[foundation-board] Update on Leadership Team development

Mon Jul 17 19:34:49 UTC 2017

Dear Members of the Board,

last week, Mark, Paul and myself met in London for a moderated Leadership
Team Meeting. Our main goal was to address a number of challenges that we
have encountered as a team over the last several weeks and months. We also
wanted to take stock at where we are as an organisation (in particular in
terms of our mid-term outlook at fundraising).

The discussion was intense, and at times also difficult and challenging. We
discussed issues raised by Paul in his email to the board, and also took
feedback that Garth had gathered from Board members and from staff into
account. The spirit of the discussion was always forward-looking, always
oriented towards concrete solutions and next steps.

We will be providing more details as we develop the plan for the coming
weeks and months, but we wanted to give you a quick update at where we are
right now:

We made the decision to focus the CEO role exclusively for the next 6
months on building partnerships with CSOs, as well as with funders outside
of our "Open Data" domain, with the goal to increase our fundraising
significantly.

We will have clear targets we want to reach, in terms of CSOs engaged, but
also in funding signed. We are developing these targets at the moment.

Mark will take over line management responsibilities from me (which right
now is only Sander) for that period; the Capacity Team Sander is leading
will also be moving under the Operations department of Mark.

Paul will be developing a plan to pursue commercial opportunities (mainly
outside of CKAN), both within OKI, but also with a strong focus on working
together with Viderum on developing leads together. Paul will also take
over the strategic guidance for OKFest to Natasha from me.

In addition to these functional changes, of course everyone on the
leadership team is aware that implementing this and executing on it will
take the full commitment and dedication of all of us. What this means
exactly for each of us individually is something that we are working
through at the moment, and are confident to close out this week.

We found the support by a leadership coach like Garth very helpful; we will
be looking into getting a more continuous support in that regards as a
team. We will need to develop a budget for this, which we will present to
you asap.

I will update you later this week with the success metrics around
partnership building and fundraising, as well as with an outlook for when
we will have a budget ready for your approval.

In the meantime, please feel free to ask any questions you might have.

Cheers,

Pavel

(I have asked Paul and Mark for their input and feedback on this email,
which they both provided.)
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