![Minutes: Process 2010-12-14 [Minutes]](display/images/gocohologo.gif)
Process minutes: 2010-12-14
Agenda:
Process meeting12/14/2010
6:45-8pm
Present: Jillian, Gail
Agenda
1. Checkins
2. Monkey Review
3. Feedback from Skills and Thrills weekend
4. Next seasons jobs, any further actions needed
5. Wiki issues - next steps in creating a Process section, and a meeting
handout section?
6. Next steps, evaluating a committee
7. Next steps, create new appreciation tradition
8. Next meeting
Minutes:
1. Checkins.2. Monkey review
Monkeys from previous meetings:
Re-MONKEY: CRC will work on developing an agenda item that would help build
personal connections among GOers.
Re-MONKEY (did not happen this term): Jillian will ask CRC what meeting this
season would work for them, to present about the Communication Pathway and
the 4 Step Method for working through emotional charge.
Re-MONKEY: Process will look at our agreements in the BOA and make a list of
what should be marked expired, and ask other committees to do so as well.
Re-MONKEY: A request for the Pet Policy as a refreshing policy moment.
Minimum we could email it out to everyone and say we'll review it at a
meeting.
Re-MONKEY: Jillian will invite CRC to Process's January meeting, including
Kate, just to hear how things are going.
Re-MONKEY: would be interesting to know what's next up on Willie's BOA
programming list. Jillian will ask him.
COOLER: create powerpoint presentations for some community agreements, as a
different kind of refreshing policy moment.
COOLER: Discussion item about Convenor jobs at a community meeting -
overlaps with Work cmtee
COOLER: Labors of love, monthly list and prize drawing? Appreciations for
some workers at the end of each work season, take nominations? For jobs well
done within the system, and best labors of love or other contribution?
Monkeys from this meeting, 12/14/2010
MONKEY: Jillian will invite CRC and Kate Long to the next Process meeting
(1/11/11) to hear how its going.
MONKEY: Jillian will start creating Wiki pages and pasting in Process
guidlines, Process mandate, etc.
MONKEY: ask around, ask people at dinner what they think about the
appreciation of the month award.
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3. Feedback from Skills and Thrills
Email evaluation comments posted below near the end of the minutes. Read
through them. Seems like people liked it overall.
4. Next seasons jobs, any further actions needed
MONKEY: Jillian will invite CRC and Kate Long to the next Process meeting to
hear how its going.
Are any minute takers new? No, so they all know the ropes already.
Heather is rolling now at Book of Agreements person, yay! She will do that
for a year at least. Not a job to rotate very often.
Jillian will ask Willie what's next on his Book of Agreements list.
Gail posted the facilitator and minute taker schedule on the board, thanks
for that.
Gail sent a message to the alternative leaders and minute takers to make
sure they know. Tammy is first up.
5. Wiki issues - next steps in creating a Process section, and a meeting
handout section?
This came up for me because I saw in the Infoco minutes, a list of tasks for
the facilitator in how to run an alternative meeting. And it made me wonder
where else that would be captured other than buried in the minutes archive.
On the gocoho.org/my site, there's a link to the Wiki and a link to
Important Documents - is Important Documents part of the Wiki? Yes - its
just a shortcut to have it linked from the /my site.
So that's where it would go - listed in Documents - Process and then linked
from there. Mandate, minute taking guidlines, infoco mandate, meeting
guidelines, 4 steps to working through emotional charge, CRC mandate, etc -
all that can be listed.
My challenge with the wiki is knowing the right search terms to use.
MONKEY: Jillian will start creating Wiki pages and pasting in Process
guidlines, Process mandate, etc.
The trickier question for me is meeting handouts. Where to put them, how to
monitor if they're out of date.
I think they should be with the minutes.
But attachments cannot be archived with the minutes. Most of the time
however presenters will email the handout in the body of an email message,
when this is possible. But this is not always possible. So the suggestion
was the minutes could be linked to the handout posted on the Wiki somehwere.
But the document needs to be only associated with the minutes and it will be
out of date fast.
