Process minutes: 2013-01-15

Minutes:

Process meeting
1/15/2013
6:45-7:45, CH sitting room
Present: Gail, Syndallas, Becky H, Elph, Jillian, Alicia for part

Agenda
1. Check ins
2. Monkeys
3. Process-jobs work season checkin
4. Monday's meeting
5. Topics for Laird facilitation day
6. Next meeting

Re-MONKEY: Jillian will email info out about member resources in January -
remind people that we have this. (look at what the budget is for 2013 - its
was reduced)

COOLER: Idea for future work seasons - to encourage new facilitators, have
one extra facilitator slot for work credit, for someone who is new and who
would not facilitate, but would be like an intern. Come to infoco and come
to debriefs when they can to learn without the pressure. Maybe could do
support roles in meeting - scribe, etc.

MONKEY: idea - how about if we trade off, each taking a month in rotation,
and some time during our month we post a paragraph on "talk" about one book
of our choice in the community collection? We could take the description
from amazon or the jacket/cover if we haven't read it, that's fine.
January: Jilian
February: Becky
March: Syndallas
April: Gail

MONKEY: Process members to come to the beginning of the next Work cmtee
meeting if possible, that's Sunday evening Jan 27, 7pm in CH.

MONKEY: Jillian will ask CRC to announce who's on it this term, at Monday's
meeting.


3. Process jobs this work season

No issues that we know of as of now.
MONKEY: Jillian will ask CRC to announce who's on it this term, at Monday's
meeting.


4. Monday's Meeting

The main agenda item is an info item by F&L. Last week there was a lively
set of email exchanges between Steering and F&L. At Steering's request,
Jillian for Process went to the F&L meeting Monday, mostly just listened,
was a fine discussion. The gist of that was not focused on outside
facilitation from Laird. They will have an info agenda item at the next
community meeting and are trying out a new work position among other
things.


5. Topics for Laird facilitation

There had been some email discussion about the potential for having a topic
for our day of facilitation with Laird be, how GO deals with the situation
of members behind on association fees. As of now, or at least as of
Monday's F&L meeting, that is not so "up" any more, F&L has a way to
proceed.

Work cmtee in the meantime sent an email saying they would like the
community to consider the topic of members not meeting their obligations to
the community around the work system, for our day with Laird:

per Work cmtee, this includes the issues of
- Non-participating residents
- Residents who always ask for reduced loads
- Absentee owners (including “hostile” absentee owners not interested in
participating)
- Extended vacations
- Members assigned work that they do not do

Work cmtee feels tired and stressed that they don't have more guidelines,
or at least wants to check in with the community to make sure it's ok that
we have so few guidelines (eg, requests for reduced loads are always
granted, per the current agreements).

Sounds like a fine potential topic to me, it is the community who would
decide of course.

Speaking of obligations, something that pops to mind for me, is the
obligation to come to community meetings - we have so many households who
never do and after a certain point that's a scary thing since it's part of
what defines us as a community.

This reminds me of something - a David Brooks column, Jan 11, 2013 NYT
"Realistic thoughts on behavior change"
"If you want to get people to vote more, it seems you'd want to tell them
what a problem low turnout is. In fact if you want people to vote tell them
everyone else is voting and they should join the club. Voting is mostly
about social membership and personal expression."
This is behavior modification. How do we do that in cohousing.

Most of the people who participate in the work program do it out of
positive feeling - making the community better and it's rewarding to be
connected in that way. So using punishment to bring people in to the work
system has a fundamental flaw to me.

Some people feel it's fine that not everyone does the same amount of work,
trusting that they only request the reduced loads out of necessity in their
lives, and that most people want to connect and contribute. So if people
request it they are granted it. (This is our current policy I think). Some
people feel it's bad that not everyone does the same amount of work and
feel taken advantage of. And sounds like work cmtee feels caught in the
middle.

I think it could be good to have a discussion on the community level with
Laird, not necessarily starting with a proposal, but look at the system
overall. No matter how good the system, over time discontent grows. Living
in co-ops and other communities I've found, even if a system is really good
overall, you need to talk about it periodically, to hear each other, maybe
tweak it as a result of the discussions or maybe not, but it does a lot of
good, people feel better about it, are energized about the system again,
are glad to get to talk about what bothers them, have people honor how they
feel. And feel supported in implementing the policies we have or new ones
that we create.

So all this work is being done, but why is X still not getting done, is a
question that is going to keep coming up. So the 80-90% do their work, and
the 10-20% that is not happening for whatever reason. Is it helpful to
display that info?

I think its important, yes. Something that helps with transparency in the
work system seems like it could be a good idea.

So, is there any kind of review at the end of the work season? Committees
each do it differently. But not officially.

I think that kind of job review should be at the committee level but not
community level.

In a lot of places there would be training. We don't have a process for
intervening and helping. When we have a spill at work, there's a spill
report, and we get together to figure out, how and why did that happen and
how can we prevent it from happening again, and we come up with a plan.

Could there be a process of, why is this failure happening. We don't have a
way of closing the loop. We just remove someone from a job instead of
looking and seeing if there's something structural in the job or in
training we can address.

I agree that its the committees philosophically who would play that role.
And it would take time and resources. Committees would need help with that.

I've been thinking about our discussion tonite. The Work and F&L topics can
both be addressed with the concept of improved communication, that's what
it drills down to for me. I think we can do this. We can at least move
forward on this issue. Even if we know that utopian goals will never be
achieved of full fairness and everything getting done. But we can improve -
ideas of communication we can come up with and try implementing.

I think there needs to be focus on it or it won't happen. It has to be a
project. Needs to have checklist - this is what we're going to do and lets
review it each quater. We recognized improving communication as a way to
move us further down the road to having better work system, better finance,
better meals sytem, etc. Let's look at the opportunities and apply them
lavishly. The year of improving communication.

Seems like we could come up with communication ideas. Low-hanging fruit.
Checkwriter binder clip on cubbies - great idea - how about we have
committee convenors on clips too?

Have a preferred way of communication for each person, listed somewhere.
Which phone number is the right one? This person never does email, this
person does not do snail mail, only notes on door, etc.

What's a good next step for work cmtee? I think we're tired and want some
help, some reassurance? Some outside energy? How about we come to what we
can for the next work cmtee, that's Sunday, Jan 27th, 7pm. We can come to
the first part of the meeting. Some have to leave by 7:30-7:45.


6. Next process meet 2/12 at 6:45.
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