[ARIN-consult] Fwd: [arin-announce] Consultation on Increasing the Size of the ARIN Board of Trustees

Tue Mar 1 19:11:10 EST 2022

Hi Ted,

I appreciate your general feelings about diversity, but diversity of thought is really the significant factor.

I don't think diversity of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or any of that matters in decisions about the stewardship of numbers.

But diversity of thought is different and I don't think superficial diversity is the desire here, although I concur it may have been in the past.

In addition to diversity of thought, one of the reasons offered for this change was protection from board capture.

Although you may be right about difficulties reaching consensual decisions with larger boards, and those difficulties making larger boards appear conservative, I find that as organizations grow larger they actually grow less conservative as a rule. We could argue that point.

But the advantages gained by making board capture more difficult outweigh the disadvantages associated with slower decision-making.

And advantages of true diversity of thought and relevant experience are even more important. 

A board of only six members is very easy to capture and in the workings of the last NomCom I detected a real danger of that happening at ARIN.

I take it at face value that the current and prior boards were honestly interested in reviewing ARIN governance and that this recommendation resonates with more than just a hired consultant but with the board members who commissioned the review. 

I am not a fan of ARIN expanding its number stewardship responsibilities beyond what is minimally necessary. I am not a fan of the board making charitable donations or spending lots of money on items tangential to number stewardship but some of the issues mentioned below do intersect with those responsibilities. Included among these are cybersecurity, risk management, and legal issues associated with the registration of increasingly valuable resources. These are issues the earliest boards may not have had to deal with, but these have become important today, and likely there will be other issues that arise in the future.

It makes sense with proliferating duties to have a larger board, and additionally the protection afforded against board capture lead me to support this increase in board size.

Regards,
Mike Burns

---- On Tue, 01 Mar 2022 16:06:25 -0500 Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm at ipinc.net> wrote ----

Yes, this sort of thing is all the rage today.  It's a big fad. 
Predictably the phrase "Increase diversity of thought on issues 
impacting the community" was included as a poison pill.

Anyone arguing against the idea is immediately labeled as being against
the magic "diversity" word and thus a bigot and racist and so has lost 
the argument before they even make it.

You might consider that a hired consultant who says "thank you for that
fat check you gave me, the reality is you are doing nothing wrong and
don't need any of my suggestions" is going to be viewed as a scammer
at worst, and a stupid waste of money at best.  Management consultants
ALWAYS recommend changes.  You could hire a consulting firm to study
the most successful and profitable company in the world and they would
find something wrong.

Go ahead if you want.  It just means that even less will get done
since in general the more members on any sort of governing committee or
team, the more conservative it is, and the harder it is to arrive at
a consensus.

https://hbr.org/2009/05/why-teams-dont-work

In another decade the next consultant will recommend shrinking the board
so it really doesn't matter what you do now.

Ted Mittelstaedt

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: [arin-announce] Consultation on Increasing the Size of the ARIN 
Board of Trustees
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2022 13:54:35 -0500
From: ARIN <mailto:info at arin.net>
To: mailto:arin-announce at arin.net <mailto:arin-announce at arin.net>

The Board of Trustees maintains authority over the scope, mission, and 
along with the President and Chief Executive Officer establishes ARIN’s 
strategic direction and fiscal oversight. The Board also has oversight 
authority of the nomination, appointment, and election of individuals to 
Board committees and similar roles.
Over the past two years, as part of its fiduciary duties, the ARIN Board 
of Trustees (“Board”) has undertaken a review of ARIN’s governance 
structures, including the size of the Board. As part of this effort, an 
independent, outside consultant was engaged to review ARIN’s governance 
structures and provide recommendations.
One recommendation from this governance review is to increase the size 
of the Board to strengthen its capacity to provide strategic and fiscal 
oversight of ARIN. Increasing the Board size will:
1. Increase the range and depth of overlapping skills and governance 
experience on the Board to augment its capability. Specific areas for 
strengthening include cybersecurity, risk management, finance, legal, 
technology and strategic oversight. This will require more than 6 
elected seats at the board table to provide this experience.

2. Increase diversity of thought on issues impacting the community, 
limit the possibility of board capture, and balance the time commitment 
required of our community volunteers.

3. Ensure sufficient board capacity to engage in more focused, efficient 
governance activities, including participation in these additional 
valuable committees (e.g. Governance, Risk & Cybersecurity, and Strategy 
& Foresight) to manage the work and oversight duties of the Board, and 
to take on work that is requested by, and important to, the community as 
it evolves.

The budgetary impact will not be material, as the only increased costs 
would be for travel costs involved in attending in-person Board 
meetings. The number of Board members travelling to any RIR meeting 
would not change.

Board Proposal

ARIN will increase the number of elected voting seats of the Board from 
six to nine. The currently available appointed voting seat would be removed.

The additional Board seats would be added in a staggered format with one 
additional seat for election in each of the upcoming election cycles 
starting with the 2022 election period.
ARIN seeks community feedback on this proposed increase to the size of 
the Board. This consultation will remain open for 15 days.

Please provide comments to mailto:arin-consult at arin.net. You can subscribe to 
this mailing list at: http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-consult.

Discussion on mailto:arin-consult at arin.net will close on 15 March 2022.

Regards,

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)

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