How can we keep Reps accountable?

[mkohler (Michael Kohler)]

@majken

Also, on the topic of accountability in the program itself, I think it’s important that it has to be top down anyway. If a Rep doesn’t fill out a report it doesn’t affect the program to the same degree as council members not attending meetings or voting. If council is accountable, then they are holding mentors accountable and they are holding Reps accountable. Reps being more accountable doesn’t trickle back up and make a lax mentor more accountable.

I agree that this is a valuable solution. But there are two open questions for this where I’d like to get your feedback on as well:

• How can we keep someone accountable? Just being accountable to someone in theory doesn’t seem enough to me. What are mechanisms or processes that would help us here?
• I see Reps as a program to empower the local community. In that sense I also see being Rep as a role which comes with certain responsibilities to support the local community. Of course it’s completely acceptable for a volunteer to take a break (and please do form time to time!), but on the other hand I think that one of those responsibilities include to be active for the local community (or the global community for that matter) on a regular basis. Would you agree to that? If so, what do you think how we could keep Reps accountable to that responsibility?

Further, my observation here is that this discussion is mostly focused on reports. I’m pretty sure that filling out reports is not the only possible solution to achieve accountability. What do the rest of the people reading here think about the “regular communication with your mentor with OKRs idea”? What could be other means to achieve the goal of accountability? We came up with those initial ideas in a meeting with very few persons. Having more than 200 Reps in the program currently, I’m sure that there are a lot of other ideas that could be of value here! Feel free to also suggest ideas that might sound crazy at the beginning, but might actually be the solution for this!

For myself it starts with holding myself accountable. While this is probably contradicting the “accountability” term in theory, it’s what I’m trying. I’m setting myself clear goals with action items to bring something to completion. Further I have the goal to respond to community members within at least 2 days for any question they have or help they might need. Having Henrik as mentor who keeps me accountable to that as well helps here as well. But it might not need to be Henrik, it could basically be anyone else I have a trusted relation with. For my Council work it’s the rest of the Council members and the Reps Peers who hold me accountable.

Here’s an idea that just came to my mind:
Our initial idea was to increase and making sure that the accountability part of the Reps role is hold on through the mentor. What if this could be anyone in the community who knows your responsibilities very well and would hold you accountable on them? What if we go further by one level and would have someone else accountable of that person?

I’d love to hear all your crazy ideas here, we’re talking about this because we want to find the best possible solution,