X-Message-Number: 30327
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:24:29 -0800 (PST)
From: david pizer <>
Subject: Avoiding Decomposition at Alcor
For about 45 years I have been managing or owning
different kinds of businesses. I have learned to
study my own businesses, those of people who have
asked me for advice, and those of my competitors. I
feel I have become very good at noticing indicators
of things that are leading to a business advancing or
declining.
The indicators about Alcor's business are very
concerning. Recently on Cryonet, Dr. Stodolsky
reviewed some of Alcor's performance indicators and
his conclusion was very alarming to me. When Dr.
Stodolsky compared Alcor's performance to our main
competitor, Cryonics Institute, Alcor seemed to be
heading to a grave location.
The three main things that will concern all of us
people who are depending on Alcor's managers' actions
to try to save our lives are the decline of Alcor in
membership growth increase rates and amount of
patients, and all the horrible mistakes some Alcor
directors seem to be making, including their refusal
to discuss these issues with their members. (There
are many other things we could compare Alcor to with
CI that would also show serious problems at Alcor, but
for this work I will focus on the ones mentioned
above).
Dr. Stodolsky concludes that yearly growth rates for
CI appear to be 20% greater then Alcor's. I don't
know what that transfers to in number of members for
each group, but if that keeps up there MUST come a
time when CI will have many many more members then
Alcor. Dr. Stodolsky then states: Beyond the other
differences, the stability of CI appears to be much
greater in terms of membership growth and growth-rate
increases.
The other thing that disturbs me is that CI has taken
over the lead from Alcor in number of patients.
What makes this grave situation (for Alcor members and
patients) seem even worse is that I believe Alcor is
spending way more money in administrative expenses and
things that could be considered marketing costs then
CI, and that Alcor had a huge lead on CI just 8 or 9
years ago.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE IN CI AND ALCOR THAT IS
CAUSING THIS? ALCOR IS A DICTATORSHIP AND CI IS A
DEMOCRACY.
(I will explain why below)
It boils down to this:
Someday, we Alcor members will become Alcor patients.
The strength in safety for the Alcor patients is the
size of the membership.
There IS safety in numbers.
As Alcor declines in market share, while it's overhead
soars, the risk to future patients keep mounting.
If you want to be successful in business, you don't
just look at today's numbers, you look at the
indicators to tomorrow's business results. (although
both are now bad for Alcor). If we members look at the
indicators, it looks like pretty moribund, as our lead
over our competitors along with our hopes and dreams
for survival seem to decompose,.
MY OPINION OF WHY HAS THIS SITUATION HAPPENED?
Alcor directors have allowed membership growth rates
to fall. Alcor is no longer the leader in the most
amount of patients.
The Directors have allowed Alcor to lose their
reputation for being the undisputed leader of all
cryonics organizations in research.
Alcor does not appear to have the financial strength
it once had. It has allowed it's overhead to become
too large as compared to it's income from dues.
Secrecy in Alcor prevails. Alcor no longer shares as
much meaningful information with it's members. Much
of the most dangerous problems are kept hidden from
members under claims of needed confidentiality.
Because they have no say, Alcor Members no longer feel
a part of Alcor.
Donations (in relation to size of membership) are
down. Volunteerism is down. Attendance at functions
in down. Pride in Alcor is down. Many past
presidents and other past leaders have left Alcor or
are dissatisfied with Alcor.
Some members feel Alcor Directors have lost, wasted,
allowed to be stolen or mismanaged away, hundreds of
thousands or dollars of money that Alcor members have
contributed to Alcor.
Inability to choose a competent president. Alcor has
fired or forced to resign, three presidents in a row.
Putting removed presidents on the board. Regarding
ex-presidents after being fired or forced to resign by
the board, the board then put two of them on the
board.
Alcor got terrible PR in the Ted Williams suspension
and in other matters. It seems to many that Alcor is
no longer focused on preventing mistakes but just
hiding them.
Secret meetings. Lack of detailed reports on
suspensions. Lack of sharing performance reports with
the membership.
MY OPINON OF WHY ALL THE PROBLEMS ABOVE ARE HAPPENING
AT ALCOR
I believe there are there is one MAIN flaw in Alcor
that leads to two MAIN problems.
