will tell.
--
Les Earnest                                  Phone:  415 941-3984
Internet: Les@cs.Stanford.edu              USMail: 12769 Dianne Drive
UUCP: . . . decwrl!cs.Stanford.edu!Les         Los Altos Hills, CA 94022