[foundation-board] Fwd: Update on the Roles of Jonathan, Laura, Marcus and myself

Wed Dec 19 11:28:04 UTC 2012

Hi All,

I’ve just sent the below to our team after discussions with Laura,
Marcus and Jonathan (this follows up the discussion at the board
meeting last week). We felt it important to communicate something as
soon as possible to the rest of the team, but, I would like to
emphasize that exact titles and role descriptions of myself, Laura and
Jonathan are something we’d obviously expect to discuss and confirm
with the board in detail (hence “quoted” titles). This is something we
will return to early in the New Year.

All the best and very merry Christmas to you all,

Rufus

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>
Date: 19 December 2012 11:26
Subject: Update on the Roles of Jonathan, Laura, Marcus and myself
To: "staff at okfn.org" <staff at okfn.org>

Dear All,

I wanted to write to give you some updates on the roles of myself,
Laura, Jonathan and Marcus.

Laura will be coming on full time from January as ‘Co-Executive
Director’ alongside me. We will share responsibility for day to day
general management and organisational strategy, and be responsible for
overall direction and operation of the organisation.

Jonathan will be working closely with Laura, Rufus and the rest of the
coordination team and wider organization overseeing areas such as our
relationship with partners and key stakeholders; developing strategy
and vision for the organization as a whole as well as for the units;
coaching and mentoring team members especially on our vision and
engaging with key stakeholders and the public; thought leadership,
blogging, and representing the Foundation at events and meetings.
Whilst Jonathan doesn’t have any line reports or a budget to manage,
he will remain a critical part of our team along with Rufus and Laura.
He will remain part time until he completes his PhD in 2013.

Marcus will be stepping down from the executive team as of now, but
will be continuing to work with the OKF in the new year. In particular
Marcus will be working with Gavin to grow our professional services
work, and also will be available to support and mentor heads of unit
as needed. We are very grateful for all of Marcus’s work in 2012 in
the executive team which has been highly professional and thoughtful,
and especially in driving our strategic planning through the year, and
look forward to working with him in the future.

I will be continuing as ‘co-Executive Director’, helping to manage the
organization along with Laura and set its direction along with Laura,
Jonathan and all of you. Over the last 18 months I’ve been stepping
back from day-to-day project management and that’s mostly complete.
I’ll of course be helping or advising across the organization where
needed but I’ll be focusing on “steering the ship” and empowering the
team rather than directly doing or managing specific activities. (I’ll
no doubt still be able to fit in the occasional piece of open data
wrangling and coding on my evenings or weekends - just like any other
community member! ;-)

In the future you may hear people refer to the “coordination team”
which consists of the heads of unit, co-executive directors, and
Jonathan. The “Executive Team” will no longer exist.

We’ve had a lot of change this year with the introduction of more
formal structures and processes than we’ve had in the past. The aim of
this is to facilitate us all to work together more smoothly as a
virtual organization. We are and will remain a very flat,
collaborative organization with lightweight management structures and
practices so we can stay agile, whilst enabling us to grow as we have
done in recent times.  We now have clearer lines of communication so
it’s easier to know who to talk to, and so everyone knows who has
responsibility for what - across the team.

All the best,

Rufus