Board of directors

Being New Zeland and Australian companies, we are required to have a board of directors. In most companies, the board is appointed by the owners to represent them so that the management group, headed by the CEO, runs the company according to the directives from the owners and the board.

At ‘the collective’, this works a little differently. First of all, we invite all members to become owners after 2 years, and second, we hold a yearly election of the board members where all ‘collective’ (owners or not) have the right to vote. Since we do not have a CEO role, and since we have very autonomous consultants, there is really quite little to manage.

What does the board do?

The board have monthly board meetings. The most important responsibilities are to make sure the financial aspect of the business is OK and that the Collective and office team are happy. The meetings are open for any collective members to attend if they wish.

Managing the finances involves keeping an eye on the liquidity to be able to do day-to-day business and to aim for a minimal result at the end of the fiscal year. See Economic Model for details.

If there is any collective member with a low score on Happiness Index, a board members takes it upon themselves to call that person and to try and find out what can be done to make them happier.

This is the template for our monthly board meetings.

1. Election of meeting secretary, chairman and attestant
2. Schedule next meeting
3. Information round
4. Walk-through of previous protocol and action points
5. Walk-through of economy
6. Walk-through of Happiness Index
   • The board creates action points to call any Crispers that have a low score on Happiness Index.
7. Important calendar events
8. Are there any blockers for the office?
9. Free topics
   • Topic suggestions on post-it notes
   • Prioritization
   • Work through the topics

How do we elect the board?

We elect the board annually at the Unconference in the fall. Our board consists of four people

1. Chairperson
2. Board member 1
3. Board member 2
4. Board alternate

The current election process

Before the election starts, collective members who volunteer to run for the board of directors put their name up for consideration on a dedicated wall somewhere.

When it is time for the election, all collective members gather in a big circle. One of the Unconference facilitators manages the election process, where we elect one member at a time, in the order listed above, using closed voting and relative majority.

For each position on the board:

1. Any collective member may nominate any other member.
2. Nominees who accept the nomination are given the opportunity to offer a short motivation for why to vote for them.
3. Each collective member casts a vote by writing the name of their favourite candidate on a piece of paper, and putting it in a basket in the middle of the circle.
4. When everyone has voted, 2-3 people count the votes in front of the group. The candidate with the largest number of votes is announced the winner without further ado.

We repeat this process until all four positions are filled.

Since we vote for one position at a time, we have the possibility to vote for a strong team. Let’s say the chairperson is an intuitive agile coach, then, maybe, people will vote for a person of different qualities, in the next round, to balance out the team. Past practice could be, the board consist of one from our office staff, one technical person and one agile coach.

We may look to change how we elect the board to one based on the Sociocracy election process to get more reasoning about the composition and feedback to the nominated people.