The main flaw is that board members elect themselves
rather than allow the members to elect the leaders of
Alcor.
The two problems that this causes are: 1) Under the
present election system, there is no accountability by
the people who manage Alcor (the directors) and 2) the
members feel they have no real say in Alcor and so
there is less motivation for members to work hard for
Alcor, to volunteer to do things, to donate money,
submit good ideas, etc.
MY OPINION OF WHO WE CAN FIX THE PROBLEM.
Alcor directors can change the way the directors are
elected, allowing a system (with safety checks built
into it) for the members, instead of the directors, to
elect and re-elect the directors.
Here are some ideas on how this might be done, but we
need a lot of input from members to really design a
good plan.
Initial ideas for a member-electing-directors system
at Alcor.
DIRECTORS
1. Directors will be elected from the existing pool
of advisors. Anyone who has been an elected advisor
for two years before the date of the annual election
for the director's office they are seeking can
announce his desire to be a candidate.
2. The Members will elect the directors (see
requirements for members to be able to vote below)
from the pool of qualified advisors who have asked to
be a candidate and from the pool of existing directors
who want to stand for re-election. We need to adopt
rules how the elections will be run.
3. There should be a method for removing (and
replacing) directors before the next election if the
membership so desires.
ADVISERS
1. To be a candidate for advisor a person must be an
Alcor suspension member for 3 consecutive years.
2. The pool of advisers can be up to 5% of the total
amount of Alcor suspension members as figured 60 days
before the election for advisers.
3. Any person who wants to be an advisor announces
that intention 30 days before the election and the
qualified members then vote.
4. At the monthly board meetings or special meetings,
when motions were to be voted on by the directors,
first the advisors would vote on the motion. A roll
call vote would be taken and each adviser's vote would
be recorded. So a record of how each adviser had
voted would be made. Advisers who cannot attend the
meeting in person will vote by computer hookup or
telephone. This record would be published in the
Alcor monthly magazine that goes to the members and a
two-year record would be available at election time
when an Adviser ran for a director's position. So we
would have at least a 2 year record of how advisers
felt about various matters that had come before the
Alcor board.
WHO CAN VOTE FOR ELECTORS AND/OR ADVISERS
1. Any person that has been an Alcor member for 2 or
more years can vote for advisors and directors.
HOW TO MANAGE THE EXTRA WORK, TRAIN THE ADVISERS, AND
INFORM THE MEMBERS HOW CANDIDATES FOR THE BOARD FEEL
ON ISSUES.
Once the members have the vote, and so the members are
now feeling more a part of Alcor, they will become
much active. There will be many of them at board
meetings and they will want to have their input
considered, and debated. This is going to take a lot
more time so we need a plan like they have at some
city and county governments.
At some county governments there are two groups that
have to do with the making of laws and rules and
granting variances ect. Here is a similar way Alcor
could do it.
Whenever Alcor was considering doing something major
they would make an announcement to the members. There
would be two monthly meetings one by a special group
of the advisors selected by the advisors each month to
hear issues and one by the directors.
At the advisers meeting the whole group of advisers
would select a small group of their members to sit on
the hearing board of the advisers meeting. This
group could be changed each month giving all the
advisers a chance to sit and interact with the
members. At these meetings the pending issues would
be discussed. Members would be allowed to have input.
They could show up at the advisers meeting and be
allowed to talk on a subject for a certain amount of
time (say 5 to 15 minutes depending on the importance
of the subject -- but each member would have the same
amount of time to make his case). Or, the interested
member could send in a written opinion and have it
read into the minutes. After the public portion of
the Planning Advisers' meeting the floor would be
closed and the Planning Advisers would then discuss
the issues and then vote. Their vote would be
recorded and passed on to the board as a
recommendation for or against each item.
At the regular board meetings, the members might have
a limited amount of time to speak for of against each
matter and then the board members would discuss it and
then they would vote.
This plan is in the early discussion phase. We all
need to share our ideas and see if we can come up with
safeguards and ways to make this work.
____________________________________________________________________________________
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