It seems like 99% of the time the handouts for meetings ARE emailed out
ahead of time, so people who can't be at the meeting can read it. Not sure
this is a big enough problem to create a system for solving. Posting stuff
on the wiki that is quickly out of date and can be stumbled across and
misinterpreted is not appealing.
6. Next steps, evaluating a committee
This has come up in Work committee a few times. Years ago Laird had strongly
recommended that if we have empowered committees we need to have a regular
system in place for the community to review/evaluate how they're doing, but
that it applies to all committees. And better to have an ongoing system in
place than to wait until you have a crisis/sticky situation.
Laird had a document to start from, pasted in below.
I think committees don't like having things given to them to do.
Maybe Process and Infoco can do a self-evaluation and try it out first.
Laird's point is more about, evaluating cmtees to check in to make sure
empowered committees are making decisions that the community is happy with.
GO doesn't have a problem with that as of now, I don't think. Work cmtee has
been looking at it more from the perspective of, the committee's functioning
itself - how to prevent burnout, esp for the convenor, how the committee
work is distributed, how to get new people.
One thing to keep in mind is that communities in Laird's experience may not
be rotating work like we are - his community for example is so small that
the work may rotate rarely. Every community is different.
There are jobs that need to be longer term, like the Book of Agreements. F&L
certainly is doing that. People need incentive to put in the time to learn
the complex jobs.
There is a need for bringing new people in for sure, having ways to
integrate new people.
I like the idea of starting with ourselves to be an example and guinea pig.
And maybe we'll find some ways of approaching it that will make it easier
for others to have.
-----
>From Laird Schaub:
Evaluation & Feedback
OK, suppose your group has gotten religion about using plenary time wisely
and you’re doing a bang up job of delegating and crafting air-tight mandates
for your cmtees. Does that eliminate all the problems? Unfortunately, no.
You have to anticipate that at least some of the time people will be unhappy
with what cmtees have been doing. If the person is a cmtee member and is
getting no satisfaction from discussing it in the cmtee, what is their
recourse? If the person is a group member not on the cmtee, does your group
have an understanding about how cmtees are expected to be available to field
questions or complaints?
Just as healthy groups have a clear expectation that members will provide a
recognized pathway by which others in the group can offer them feedback
about their behavior as a member, there is a parallel expectation for
cmtees.
In addition to figuring out how to handle specific complaints, it is wise to
periodically evaluate all standing cmtees. This provides the opportunity to
do a number of things:
• Celebrate the cmtee’s accomplishments!
• Review the mandate (adjusting it as needed).
• Reflect on the composition of the cmtee—is it time to make some
adjustments?
• Provide overall feedback about cmtee performance (this is different than
addressing an acute issue; here you are looking at patterns of behavior).
TOP SECRET: Cmtee evaluations will tend to go much better if the cmtee self
evaluates first and shares a summary of its examination with the group—if
there’s a glaring deficiency in performance, it will tend to go easier all
around if the cmtee offers a mea culpa before they’re busted by the group.
When cmtees do self evaluations, there are two steps to it:
1. How well is each cmtee member doing his or her job? If there are
problems, how will these be addressed?
2. How well is the cmtee as a whole fulfilling its mandate? If there are
shortcomings, how will these be addressed?
---------
7. Next steps, to create new appreciation system/tradition
Ran out of time, but want to talk about this - monthly award at dinner,
outstanding labor of love, community service, job well done. How to create a
system so that it continues.
What to give as the award, so that pepople feel valued or appreciated?
Doesn't have to be of monetary value. Write songs or poems for people?
Cards? Maybe their name and what they did goes up on a board.
Give someone a free dinner, come out of Process budget? would only be
$5/month o so.
Personal is better.
Statue that lives on your porch when you're that month's winner! Idea - ask
Judith or Becky to make us a banner or flag to post on the porch for a
month? Appreciation flag! With a big star and the Great Oak.
MONKEY: ask around, ask people at dinner what they think about the
appreciation of the month award.
8. Next meeting
Would be the 2nd Tuesday in January. January 11th.
MONKEY: Jillian will email Rod about the meeting date and time.
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FEEDBACK from Skills and Thrills
- Did you like it overall? Why or why not?
It was very fun. Variety, interesting, good opportunities to learn and
spend time with neighbors.
