Cancel the Council

Now if you've been a regular reader of SailJuice over the past year, it won't have escaped your notice that I'm no fan of the way ISAF is structured, and particularly the powers that are bestowed upon the 38-headed hydra known as ISAF Council. It's been this way for so long now that I wonder if people have forgotten to ask if there is a better way. Council is over-democratised and over-politicised and incapable of making coherent decisions.

That's not to say the 38 individuals on the Council are stupid, but the net result of 38 individuals voting on things about which they disagree means the collective decision making process is rendered useless. Too often the result is collective stupidity.

One of the jokes going around Madrid was that someone should put in a submission next year to disband all the expert committees and subcommittees, because ISAF Council doesn't pay any attention anyway! That way you could have a three-day Conference instead of a 10-day Conference, and save a whole lot of wasted breath, because the outcomes would be the same but the hotel bills would be a lot smaller.

Another way of looking at it could be to turn the Conference on its head, placing the ISAF Council meeting first, where the 38 members tell everyone what they'd like to see for their respective interest groups, and then it would be up to the expert committees to make the final decisions, adopting ISAF Council requests where they fitted in with the overall ISAF strategy, and discarding the ones that didn't. I like the sound of that.

But fat chance of that happening.

Alternatively you could revert to the strong-arm approach that used to be taken by Paul Henderson, who as ISAF President would throw his weight around and get stuff done through a form of dictatorship. Henderson was not the easiest man to work with, by all (and I do mean all!) accounts, but stuff did get done. A number of people are certainly looking for a stronger form of leadership from Goran Petersson now that he's secured his second and final four-year term in office.

If Petersson were to remove many of the decision-making powers from ISAF Council and create a more effective process for Getting Stuff Done, then he might not be very popular with some of the 38 members of Council (although he would be popular with many), and he would secure the gratitude and respect of a huge number of sailing fans who want to see ISAF moving in a coherent progressive direction.

QUESTION: Will Petersson or anyone else ever be able or brave enough to restructure ISAF into a body that is capable of making progress quickly and effectively?