What We Are Not Saying!

By: David Pizer

What we are NOT saying when we talk about wanting reforms at Alcor:

We are NOT saying that any certain Director wants to harm Alcor on purpose.

We are NOT saying that any certain Director makes mistakes deliberately.

We are NOT saying that some Directors have intentions to damage Alcor.

I may not be speaking for all Alcor Reformers when I tell you what I think we Reformers are not saying. But I think I speak for a lot of Reformers when I say that when Reformers talk about things that they think are wrong at Alcor they normally are NOT trying to show contempt for, or trying to insult, any particular individual Director. We are trying to show that things are not getting done in the best possible way that they could be done because there is a basic flaw in the core of Alcor‘s basic undercarriage of the management system.

Let me tell you WHY I think Directors do not do as good a job for Alcor as we would like them to do - maybe as good a job as they would like to have done themselves:

I believe that ALL Directors probably have the best possible intentions when they first take their seat on the Alcor Board of Directors. They want to do things to make Alcor grow in membership, public reputation and financial strength. They want alcor to prosper and survive until some time in the future when the patients can be restored to vigorous health and well-being. They want Alcor to survive because they want to survive, and they know that they, along with the rest of us, will be Alcor patients someday. They are willing to put in time and sometimes their own personal resources. Many of them never receive a salary or expenses for their efforts

But judging from what some members feel is a very poor record of performance, (which I have given many examples of elsewhere on this site), some Alcor members have come to the opinion that something happens to the Directors after they have been on the Board for a while. Now, it may be true that many Directors do NOT have much experience in successfully running a business, and that may be one reason why they have done so badly, but I believe their record of so many mistakes, so much money being lost, wasted or stolen has got to have some additional causes.

I believe we should have more representation or successful business people, but I don't believe that all 9 Board seats should be filled by people with successful experience in running businesses, there should be representatives from the medical and scientific community as well. Perhaps about 50 % of the Board members should have an impressive experience record in running businesses so that the Board will have enough different opinions in overcoming the business challenges it faces throughout the years.

Here is my opinion of what happens to the new Directors. An Alcor member becomes interested in trying to help Alcor. For whatever reasons, he gets elected to the Board. He attends his first Board Meeting full of enthusiasm, good intentions and energy. He attends all the meetings and puts in his time, Although his intentions are good, things don't seem to be getting any better. In fact many indicators start to show that things are getting worse.

Alcor members, some of the Alcor Advisors and some Staff members start to give him proposals on what he should do to make things better. But because he has little experience in making successful business decisions he does not know which suggestions are good ones an which ones are not.

As things seem to get worse and worse for Alcor, the members become more dissatisfied with the Directors' actions and performance. The members begin to criticize them or their actions. Some members begin to become more assertive with their suggestions. After all, the members are depending on Alcor to save their lives. They have a lot at stake.

Eventually the members become very disappointed with the performance of the Director. The more they express unhappiness, point our symptoms of internal problems, and protest, the more the Director seems to dislike and ignore those members who are petitioning them the most. It is a spiraling cycle. What feeds the destructive process and allows it to escalate is the fact that all Directors realize, from the day they take office, that they don't have to answer to the members. They don't have to answer to anyone. They can blame the poor performance of Alcor on the environment that Alcor is in, or the distrust by officials, the media and politicians. They blame it on anyone and everyone except themselves. But they're the ones who should build trust in the minds of the officials, change the attitude in the environment, win over the media and politicians.

Alcor is a unique company, unlike many companies where the top leaders have some level of accountability. Directors in many companies have to answer to the stockholders, who can vote them out if they don't perform well for the company, but there are no stockholders in Alcor. In some nonprofit companies, the Directors have to answer to the members. In those companies the members can vote replacements for poor performing Directors each year at election time - not at Alcor.

What I am saying here is that I believe the key to the problem of why the Directors become the way that they do is because they realize that no one can hold them accountable for their mistakes. So even though they start out with the best of intentions, they really mean to do well, when the first mistakes start to happen and they would do well to listen to suggestions from the membership, they feel that they don't have to if they don't want to. When you don't listen to others, you loose some of the resources available, and without as many resources you don't have all the tools you need to do the best possible job. I believe that if the Directors felt more accountable to the members, they would listen to the members better, work harder to find solutions to the problems, and be more careful when they made decisions.

And for those Directors that it turns out are just not capable even though they wish they were, a system where the members do the voting would be a system to replace the Directors whose performance is substandard. At election time, members could simply vote in a replacement who is better qualified.

There are things Alcor members can do when they feel that the Directors are not doing a good job, they can leave.

Leaving Alcor is what Alcor members seem to have been doing lately. For every two people who join Alcor lately, one person leaves. To me that says that people are coming to Alcor because they like the beautiful concept that cryonics embodies - a chance for survival and travel to a time in the future. But after they are in Alcor for a while, about half of them leave. Cryonics attracts people who yearn for freedom, freedom from death, or at least freedom to choose one's time of death. The dictatorship style of management at Alcor gives the least possible freedom to the members, they are not free to choose the people they want to lead the company that they are trusting with their lives.

Some members who don't want to leave Alcor and they don't like to see her going downhill have another idea. They say: 'Let's take the issues to the membership.' Let's gather the evidence, check it over, consider the reasons why things are not better, and then discuss how we can make Alcor better with the membership. That's what ReformAlcor is all about. We are the members who think that careful discussion with respect to everyone's opinions and a forum to express concerns and suggestions for reform is the best way to start to make things better for Alcor.

So what am I NOT saying.? I am NOT saying that some Directors are making grave mistakes on purpose. I am Not saying that some Directors, whose actions hurt Alcor, intend to hurt Alcor

I am saying that we need more Directors with successful business experience AND we need a system to motivate those people that do get on the Board, and want to stay on the Board, to do a better job. The system that will help do both of these is the one where the members elect (and re-elect) the Directors. That is the system that will increase YOUR odds of survival. The system that will not help make Alcor better is the present one where Directors keep re-electing themselves no matter how bad their performance is. That is the system that will increase our odds of having to be dead forever.

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