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Dysfunction Run Amuck
Part VII: USATF Presidential Elections, Doug Logan and Restructuring

Posted December 3rd, 2008 at 1:00 PM by Adam Jacobs

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Olympics

Part VII is the final installment in TheFinalSprint.com’s investigative series titled “Dysfunction Run Amuck: USA Track & Field and the Need for Change”. To catch up on the preceding installments, please use the links found at the bottom of this article.

USATF Presidential Election and the Need for Unity

As Doug Logan wrote in his blog on November 4th, “It takes cooperation and vision for a diverse NGB like USATF to come together and set a course for a better future.”

In order for Logan to succeed in setting that course, he will need a strong partner at the helm of the USATF Board of Directors. The next president, to be selected by the membership’s appointed delegates on Friday, December 5th, will likely have a major effect on the progress of the organization and on Logan’s ability to achieve his goals.

With the fate of the track federation hanging in the balance, delegates will be faced with a choice between three strong candidates for USATF President: Bob Bowman, Stephanie Hightower and Dee Jensen.

Bob Bowman is the immediate past president of the Pacific Association, the largest association within USATF. He was vice president of USA Track and Field from 1984 to 1988 and a former American record holder in the 50km Racewalk. Professionally, he was an engineer and a businessman.

Stephanie Hightower serves as Chair of the Women’s Track and Field Committee, a board-level position. She has also represented the Athletes Advisory Committee. As an athlete, she competed in the 100m hurdles and was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team. Professionally, she currently serves as Vice President for Institutional Advancement for Columbus College Art and Design and served as President of the Columbus (Ohio) Board of Education.

Dee Jensen is the current Vice-President on the USATF Board of Directors. She was the first President of the Dakotas Association and continues to serve as an officer. She has experience as a USATF official and coach. Professionally she was a Business and Effective Human Relations educator at the Junior College and High School levels.

[NOTE: For more biographical information on the candidates, please visit our Meet The Candidates page and/or the USATF Nominations Booklet.]

As mentioned several times throughout TheFinalSprint.com’s series, this presidential election comes at a critical juncture for USATF. To that end, a former chief executive of USATF, speaking on the condition of anonymity, explained: “In order for USATF to truly root out its demons and avoid potentially devastating sanctions by the USOC, it must elect a President that is strong, untainted, and willing to really go out on a limb to bring together the warring factions on the Board.”

“I’ve never seen it this bad in my 40 years in the sport,” said Bowman about the effectiveness and efficiency of the USATF Board of Directors. “The sad part of it is that there were good people on the board who were not able to counter much of this bad behavior. They too let the sport down. We need a housecleaning of the board. We can do much better with new people who will seek only the goals and best interests of USA Track and Field.”

Even though some people have questioned Bowman’s ability to unify the vastly different groups within USATF and Jensen’s ability to stand-up to the past transgressors on the Board, both have been characterized as candidates in favor of reform and largely immune from harsh criticisms (possibly because of a lack of public notoriety) during the election cycle.

The third candidate, Stephanie Hightower, has proven to be the most controversial, drawing, by far, the sharpest public criticisms.

According to an executive at the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), who spoke on the condition of anonymity, “If Hightower overcomes a lack of grassroots support and wins, like many have predicted, she will present potentially insurmountable hurdles for Doug Logan’s agenda.”

“You can’t (overdramatize) just how critical of a time this is for USATF … And if Hightower is elected, her polarizing impact on the Board and resistance or at least lack of knowledge regarding fiscal responsibility will be to the measurable and possibly irreversible detriment of USATF members - from elites to youth to masters.”

Of course, not everyone shares this view. Hightower has the most name recognition, has a well-organized core of supporters and has earned the endorsement of many well-respected figures in the sport, including 2004 Olympic gold medalist Deena Kastor and New York Road Runners CEO Mary Wittenberg.

Even some of Hightower’s critics have praised her recent performance as Women’s Track and Field Chair.

However, several USATF staff and board members said that since hanging up her spikes, Hightower’s tenure at USATF has been full of sharp contrasts that make it hard for them to predict how effective and successful she will be if she succeeds Bill Roe as President. The contrasts are drawn from what they called “the Stephanie of old” and the “Stephanie of the last 12-18 months”; pointing to more positive attitude and tactics she has possessed and employed since 2007.

Has the “new Stephanie” turned over a new leaf? Or is she a talented politician working to improve her reputation before an election?

To that point, the president of an Association in the western United States believes, “It’s a tough call … but it, more than anything else, will likely determine whether or not delegates are willing to vote for her over Bowman or Jensen, who may be safer but arguably less dynamic leaders, as USATF approaches one of the most significant crossroads in its history.”

