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BOD Voter's Guide

BOD Voter's Guide

Monday, July 18, 2011 - 10:11

Voter's Guide to the 2011 PDGA Board Elections


The PDGA Board formed the Nominating Committee at the 2011 Spring Summit. The overall goal of the committee was to enhance the quality of the election pool for the Board, ultimately improving the effectiveness of the elected Board. The principal motivation for this new effort was the realization that the responsibilities of PDGA Board members have become significantly more demanding as the organization and the sport has grown larger and more complex. Additionally, there was the concern that there were qualified candidates within our membership who might need additional motivation and information in order to consider running for a Board position.


At the Summit meeting, the Board named three members to serve on the Nominating Committee. They were, Dan Roddick, Todd Andrews and Terry Miller. Several weeks later, the committee also added Ron Convers, Jr. to the staff.


The charge to the committee was two-fold, both to provide outreach to promising new candidates for the Board and to identify the skills, training and other abilities that contributed to productive service on the Board.


The recruitment effort appears to have been successful as there has been a substantial increase in the number of Board candidates with a total of 18 (3 women and 15 men).


The candidates for the 2011 Board election are:


Tom Cremer - IA
Bob Decker - KS
John Dorn - WI
Rebecca Duffy - OR
Teresa Trueba Embree - WA
Joe Feidt - WI
David Feldberg - OR
John Heaton - CA
Jack Hicks - FL
Jurky Jurkovich - CO
Jack Lowe - MO
Tom Lowry - OK
Kevin McCoy - GA
Theo Pozzy - OR
Kent Schafer - WI
Peter Shive - WY
Michael Solt - PA
Mike Wierda – SC / AZ


The candidate biographies and statements can be found at:
http://www.pdga.com/pdga-documents/2011-pdga-board-candidate-statements


The geographical spread of the candidates within the US is impressive, however, there are no candidates from other countries. We’ll have to work on that.


Because of the large number of candidates, it’s a daunting task to fairly evaluate their potential for effective service on the Board. It’s important to note that the work of the Board members has become considerably more demanding as the PDGA and the sport have become larger and more complex. In order to make the assessments as fair as possible, we wanted to create a set of metrics that could be applied equally to each candidate. Realizing that this would be a very inexact science, the goal was to identify some of the key attributes that we felt were deemed important for a PDGA Board member to possess. The factors that were selected were as follows:


Training and/or Experience in:
 
A. Competitive Disc Golf
B. Disc Golf Organization
C. Finance
D. Sales and Marketing
E. Tech Management and Development
F. Human Resources Management
G. Journalism
H. Event Production
 
Skilled in:
 
I. Oral Communication
J. Written Communication
K. Promotion
L. Listening to Others
 
Intangibles:
 
M. Enthusiasm for the Task
N. Time Availability
O. Collaborative
P. Creative Innovator
Q. Vision
R. Flexible/Adaptable
S. Respected


We suggest that you carefully read the candidate bios and statements and make your own assessment of how they match up with these attributes. At the end of this guide, you’ll find a rating sheet that might be useful.


Of course, when you pull out separate factors like this, the parts of the whole do not always add up as we expect. In order to balance that concern, the committee also suggests a second evaluation to provide a more practical assessment of each candidate’s potential for useful service on the Board. To do that, we suggest that you imagine that you have your choice of all 18 candidates for a number of typical PDGA Board task assignments. See how each of the candidates matches up with these tasks. If you find yourself consistently picking out a candidate for numerous assignments, that’s a significant indicator. If, on the other hand, you can’t find a fit for a candidate, then that may be a sign that there would be the same situation on the Board. The goal is to achieve a more typical and real-world assessment of each candidate’s abilities. The suggested tasks to consider include:


A. Moderating a member forum at Worlds
B. Overseeing a redesign of pdga.com
C. Selecting an editor for Disc Golfer magazine
D. Liaison to the Rules Committee
E. Overseeing PDGA actions in a lawsuit
F. Coordinating the revamp of the PDGA logo
G. Liaison with a youth development program
H. Reviewing the PDGA's annual auditor's report
I. Liaison to the Tech Standards Committee
J. Providing IDGC staffing oversight
K. Selection of a PDGA Executive Director
L. Liaison to the Course Design Group
M. Redesigning the national tour


The Bottom Line


As in any election, there are many important factors on which you simply won’t have enough information. In the case of candidates that you may know personally, they may gain advantage or be held unfairly accountable for things that you know about their past actions. Candidates who you don’t know are impossible to assess on some of the key factors and also may gain advantage by presenting biographical information that is not reflective of their true abilities. Candidates who have long, successful experience in PDGA work have a clear advantage in our evaluation process. If you have a job that needs to be done, it’s natural to pick the proven veteran over the unknown. However, we also know that it’s essential to have fresh perspectives on a successful Board. It’s hard to give that untapped potential its fair weight in this process.  In short, it’s very difficult to predict how effective any particular candidate may actually be as a Board member. In the future, we hope to have the candidate statements provide more detailed information on these aspects of their qualifications. Video campaign statements may be provided as well. For now, we hope that you’ll find that these assessment tools help you focus on the kind of Board member that you want to move the PDGA forward to the future that you imagine.


To download a copy of the Voter's Guide including a worksheet to aid you in the evaluation of the candidates:


2011 PDGA Board Voter's Guide


Please Vote!


When you receive your ballot in mid July, please take a few minutes of your time to complete and submit your ballot. In doing so not only are you fulfilling one of your basic rights and responsibilities as a PDGA member, but you are also demonstrating that the work performed by these core volunteers is important and worthwhile, both for you personally, and for the PDGA and disc golf as a whole.