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SCCA: The search for a new president begins

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#1
Johnny D

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Lee Hill, who will become Chairman of SCCA's Board of Directors in the New Year, recently sat down with RACER Magazine to shed some light on the search for a new Sports Car Club of America® President.  The update includes some thoughts on the philosophy behind the search and the characteristics the next SCCA® head should possess.

 

"We've spent a fair amount of time making sure we had the job description where we wanted it,” Hill said in the interview.  “Our hope is that in the group of applicants we have by the SCCA National Convention, we'll have a sufficiently deep pool of candidates that we'll be able to select a president. But if we don't have what we need, then we'll regroup and try to find more candidates. Our sense is that we're a whole lot better off hiring the right person in May or June than we are hiring the wrong person in February. We have not set an arbitrary deadline on ourselves."

 

Read the full article (below) or at Racer.com to stay abreast of the search for an SCCA President.

 

 

Thursday, 22 December 2016
Philip Royle

 

On Aug. 10, 2016, the official word came down the newsfeed: Lisa Noble has resigned as President and CEO of the Sports Car Club of America to pursue other challenges. This came at about the two-and-a-half year mark of Noble being announced as president and CEO of the SCCA. Prior to that, she'd spent about six years on SCCA's Board of Directors, acting for the last few years as Chairman of SCCA's Board. This was also the third time in such a short time span that the SCCA had been searching for a new president. The traditional course of action for SCCA's Board following a vacancy of the president's position has been to appoint an interim president, but this time the Board opted for a different route.

 

"When the vacancy occurred, we were less than a month from the 2016 Solo National Championships, and then the National Championship Runoffs and RallyCross National Championships were going to occur – we felt the SCCA staff knew what they had to do over the next few months and would be fully occupied doing it," says Lee Hill (pictured below), who assumes the position of Chairman of SCCA's Board of Directors come Jan. 1, 2017, explaining why an interim president was, and has not been, put in place.

 

"It also seemed like an interim president is just one more accommodation for the SCCA staff to make. The question is, where do you get an interim president? The last time it was the existing Chairman," says Hill. "What we decided to try this time was having the Chair and Vice-Chair [of the SCCA Board of Directors] be in direct communication with senior staff, to sit in on calls or provide guidance whenever the staff wanted assistance. So far, it seems to have worked."

 

That said, he insists, "We understand we need a president – we can't keep going forever with just the staff turning the crank." Consequently, SCCA's Board has been evaluating what the president's position should entail – a conversation that started long before August.

 

"We've been trying to understand what we really need in a president," says Hill. "We've been working for a year now with a non-profit board consulting company, Quantum Governance, and they've been facilitating meetings, giving us an outside view that isn't tainted with our knowledge, and offering a reality check with the outside world. What are the weaknesses and threats, and what do we need in a president in order to take full advantage of what we've got?

 

"In the past, SCCA Boards have gotten deeply involved in micromanaging the business, or trying to, often by defining problems in a tiny little box and determining not only what the problem is, but also how they want the staff to handle it," Hill explains. "With Quantum, we've been trying to improve the Board's overall ability to function as a proper Board. Part of this is that one of the Board's main responsibilities is evaluating the president, and the president evaluating the Board. Even the SCCA staff was involved in this process."

 

So, while the agency is helping SCCA's Board define the role of the club's future president, it's also helping the Board define its own role.

 

"[The SCCA Board is] supposed to oversee things, we have a fiduciary responsibility, we're supposed to set direction, we're supposed to hire the president – we're not supposed to have our fingers in every little thing that goes on," says Hill of the Board's evaluation of itself."

 

"We have a Governance Committee that's supposed to help move things along, and we are trying to formalize our documents to make it so that we establish a culture of being a proper Board. The ultimate goal is to try to get better communication and better alignment of all the different segments of the SCCA, for the betterment of the Club.

 

"The Board's responsibility is to the entire Club, not to our home territory," says Hill of one of the key things the outside agency has helped the Board better understand. "That's a message I believe all of our Board members understand now, but I'm not sure that's always been true."
Becoming a better club is what Hill insists is essential to survive. "Once upon a time we were the only game in town, but that's not the case anymore," he says. "And, the game is shrinking."

 

So, with reevaluated roles for both the Board and the president, in early December the SCCA released its president job description. What qualities are SCCA's Board looking for in the future club president?

 

"A communicator, an ambassador, a diplomat," Hill says. "Communication is key. A lot of the 'tribal' barriers of the Club can be broken down if you can explain what's important to the various groups. Charisma is key. A term we used with Quantum was 'wow factor.' Someone who shows up in a room and people listen." That said, Hill is realistic about the SCCA's potential reach. "Are we going to get a Roger Penske?" he asks. "No, we're only a $10 million a year business."

 

 Lee_Hill.jpg

 

While they have realistic expectations, Hill and the SCCA Board are still setting the bar quite high for the next president – and they're willing to wait in order to find the right person.

 

"The person needs to be intelligent enough to understand the different pieces of the Club," Hill explains. As an example, he mentions the inner workings of the Club's structure. "The president is going to need to understand the various assets we have to work with," he says.

 

"We've been underutilizing our SCCA regions. The SCCA national office is very heavily dues-based – it's a third of the revenue – where as the SCCA regions are almost entirely participation based. There's kind of a fundamental disconnect there, so one of the issues I see is that the president needs to be able to try to better understand and align the goals of the entire Club. The National Club exists primarily to serve the individual regions in that it handles a lot of administrative items for everybody – like insurance, centralizing rules, and so on. The view has to get broader."

 

That brings us to today with a president search that's nearing SCCA's Jan. 17, 2017 deadline for submitting resumes.

 

"We've spent a fair amount of time making sure we had the job description where we wanted it. Our hope is that in the group of applicants we have by the SCCA National Convention [Jan. 19-21, 2017], we'll have a sufficiently deep pool of candidates that we'll be able to select a president. But if we don't have what we need, then we'll regroup and try to find more candidates. Our sense is that we're a whole lot better off hiring the right person in May or June than we are hiring the wrong person in February. We have not set an arbitrary deadline on ourselves."

 

The goal, Hill explains, it to hire a president who will be good for the SCCA and be able to see projects through in the long run. In other words, they're looking to avoid another short-term hire; rather, they want the new president to stick around and really dig into the depths of bettering the SCCA. Ultimately, this is something that should be good for everyone involved in the SCCA, from the staff to the regions to the members who simply want to race on the weekends.


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#2
Caveman-kwebb99

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Butch kumer for pres!

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#3
Johnny D

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Butch kumer for pres!

 

Kummer, 2 m's

J~


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#4
Johnny D

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How about Randy Pobst ?

J~


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#5
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They missed on one who would have been a great fit in Erik Skirmants when they Hired Lisa. Erik did a fine job with Enterprises.


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