Doug Logan and the Tides of Change

Craig Masback’s decade-long effort to pull the USATF back from the brink of financial ruin, his ability to secure lucrative long-term sponsorships, plus his role in extracting the USATF from the doping-regulator business has laid a good foundation for our national governing body to become a viable, efficient entity that will be ready to take on the challenges that lie ahead. One of the key remaining pieces missing from the puzzle is the restructuring of the bylaws that can address the dysfunction in the current organizational structure and put the board of directors in an environment that is much more conducive to efficient governance.

So far, in his brief tenure as Masback’s successor, Doug Logan has taken a strong stance against doping, promising that he will “metaphorically choke the life out of drugs, drug cheats and their enablers.” In one of his first actions as CEO, Logan wrote a high-profile open letter to President Bush requesting that Marion Jones not be granted a pardon or a commutation of her sentence.

He instituted a new “customer service” culture in the National Office that treats the membership and volunteer leaders as clients and overcome the initial resentment of some of the board members who had been upset with his hiring. Logan also created the much talked about High Performance Division Audit Panel; “an independent audit panel to examine the practices, methods and procedures for selection, coaching and preparing our national teams for international competition.”

He also declared his goals of improve the track federation’s marketing position and dramatically increase revenue to finance a USATF budget that would reach three times its current $16 million level.

Logan inherited the unenviable task of reforming an often deeply dysfunctional board of directors and a corporate structure that the organization outgrew some time ago. That’s certainly the opinion of the United States Olympic Committee, which has repeatedly told USATF that it must either change or face the critical consequences of losing more than $3 million in funding, or perhaps even worse, being de-certified as track and field’s American governing body.

Yet Logan seems up to the challenge and has been successful in extending his “honeymoon period” with what appears to be a majority of fans, the running media and even the most passionate forum-ites.

TheFinalSprint.com has been told by several insiders, including two that may never officially join his fan club, that what has impressed them most is his success, especially over the last month or six weeks, in unifying the often contentious Board and achieving compromise on a restructuring package to which many members expressed deep opposition only a few months ago.

When asked by TheFinalSprint.com how they would describe Logan in only one or two words, board members seem to gravitate to responses that captured Logan’s determination to bring about change and/or a new order: “Reformer”, “Revolutionary”, and “Sheriff.”

“Craig [Masback], like Doug [Logan] now, possessed exactly the type of strengths to deal with the challenges faced by USATF at the time that he was hired,” commented one board member of Running USA, the national non-profit professional organization for the running industry.

A former chief executive of USATF said, “Over the last four months, Logan has proven that he, more so than even Senator John McCain back in the good ol’ days, is a genuine maverick.

“He is dedicated to shaking up the status quo despite how many people he pisses off along the way - and believe me - he has already pissed off many long-time figures in the sport, especially those on the Board who have demonstrated ethically questionable behavior for years.”

Restructuring and Reform

The 2008 USATF Annual Meeting from December 3rd through December 7th, 2008 at the Silver Legacy Resort in Reno, Nevada will include nominations for USATF officers and Long Distance Running Division Chair. The USATF’s website states that the USOC “has mandated that USATF restructure its Board of Directors effective at this year’s annual meeting. The USOC has mandated that the Board be severely reduced in size, and that the Board’s officers be elected by and from the Board’s membership.

According to materials posted on the USATF website:

“As a result of this mandate, legislation will be introduced at the Opening General Session of the Annual Meeting reducing the size of the Board from 29 to approximately 15 individuals, and providing that the Board select the Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer by and from its members. The delegates to the Annual Meeting will continue to elect the President, who will serve as Chairman of the Board.”

The bottom line, as Doug Logan recently wrote in his blog, is that “it takes cooperation and vision for a diverse NGB like USATF to come together and set a course for a better future.”

How is the USATF board of directors going to get from where they are now, which is a toxic miasma of infighting, racial tensions, financial mismanagement and lax oversight to finding the necessary cooperation and vision that Logan foresees? The writing already may be on the wall in such bold letters that the board of directors can’t help but try to put aside all of their petty differences.

The board has, in fact, already taken the first steps toward cooperation and (as Logan wrote) “come up with a blueprint that will put USATF in the best possible position moving forward.” They have put a considerable amount of time and effort into putting forth the proposals that will be up for vote in Reno next month. These proposals include the following:

Reduce the size of the board of directors from 32 to 15 members, which include an elected president; constituency chairs for High Performance, Long Distance Running, General Competition, Youth, Coaches and Officials; three athletes chairs; three “independent” seats; one seat for “5E” organizations (groups such as the NCAA an others); and one seat for USATF’s IAAF representative.
The Board will elect its own Chair. If the USATF President is not elected as Chair, the President will be named Vice Chair.
The constituencies will each provide three names for their respective chairs to a nominating committee, which, in turn will select the board member from those three names. The nominating committee will also either select or recruit the independent board members.
Committees still select their own chairs with the board having final approval.
In accordance with directive approved by the Board last summer, a new Youth division will be created.

