RA-Aus has a new CEO

[Guest Maj Millard]

Motz, Even so board membership does take very active posters and clips their wings severely, don't hear too much from Ross and Tony these days, a shame really. Office seems to strip the right of the individual to air their personal opinion in all walks of life.

rankAmateur,

 

Tony and Jim jump in when they need to, as demonstrated at the end of this thread.

 

I too still jump in occasionally on posts that interest me. I do monitor this forum just as much as I used to but have gone off posting a bit after receiving much unwarrented critism from several members, when I was actually attempting to communicate with the members of this forum at a boardmember level. Your loss unfortunatly as I see it. I do however often communicate with forumites on a private level, and am happy to do so anytime.

 

I have plenty of other areas to cover, and just keeping up with matters of the board takes a fair bit of time also. For instance I was one of the four board members who formed the recent CEO selection sub- committee ..........Maj.....

 

 

[Spriteah]

Hi all,

 

I am yet to personally meet Michael Linke but am confident he will be the Manager RAAus requires to get us moving forward again. He brings skills and knowledge of running not for profits and working with volunteer boards. I also do not want to discount the great effort and progress Mark Clayton contributed. We still have hurdles but are making progress.

 

In relation to comments about Don Ramsey he has been nothing but helpful to many on the board. I am currently discussing our constitution with Don and hoping some future changes will be proposed to advance the Association.

 

Regards,

 

Jim Tatlock

 

RAAus Treasurer

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Don and others were supporting Jim and others when Jim wasn't on the exec and was part, indeed perhaps even leader, of the board mushroom subcommittee whose purpose in life was....anything but running RAAus......in my opinion. Support back then was more about not allowing Jim to whip out the back and perform the Japanese ritual suicide thing.....now support is what ever he or other need from Don and or the others among those dubbed as the "troublemakers". But essentially its more than just words these days!

 

Andy

 

 

[Guernsey]

If you have a picture of yourself as your avatar and stick your neck out a lot, it is hard to hide and they find you

I agree Don, it certainly works for me. I just had to milk that one..

 

Alan.

 

 

[turboplanner]

It's spreading.

 

I've just been on the RAA site and noticed the Organizational chart which shows the head as a Board of Directors, which it certainly is not, or?

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Well if the worst thing we say is they called themselves a board instead of a committee of management then life will be pretty good I reckon.

 

Andy

 

 

[turboplanner]

You don't know the difference between a board of management and a board of directors?

 

 

[rankamateur]

It's spreading.I've just been on the RAA site and noticed the Organizational chart which shows the head as a Board of Directors, which it certainly is not, or?

This may be part of the push by some to move to a much lesser number of paid directors.

 

 

[coljones]

You don't know the difference between a board of management and a board of directors?

At the extremes there is a world of difference but in the middle there is for all intents and purposes, none. There are activist boards and directors that spend a lot of their time with their sleeves rolled up and there are advisory boards and directors that excise a light touch and are under the gun of activist executive chairmen or CEOs.

Boards largely set their own identity within the dictates of the act and their own constitutions (or in spite of) and very few boards are ever the same.

 

What is your concept of the difference?

 

 

[DonRamsay]

Board versus management - we've been over it so many times.

 

Don't worry about he semantics, RAA needs the Board of part-time amateurs to leave the management to do the job of running the show. The Board are quite capable of making the policy decisions but do not have the time and in many cases, the expertise, to be the Management Committee. Organisations are different. I think I know this one fairly well and it needs the Board to stay out of the office and get on with the important policy considerations.

 

 

[eightyknots]

Boards should only exercise governance. Management should be left to the executive component of the organisation. Hence CEO is a suitable title for the job.

 

 

[David Isaac]

Boards should only exercise governance. Management should be left to the executive component of the organisation. Hence CEO is a suitable title for the job.

The problem is that is not what our constitution says and why it needs a rewrite to suit a new structure.

 

 

[turboplanner]

A Board of Directors exercises Governance; A Board of Management exercises Management

 

A Board of Management usually sets Policies; A Board of Management usually sets strategies

 

A board of Management is usually non-executive; A Board of Management is usually executive

 

If you have a Board of Directors, they usually hire executives, set the executive salaries and generally sit back and change the executives if things are not going OK.

 

So effectively you have an additional layer of paid people.

 

So the underlying question is whether this is affordable; most small companies cannot afford a Board of Directors and the mandatory Director positions are handled by members of the family which owns the company. Where the affordability kicks in depends on the level of turnover of the company being enough to produce the income to generate acceptable profit after the cost of the additional layer of people, so about the $10 million mark.

 

There are many Incorporated Associations much bigger than RAA operated by Committees, which is what a Board of Management is.

 

There is nothing to prevent RAA from being a proprietary company with a Board of Directors except the cost paid out by the members; I just did a very rough calculation, and that would lift the subscription to about $356.00 with 8,000 members, more if the membership continues to decline.

 

So it's really a matter of cost.

 

However, all of that is irrelevant because the Constitution of RAA specifies a Board of Management.

 

Rankamateur, your suggestion is intriguing, that would be a cushy job.

 

What amazes me is that this Association virtually has no volunteers, and has rebuffed them when they have offered their services; most Incorporated Associations are entirely volunteer, but there are enough people each doing a little bit to carry the total work load.

 

 

[turboplanner]

This is the link to the EGM transcript from the thread "2013/02/09 EGM Transcript now available"

 

http://www.raa.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/RA-AUS-9th-Feb-2013-TRANSCRIPT.pdf

 

 

[rankamateur]

"conversion of RAAus to a more efficient professional and centralised organisation. This means appointing professional paid directors, reducing their numbers to an efficient and less costly maximum of seven" Does this idea really have any traction in the organisation?

 

The idea left me cold in my NSW ballot deliberations.

 

 

[DonRamsay]

There is no traction for the idea of a paid Board of Directors of any size. The current 13 person Board is sizeable and quite expensive to transport from/to all over Australia and accommodate in Canberra (and Temora) for the two face-to-face Board Meetings.

 

The idea of having 5 Board Members elected and 2 more appointed by the five elected revolves around the extra two bringing expertise that could not be guaranteed would come from a popularity poll. I personally don't favour that idea. The expertise that is useful and not highly likely to come from a bunch of pilots is Legal/Company Secretarial and Finance Management. These skills could be part of the resume of a CEO and augmented by contracted advice. Personally, I have long argued that RA-Aus needs in-house management accounting skills in the form of a Business Analyst to advise the CEO on budgeting and cost control. It is up to the CEO to advise the Board on such matters.

 

The experience of RA-Aus being run by the "Management Committee" has been a lot less than wonderful and resulted in the parlous state from which recovery has begun. RA-Aus being run by a competent experienced business manager is far more likely to be successful. This is especially so if the Board choses well (and I am hearing that they have) and then supports the CEO with good policy decisions. Ra-Aus has not shown the ability to elect good business managers who can spare the time to do the job. There are 15 staff who require top class leadership which I have not seen in RA-Aus prior to the EGM in 2013.

 

 

[rankamateur]

That quote was lifted straight out of one of the NSW election candidate statements

 

 

[DonRamsay]

To save me the "joy" of re-reading them all - which candidate?