So, I am not sure what the alternative is. The pressures seem worse if anything at that level would automatically result in a complete recusal, and not disclosing it also seems kind of bad.
Having a private board also doesn’t feel great to me, mostly because I am not a huge fan of lots of intransparent governing bodies, but maybe that’s the best path forward?
Hmm. Do you have to make it public every time someone recuses themself? If someone could nonpublicly recuse themself that at least gives them the option to avoid biasing the result but also not have to stick their past romantic lives on the internet.
So, the problem here is that we are already dealing with a lot of time-constraint, and I feel pretty doomy about having a group that has even less time than the fund already has, to be involved in this kind of decision-making.
I also have a more general concern where when I look at dysfunctional organizations, one of the things I often see are profusions of board upon boards, each one of which primarily serves to spread accountability around, overall resulting in a system in which no one really has any skin in the game and in which even very simple tasks often require weeks of back-and-forth.
I think there are strong arguments in this space that should push you towards avoiding the creation of lots of specialized boards and their associated complicated hierarchies, and I think we see that in the most successful for-profit companies. I think the non-profit sector does this more, but I mostly think of this as a pathology of the non-profit sector that is causing a lot of its problems.
I guess I think a private board might be helpful even with pretty minimal time input. I think you mostly want some people who seem unbiased to avoid making huge errors as opposed to trying to get the optimal decision in ever case. That said, I’m sympathetic to wanting to avoid the extra bureaucracy.
The comparison to the for-profit sector seems useful but I wouldn’t emphasize it *too* much. When you can’t rely on markets to hold an org accountable, it makes sense that you’ll sometimes need an extra layer.
When for-profits start to need to achieve legitimacy that can’t be provide by markets, they seem to start to look towards these kinds of boards, too. (E.g. FB looking into governance boards).
That said, I don’t have a strong take on whether this is a good idea.
I understand your hesitance about board-profusion, but this seems like a reasonably clear-cut case in which a layer of non-public decision-making is necessary to manage COIs in a responsible way.
One possibility is having the CEA trustees do this, alongside the oversight they already provide.
So, I am not sure what the alternative is. The pressures seem worse if anything at that level would automatically result in a complete recusal, and not disclosing it also seems kind of bad.
Having a private board also doesn’t feel great to me, mostly because I am not a huge fan of lots of intransparent governing bodies, but maybe that’s the best path forward?
Hmm. Do you have to make it public every time someone recuses themself? If someone could nonpublicly recuse themself that at least gives them the option to avoid biasing the result but also not have to stick their past romantic lives on the internet.
Oh, no. To be clear, recusals are generally non-public. The document above should be more clear about that.
Edit: Actually, the document above does just straightforwardly say:
Ah—whoops. Sorry I missed that.
Having a private board for close calls also doesn’t seem crazy to me.
So, the problem here is that we are already dealing with a lot of time-constraint, and I feel pretty doomy about having a group that has even less time than the fund already has, to be involved in this kind of decision-making.
I also have a more general concern where when I look at dysfunctional organizations, one of the things I often see are profusions of board upon boards, each one of which primarily serves to spread accountability around, overall resulting in a system in which no one really has any skin in the game and in which even very simple tasks often require weeks of back-and-forth.
I think there are strong arguments in this space that should push you towards avoiding the creation of lots of specialized boards and their associated complicated hierarchies, and I think we see that in the most successful for-profit companies. I think the non-profit sector does this more, but I mostly think of this as a pathology of the non-profit sector that is causing a lot of its problems.
I guess I think a private board might be helpful even with pretty minimal time input. I think you mostly want some people who seem unbiased to avoid making huge errors as opposed to trying to get the optimal decision in ever case. That said, I’m sympathetic to wanting to avoid the extra bureaucracy.
The comparison to the for-profit sector seems useful but I wouldn’t emphasize it *too* much. When you can’t rely on markets to hold an org accountable, it makes sense that you’ll sometimes need an extra layer.
When for-profits start to need to achieve legitimacy that can’t be provide by markets, they seem to start to look towards these kinds of boards, too. (E.g. FB looking into governance boards).
That said, I don’t have a strong take on whether this is a good idea.
I understand your hesitance about board-profusion, but this seems like a reasonably clear-cut case in which a layer of non-public decision-making is necessary to manage COIs in a responsible way.
One possibility is having the CEA trustees do this, alongside the oversight they already provide.