In addition to what’s up for vote, the national office will be implementing its High Performance Plan, will oversee the national team staffs once those are submitted to the CEO for review then forwarded to the board for approval, will be responsible for the board-approved annual budget, and will be doing a restructuring of its own.

The schedule in Reno for the restructuring vote on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 is as follows:

Afternoon: discussion/feedback meetings for proposed changes will be held by board of directors, members, committee chairs and athlete leaders.
7:00pm: presentation of restructuring plan to membership for discussion and vote. The proposed changes will pass if 67% of the membership votes in favor of them.

The USATF Presidential Election is on Friday, December 5th, 2008:

First Round: 7:00am – 10:00am
Second Round: 3:00pm: 2nd Round (if needed)

To paraphrase Tolstoy, “All successful organizations are successful for different reasons, but dysfunctional organizations are dysfunctional in the same way.”

After decades of research on the topic as it applies to both nonprofits and corporations, research and trade groups dedicated to management and governance have largely reached a consensus on the most significant symptoms of a dysfunctional board of directors. There are countless lists dedicated to the diagnoses of such boards, and in one form or another, they all include the following warning signs:

Inefficient use of resources

Constituent-based decision making as opposed to asking: “What’s best for the entire organization?”

Turf wars and personal agendas

Lack of communication

No sense of ‘checks and balances’

Infighting, buck-passing, and heated cross-division arguments

Low sense of unity and deterioration of morale

Inordinate amounts of time spent dealing with internal upheaval

Unfortunately, and as evidenced throughout this seven-part exposé by TheFinalSprint.com, the USATF’s Board of Directors has displayed and experienced, at one point or another, each and every one of these symptoms in recent years.

Even the most ardent critics of the USOC’s mandates and those who have questioned particular reforms in the restructuring proposal, agree that there must be change and that the next USATF President will play a critical role in the success or failure of such changes.

During a lecture on how to diagnose and cure a dysfunctional nonprofit board, author Kim Klein explained: “Curing a sick board requires observation, deduction and a good dose of honesty. It also requires a willingness to make significant (and possibly unpopular) changes in the ways ‘things have always been done.’ This is because a dysfunctional board is often the result not of the members’ unwillingness or inability to work, but of a structure that inhibits effective functioning.”

Logan agreed with Klein’s assertion and believes that the current governance structure at USATF –especially as it applies to the Board of Directors– is largely to blame for the past dysfunction and ineffectiveness. In an exclusive interview with TheFinalSprint.com, Logan said, “With or without the recommendations made by the USOC, the great majority of the changes in governance that we are proposing to the membership - I would’ve recommended to the board myself.”

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USA Track & Field is at a critical juncture and with questions of authority, accusations of misdeeds, evidence of dysfunction and a call to action hanging over its head, its delegates will be forced to make challenging and profound decisions. How they vote will likely have a lasting effect on USATF for years to come.

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Dysfunction Run Amuck:
USA Track & Field and the Need for Change

11/20 - Introduction

11/21 - How Did We Get Here?

11/25 - USOC Mandates / A Question of Authority

11/28 - Cannon’s Allegations / Financial Mismanagement

11/29 - ‘Jets vs. Sharks’ Dynamic / Racial Tensions

12/02 - Overstepping / Conflicts of Interest

12/03 - Pres. Election / Logan / Restructuring

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CREDITS:

Segment Title:
“Part VII: USATF Presidential Elections, Doug Logan and Restructuring”

Series Title:
Dysfunction Run Amuck:
USA Track & Field and the Need for Change

Author:
Adam Jacobs, Editor-in-Chief of TheFinalSprint.com and CEO/President of the TFS Media Network. Jacobs also serves on the Board of Advisers for Giving Athletics, Inc and is a co-founder and the current Executive Producer of the Running Film Festival (RFF).

Additional reporting by:
Jimmie R. Markham, associate editor and podcast co-host at TheFinalSprint.com. Markham is also the founder of 400meteroval.com.

Special Thanks To:
James Dunaway: A senior editor at Track & Field News for four decades, Dunaway writes for the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) and is the editor of American Track & Field and Athletes Only! He has covered fourteen consecutive Summer Olympic Games, twice served as president of the Track and Field Writers of America (TAFWA), and written stories for newspapers around the country, including The New York Times and Austin American-Statesman.

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Please direct all inquiries, including requests to reproduce or republish this article, to Adam Jacobs: adam(at)thefinalsprint(dot)com