Failfest Prague June 2023

Below is a report of the FailFest at the Wikimedia Europe General Assembly 2023 on the 10th of June in Prague, Czech Republic. This session was organised by Wikimedia Europe and friends and moderated by Alice Wiegand, Philip Kopetzky and Jan-Bart de Vreede.

Chatham House rules apply - so the notes will not reflect who said it and who it is about.

First things first

We can imagine that reading this will inspire you to add your own "lessons learned" and you are welomce to ADD things to this page. If you wish to do to anonymously then you can do so in the space provided on our Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Wikmedia_Europe_General_Assembly_Failfest_2023

Why are we doing this?

All of us know examples (past and current) where we are making the same mistakes all over again. The goal is to share the lessons learned in a lighthearted way.

We dealt with three "failure-goals"

1) What to do to ensure that your first staff hiring is a failure

2) How to make sure your board fails in moving from an operational level to a supervisory board

3) How to fail at affiliate - community relations

And a bonus topic

4) As an ED, how can I help my Board fail?

   What to do so that your first staff hiring is a failure

• It's really easy!
• Promote yourself as the chair of the board to be the first employee (or choose another board member)
• Reach out to your closest friends and hire one of them
• Don't write a job description. Don't limit yourself and your first staff member!
• If you DO decide to hire someone from outside the board:
  • Make sure only the entire board together interviews the candidates, you can't trust just a few people
  • Make sure you keep absolute control over your first staff member
  • Keep them entirely separated from the outside world and very close to yourself. They should not have contact with community members, it really confuses them.
  • Get them harrassed in their welcome email
  • Don't defend your first staff member from judgements by the community, however immature or out of place they are
  • Run your Wikimedia organisation with a staff member just like Wikipedia (by committee)
  • You are the expert in everything, so you have to voice your opinion on everything your staff member does

• And in reality....
  • When writing a job description make it an open and collaborative process
  • Don't run it like Wikipedia - assign one board member to run the HR matters of your staff member, but everyone else should not be involved in day-to-day communication with your staff member if it's not absolutely necessary
  • You hiring someone also means that they are here because of your decisions, so you also need to stand behind them if the community acts in an inappropriate manner
  • *The ghosts of the former EDs give their creaking approval*

How to sabotage a move from an operational board to a supervisory board (including hiring your first staff members and not giving them space to do their thing)

• Everyone who is a volunteer on the board and everyone is an expert on everything, clearly more qualified to run the organisation than your staff members
• Don't hire anyone who would have expertise on transforming the board (organisational development, financial, etc.)
• Use Wikipedia rules as the guidelines for your organisation
• Constantly ask for updates from every single staff member
• Never delegate anything!
• Use Wikipedia to communicate everything going on in the organisation
• Use deadlines as a reason to ask many, many questions
• When a staff member is stressed, relieve them of that stress for making their decisions for them
• Never facilitate, always negotiate
• Give the treasurer all the keys so that everyone has to go through them
• All numbers in a report need to be questioned, even if the
• Call staff and ED on the weekend! You are volunteers and only have time outside of the working week, so that is the best time.
• Make your pet projects more important than the welfare of the organisation
  • Make your pet projects an important priority of your ED
  • Make the ED choose which pet project to focus on
• If you have an ED, fire the ED

• And in reality...
  • It is a tough step to make this transition
  • It will not happen without discussions, conflicts and failures along the way
  • Design a document that regulates the internal governance of the organisation
  • The ED in your organisation becomes the operational boss of your organisation
  • Make sure that your board actually covers all the skills required in an organisation with staff members
    • You can put ads on ngo websites to attract people looking to contribute
    • Make sure that everyone on the board is treated equally
  • Make sure reporting is on adequate level, but it's not making your staff inefficient
    • You don't need to ask about every detail in a report if doesn't cause great distress to the organisation
    • Define a stable reporting structure and don't change until it is really required
  • Pet projects should be kept outside any board meeting or board decision, however difficult that might be
  • Welfare of staff is important - if you're unhappy about a specific staff member, you have to go through the ED
    • Support the ED until they are no longer at the organisation, not a minute or second before that
  • How do you square liability of the board with checking on staff?
    • An internal governance document or definition of roles and responsibilities should explain who is responsible for what. Any legal liablity will stem from neglecting the specified roles and responsibilities.
  • You as the board signed up for this, so act accordingly
  • Read any document that the ED or staff send you

How to fail at affiliate-community relationships

• Develop criteria for specific projects and value them so that everyone in the community can comment on them and spend a lot of time and energy
• Expect as little as possible from your community
• If volunteers want to do a project, tell them that an employee can do it better
• Make sure you never ask your community about anything - they're just random people
• If they come to you with feedback, it doesn't actually affect you
• Push a lot of strategy that they're clearly interested in
• Prioritise projects by an online votes
• Make sure you always listen to the same people
• If someone wants to contribute, tell them they are 5 years late
• If you can't make a decision as an affiliate, delegate it to a working group.

• And in reality...
  • Support volunteers in their projects by supplying administrative work or facilitate meetings/sessions
  • Don't overload volunteers  with information, try to think about what is relevant to them but leave the option open for them to dive into the background documents
  • Try to expand the feedback to more volunteers - survivor bias means that you only hear from those that are still involved

As an ED, how can I help my Board fail?

• Overload your board with lots of documents, they really want to know all the details... why would you provide just the information they need in order to make a decision?
• And the other way around: Keep your board disoriented with only crumbs of information in fancy presentations with lots of business language abbriviations.
• Push away every undesired question with a reminder that the board's discussion level is strategical and not operational.

• and in reality ...
  • Figure out which information on which abstraction level the board needs and look for a joint agreement on it.
  • Clarify roles and responsibilities with the board and ask for their expectations.