- What was your favorite part?
Home repair session and canning session for learning, cement stepping stones
for creativity and hanging out.
- What suggestions for improvement do you have?
More input from community about what they'd like to have for sessions.
- Other comments?
For me the time commitment was too long. I bailed mid-Sunday afternoon
feeling like I needed to get personal things done. But many people came and
went and that was fine.
THANK YOU Jillian for your gracious and hard work on the whole weekend!
-------
I went to the 2 hour home maintenance program (which seemed like an half
hour), the car maintenance program, and the optimism program. I got
something of value out of each one and I felt that we were only touching the
surface of the leaders knowledge in all three of the programs. The only
suggestion I have would be to allow time. Kudos to the organizers of this
program.
----
Loved today. Wished that I could have done canning AND knives. Not sure
how to make that work:) Really appreciated having time to make art! I
love doing creative stuff but left on my own, I never seem to fit it into my
schedule:)
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At first I was very upset that the community did not choose to do the
creating art option since I really think having more public art would make
our living environment more unique, interesting, and beautiful. I remember
thinking, well, they better make this #$%$@ skills and thrills weekend good
or I'm just not going. Well, I think you guys did a great job, I learned a
lot about home maintenance, how my car runs and how to take care of it, and
I got to create some art too. Good job!
> - Did you like it overall? Why or why not?
Yes - we got to learn practical and valuable skills and we got to create
some art.
> - What was your favorite part?
I did the home maintenance, the car maintenance, and the stepping stones in
their entirety and really like all of them. I got to do part of the
learning to can food session and found that valuable too.
> - What suggestions for improvement do you have?
Don't make it on a weekend where we have a community meeting the Monday
after. And next time I'll tell my husband he's not allowed to head cook
that weekend either. We had an intensely GO focused weekend with very
little time to ourselves.
> - Other comments?
Well planned and well executed. I also really appreciated REAL food for
lunch on Saturday! I am so glad it was not take out again and that Gail
made a tasty and healthy soup. We probably would not have signed up if it
had been pizza, subs, or schwarmas since we are getting burned out on those
items.
Thanks for all your hard work!
-----
It was fun but a little hectic in the shop. I'm thinking if we schedule
anything like this again, I'd like to ask for more definite signups (some
people showed up that hadn't confirmed) and try to stagger the groups so
that not everyone is in there at once. We had pretty much everyone show up
at 1, and so it was too crowded and Dale and I were bouncing around too
much. I think we could have gotten the same projects done more easily if
half the people had come at 1 and half at 2. Actually, I should have thought
of this at the time and just asked a couple people to come back later. It
would probably be more fun for the participants too, as I felt like I spent
he first 40 minutes saying "jut a minute I'll get right back to you". But I
think the kids had fun and everyone left with the same number of digits they
came with, so it was good,
---------
Hi, I already mentioned that I thought it was very successful. The
home repairs was especially good . Also, the way Eric handled the car
info was really helpful and done so well. Much infoand people like me
didn't feel intimidated because of being a car dummy. The tea tasting
was also very well done and very informative. My only criticism is
that I had to choose between the Nia-Zumba dance class and the car
maintenance. I wish I could have done both.
Thanks for all of your hard work--
----------
I thought it was really neat and that the variety of workshops and
combination of neighbors/outside presenters was nice.
>
> - What was your favorite part?
Missed everything due to to being sick, but Andrew & Keith enjoyed the
workshop craft, and made a game we've been playing a lot! Andrew also
enjoyed the chocolate pretzel workshop.
I really appreciated how truly kid friendly this skills & thrills was!
I think it was good for Andrew to have an experience of feeling like
something happening around here really worked for him and was
interesting!
>
> - What suggestions for improvement do you have?
>Next time don't have it when I'm sick, ha ha
> - Other comments?
Although we probably don't want every skills & thrills to be this way,
I really appreciated the fact that we could pick & choose according to
our interests and time and be at "all" of something. When time
constraints keep us from parts of a continuous event, there's a
feeling of missing out that dampens the experience.
---------
I thought the home maintenance thing was useful, good but not stellar.
It seemed like the folks who attended the car maintenance thing got
something out of it and were happy.
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