Excutive Director Report
March 18, 2008

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Dear USA Water Ski board of directors, board members of the sport disciplines, principals of the sport, and the USA Water Ski staff:

I have had a fair amount of experience dealing with governance tendencies of organizations and corporations. Not only has that experience encompassed sport “not for profits” within the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), but also the performing arts International Peace Garden “not for profit” corporation I operated in North Dakota/Manitoba (and, that one was particularly interesting as the entity was located on both U.S. and Canadian soil, so it had two separate “not for profit” corporations; one Canadian and the other U.S.). So, I have seen a lot of good and bad governance tendencies.

The one super bad governance example was with the USOC in the 1990s and the early part of this century. During that time frame, the USOC had 123 board members with a representative from each Olympic/Pan American sport and a whole array of other entities. The board was totally dysfunctional with each board member’s agenda having to do with “how to receive the greatest amount of resources from the USOC for an individual sport or entity without any regard for the organization’s operation as a whole.” It was a cluster. The organization was not staff driven and as a result board members would meddle with day-to-day operations totally disrupting the business of the USOC.

The USOC is a federally chartered organization, and even though it receives no governmental funding, it does receive oversight from Congress.

Congress got involved with the USOC in 2003 in a very public way. Hearings were held, various leaders of the USOC were forced out, and the board, after a long exhaustive self-examination, opted to reinvent itself so Congress would not have to do it for them. A new structure was put into place that caused the entire board to resign. A new, sleeker board was created based on both independent and constituency representation. The new board – 11 members instead of the old 123 – consisted of representation from athlete, national governing body (NGB), coaching constituencies and three independent members (independent members were defined as having had no involvement with sport administration over a time frame of several years). The theory was to bring on board independent thinking from principally high-level business people. There was no geographical representation, no weighting of votes, and no more expensive board meetings. The result was a quality level of governance with the board settling exclusively on policy and setting expectations from staff, and the staff actually executing the expectations.

The move worked so well that Congress also asked the USOC to begin the same process within the NGB world. Beginning in 2004, the USOC was forced to take over a particularly poorly run NGB at that time by forcing the entire NGB board to resign due to many untoward behavior patterns. The USOC gave the NGB – USA Taekwondo – a “Godfather’s” choice of the board resigning and having a replacement board assigned by the USOC, or the organization losing its designation as the NGB for that Olympic sport.

Obviously the board resigned and the new governing entity began the process of redesigning the governance along the lines of the USOC model. The redesign was completed, new board elections within the taekwondo community were conducted, and today USA Taekwondo is a strong NGB within the Olympic family. Slowly but surely many of the other NGBs are taking note of the efficiencies of the USOC and now the USA Taekwondo model of governance. It is efficient, it is economical, and it is the cutting edge of good governance.

USA Water Ski is a fairly new organization in the sense of encompassing many disciplines during its recent past. I have been told it took around five years to get to the point of our governance today. A great deal of effort was put into the philosophy of fair representation based upon the population and other components of each sport discipline. What has been done is laudable. The positive aspects are fair representation for each discipline, and a resulting fair allocation of financial and other resources. Essentially, USA Water Ski serves each autonomous sport discipline as a provider of certain business functions. Functions such as insurance acquisition and administration, membership solicitation and fulfillment, and other administrative functions are conducted by USA Water Ski. These are all provided as efficiencies in running the business as a whole.

But, there is a downside. While a sense of fairness was a worthy forethought in our structure, the weighting of votes based upon the population and other components of weight can also have an adverse outcome. Since we are human beings with certain prejudices toward our own interests, our current structure has a tendency of creating fiefdoms within the corporation. Often the intent of preserving the sport discipline of our own interest through our board votes cause us to operate with a provincial hat instead of a universal hat. If turf battles take place they can actually negatively affect growth within the organization as a whole. If the intent is similar to the old USOC days “of acquiring as much in the way of resources for our own sport discipline without regard for the organization as a whole” we may be on the same path as the old USOC was in the ‘90s.

The creation of governance models within an organization can be difficult to build when trying to provide fair representation in as egalitarian a way as possible. Unanticipated results can sometimes occur. I suppose one of these days the USOC may approach USA Water Ski to look into a modification of our structure. In the meantime, it does make for interesting conversation as we look toward ways to improve all we do going forward.

We are about to enter an affinity membership growth mode to solicit people to embrace all disciplines under our umbrella and to support us because of their passion for the entire sport. We will ask for support that revolves around their passion, but also to help us to support and defend rights to access public waterways throughout the U.S. It is critical that as members we accept all the sport disciplines we have under our umbrella. After all, none adversely affects the others, and going forward together as a strong united front will help further in building the entire sport.

Steve Locke
Executive Director
USA Water Ski