Domain Association - Part 3

The Chairmen, Treasurer, CEO and Taskforces
Over the years I’ve seen many organisations get confused over the rolls of the CEO, treasurer and chairman. Chairmen often try and be the CEO and treasurers try and control the association via the budget.

The facts are that each of the rolls are critical to the success of the association as long as those people in the positions clearly understands their tasks.

The Chairman
As well as representing the association to other organisations the chairmen:
1. Has a casting vote in the board meeting in the event of a tied vote.
2. Represents the association at events where the membership is present (eg. AGM).
3. The most critical role is often to provide support for the CEO and help navigate any internal or external political issues so that the job of the association can get done.

In my time as the vice-chairmen of the Australian Internet Industry Association I often found myself talking to the CEO and providing another perspective in deliberations. This then sometimes came to offering personal support as the role of the CEO can be personally taxing. To this day I have a great friendship with the former CEO and a huge amount of respect for what he helped accomplish during his tenure.

The Treasurer
This is often a thankless task but one that is vital to get in the hands of a competent person. People often think that the treasurer’s job is to “do the financial books”. In some cases this may be true but it’s often better that a book-keeper actually prepares the finances and reports back to the treasurer. The treasurer can then report on the financial position of the association to the board and to the members at the AGM.

In my experience as a treasurer I found it useful to establish a finance committee where the CEO, two other board members and I were in attendance. We met on a phone call once per month to review the figures and to ensure that they were within expectations.

I would work with the CEO to establish annual budgets to meet the association’s requirements and the goals of the board. This budget would be submitted to a finance committee meeting and then to the following board meeting for approval. Everything was then measured against the budget.

I should mention that when I first stepped into the treasurer’s role I had inherited a bit of a disaster and some tough calls had to be made (eg. Cutting the salary of the CEO). When I handed the position onto my successor I was quite proud that the CEO had been reimbursed his reduced salary and there was over $250K in the bank. It really wasn’t rocket science….just prudent financial management.

The CEO
Sadly, I’ve often found that chief executives make reference to their board in a less than friendly manner. This is a shame as a strong association is often the result of a strong board that has a productive relationship with the CEO.

Generally speaking the CEO of the association should be fulfilling the policies of the board.

That being said, from a practical point of view the CEO provides the following:
1. A bridge between the membership and the board.
2. Represents the association to other organisations.
3. Ensures that board policies are acted upon in a practical manner.
4. Coordinates legal responsibilities (eg. AGM, finances etc.)
5. Provides feedback to the board on the success/failure of policy initiatives

In my opinion the CEO should always be on the board to help avoid any miscommunications.

Taskforces
What I found worked really well was the establishment of taskforces that were centred on particular issues. A director or member would chair the task force and interested members could then join in to add their own contribution. Task forces would only be formed while the issue they were addressing was pertinent.

For example, I chaired the online advertising standards task force. At the time, there weren’t any standards and advertisers had no idea what a view, click or a CPM really was. This reduced the amount of money that they were prepared to spend in online advertising.

I’ll never forget trying to “herd the cats” of advertising agencies that were building various technologies to generate metrics for their clients. Each of them thought that their own methods were the best. In the end they saw the sense in a universal standard. The result was the online advertising industry grew by an order of magnitude.

Another taskforce had to do with cyber-crime. The CEO of one of the major ISPs chaired the taskforce and worked with government, authorities and other competitors to work at reducing online criminal activities.

Taskforces are a way for the membership to get involved in their association that is WAY beyond just paying the membership fees. Since there is feedback up and back from the board then a taskforce could be formed or even be disbanded very quickly. It also meant that the CEO became more of a coordinator rather than a doer that is being run ragged.

When I reflect on the domain industry there are a number of taskforces that really need to be established.

Here's a few taskforces off the top of my head:
1. Net neutrality and the impact upon domains.
2. UDRP and legal frameworks for dispute resolution
3. Transparency of statistics for monetisation
4. Establishment of a domain investor code of conduct
5. Elimination of fraud from the traffic industry

I’m sure that any of you reading this could add a few more to the list. What’s important is that they are issues that you are passionate about that need buy-in from some members to be a part of the taskforce and approval by the board. You can’t have people wanting to create completely random taskforces!

As per usual, I look forward to your feedback and constructive comments.
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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He is the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face.
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