The Nonlinear Library EA - Takes from staff at orgs with leadership that went off the rails by Julia Wise
Nov 10, 2023
11:08
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Takes from staff at orgs with leadership that went off the rails, published by Julia Wise on November 10, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
I spoke with some people who worked or served on the board at organizations that had a leadership transition after things went seriously wrong. In some cases the organizations were EA-affiliated, in other cases only tangentially related to the EA space.
This is an informal collection of advice the ~eight people I spoke with have for staff or board members who might find themselves in a similar position. I bucketed this advice into a few categories below. Some are direct quotes and others are paraphrases of what they said. All spelling is Americanized for anonymity.
I'm sharing it here not because I think it's an exhaustive accounting of all types of potential leadership issues (it's not) or because I think any of this is unique to or particularly prevalent in or around EA (I don't). But I hope that it's helpful to any readers who may someday be in a position like this. Of course, much of this will be the wrong advice if you're dealing with a problem that's more like miscommunication or differences of strategy than outright corruption or other unethical behavior.
Written policies
"Annual self-review [by the CEO] to the board, performance reviews of CEO's reports + feedback for the CEO shared with the board, official routinized channel for making major complaints to the board. More informally, I feel like having more of a 'we do things by the book' / 'we do all the normal tech company best practices for management' goes a long way. Also being formal and quite cautious about conflicts of interest."
Maybe there should be a policy that if you have a problem with your manager or with org leadership, here's this alternate person you go to (HR, external HR consultant, board).
One person from an org where the leader was treating staff badly said they had whistleblowing policies on the books, but it was hard to use them against the leader because the leader had control of the process.
Maybe policies would have helped, if they'd had more teeth. Like the board must do x and y substantive things, here are minimum standards for what that will look like, this kind of report would need to be reviewed. But they had some of that and it didn't help.
"If you are cofounding an organization, have an agreement about what happens if you have irreconcilable disagreements with your cofounders. Every single startup advice book tells you to do this, and nobody does it because they think they are special, but you aren't special. Even if your cofounder is your best friend and you are perfectly value-aligned, you should still have an agreement about handling irreconcilable disagreements."
Role of board / advice for board
Prioritize fixing culture proactively. When you can see the organization fracturing or employees are saying the culture is bad, board members should take it seriously. Not sure what kind of interventions would be best, maybe mediation between employees who aren't getting along.
Having a good policy about how staff are treated is only useful if you carry it out. It's useless if nobody actually investigates problems.
At one org, the leader arranged things so important decisions were made in informal discussions before going to the actual board. The board rubber-stamped things, wasn't providing independent oversight. It was worse because some board members were staff.
Where some board members are uninvolved, the leader doesn't even need to hide things from them - they just won't notice.
At one org, multiple staff members thought the board could have prevented the problem if they'd run a proper hiring round for the leader earlier rather than making hasty internal appointments.
"Have a board that's actually capable of doing stuff, and board mem...
I spoke with some people who worked or served on the board at organizations that had a leadership transition after things went seriously wrong. In some cases the organizations were EA-affiliated, in other cases only tangentially related to the EA space.
This is an informal collection of advice the ~eight people I spoke with have for staff or board members who might find themselves in a similar position. I bucketed this advice into a few categories below. Some are direct quotes and others are paraphrases of what they said. All spelling is Americanized for anonymity.
I'm sharing it here not because I think it's an exhaustive accounting of all types of potential leadership issues (it's not) or because I think any of this is unique to or particularly prevalent in or around EA (I don't). But I hope that it's helpful to any readers who may someday be in a position like this. Of course, much of this will be the wrong advice if you're dealing with a problem that's more like miscommunication or differences of strategy than outright corruption or other unethical behavior.
Written policies
"Annual self-review [by the CEO] to the board, performance reviews of CEO's reports + feedback for the CEO shared with the board, official routinized channel for making major complaints to the board. More informally, I feel like having more of a 'we do things by the book' / 'we do all the normal tech company best practices for management' goes a long way. Also being formal and quite cautious about conflicts of interest."
Maybe there should be a policy that if you have a problem with your manager or with org leadership, here's this alternate person you go to (HR, external HR consultant, board).
One person from an org where the leader was treating staff badly said they had whistleblowing policies on the books, but it was hard to use them against the leader because the leader had control of the process.
Maybe policies would have helped, if they'd had more teeth. Like the board must do x and y substantive things, here are minimum standards for what that will look like, this kind of report would need to be reviewed. But they had some of that and it didn't help.
"If you are cofounding an organization, have an agreement about what happens if you have irreconcilable disagreements with your cofounders. Every single startup advice book tells you to do this, and nobody does it because they think they are special, but you aren't special. Even if your cofounder is your best friend and you are perfectly value-aligned, you should still have an agreement about handling irreconcilable disagreements."
Role of board / advice for board
Prioritize fixing culture proactively. When you can see the organization fracturing or employees are saying the culture is bad, board members should take it seriously. Not sure what kind of interventions would be best, maybe mediation between employees who aren't getting along.
Having a good policy about how staff are treated is only useful if you carry it out. It's useless if nobody actually investigates problems.
At one org, the leader arranged things so important decisions were made in informal discussions before going to the actual board. The board rubber-stamped things, wasn't providing independent oversight. It was worse because some board members were staff.
Where some board members are uninvolved, the leader doesn't even need to hide things from them - they just won't notice.
At one org, multiple staff members thought the board could have prevented the problem if they'd run a proper hiring round for the leader earlier rather than making hasty internal appointments.
"Have a board that's actually capable of doing stuff, and board mem...