Process minutes: 2017-07-20

Agenda:

7/20/2017
11:45-1pm
Present: Patti, Sarah, Jillian

AGENDA:
Checkins
Monkeys
Debrief on community meeting, Process Mandate and Goals item 7/17/17
Next work season and Sarah’s participation
Facilitator brunch at GO on 8/13
Next meeting

Potential agenda items:
-Craft agenda item for community discussion about committee convenorship,
as requested of Process cmtee
-Next steps on spending the $500 we have for facil training? Mary and Sarah
perhaps plan something
-Refreshing policy moments scheduling
-Meeting time next steps - idea to experiment with moving one meeting in
fall to Saturday just to try, without big rearrangement

2. ONGOING MONKEYS:
Bringing chocolate for the two community meetings a month.
COOLER: Once the GO contacts database is in MESS, Sarah may enter the info
we gathered at a community meeting in January 2016 about how members want
to be contacted, in to the MESS system.
Re-MONKEY: Mary and Sarah to share their handouts and powerpoint to the
Process cmtee google folder in drive. (See 3/19/16 Process minutes)
Re-MONKEY: SEPT 18, 2017 meeting - Sarah will be in Iowa - one Process
person work with Sarah so she can skpye in as test
Re-MONKEY: Sarah will read through the 3/21/16 parking minutes and suggest
next steps for a follow up discussion at an upcoming meeting.
Re-MONKEY for next facilitator brunch: could ask facilitators - when
there’s a new proposal, or discussion of any new idea, ask for questions,
then ask for positive reflections about it, before they go into discussion
of concerns.
Re-MONKEY: Let’s schedule a few refreshing policy moments:
Parking
Cleaning up after yourself in the CH / Expectations for teen and youth cmty
work, CH access, and supervision
Review of GO proposal and decision-making processes and revisiting decisions
Overview of BOA and how to search for agreements - demo
Minutes must be emailed to their minutes email address for the BOA and to
talk.
Re-MONKEY: Jillian will ask Willie about the BOA - if we want to mark a
completed agreement in a particular way - what does he suggest?
RE-MONKEY: Sarah got a csv file of GO roster from Tom, as next step on the
meeting time survey question. Idea is a starting place of a list for who
lives at GO to collect attendance statistics.
RE-MONKEY: Request time on the next regular meeting agenda, to discuss how
it went on May 3, and how it relates to the convenor issue and cmty work
issue.
MONKEY: Discuss more of the goal ideas from today's meeting
MONKEY: Sarah will follow up with Membership about setting goals
DONE: MONKEY: Jillian will follow up with Buildings about setting goals
and about mandate
MONKEY: Patti will follow up with Meals about setting goals
DONE: Sarah will email Gail about the Process supplies and office.
MONKEY: Jillian will add to the BOA job description, tracking if commitees
are sending in minutes, and if community meeting minutes are in there too.
MONKEY: Jillian to send out reminder about 8/13 noon, facilitator brunch
MONKEY: We need to read our mandate, the Committee Effectiveness Proposal
from June 2005, and the Process stuff from Vision, and talk about our own
priorities, amongst ourselves and then with community. This will help show
that Process needs time to work on its own stuff, that we need another body
to oversee the big picture vision work, goals, and priorities of all
committees.
MONKEY: Will meet in August - Sarah will ask for a training with Yi-Miau to
remind us how the BOA entry and updating works. And we could plan to do or
discuss doing some cleanup (removing duplicates, fixing agendas so they
show up in the listing, and so forth)
MONKEY: Jillian will add Vice President (infoco convenor) and Secretary
(process convenor) into the mandate and email out new copy - check with
Debbi first to makes sure it is correct.
MONKEY: Jillian will follow back up with Buildings and Grounds about
presenting their mandate and 2018 goals on 8/21/17
MONKEY: Patti will present committee effectiveness proposal on 8/21/17
meeting. And maybe the Sept meeting the item about, do people want to
explore other systems and who has energy to do that. Sarah will see if she
can come back for it.
MONKEY: Sarah will ask TS process folks to please share information about
the Laird facil training happening!

Minutes:

Sarah will be 3 weeks in Iowa and 1 week here from now on. She is trying to
attend first Wednesday meetings; she can’t be here on 3rd Mondays. Maybe we
could experiment with Skype/visual, audio where no visual but we can hear
her and she can hear us. She works first weekend of every month 5pm Friday
to 5pm Sunday.


3. Debrief on community meeting, Process Mandate and Goals item 7/17/17

--------
This is the comments/questions section of the draft COMMUNITY MEETING
notes, Process mandate item, 7/17/17:

One of the things I've noticed over the years is we put a lot of energy to
create agreements and then it sits on shelf. And as new people move in they
are unaware. I would like to support the idea of the refreshing policy
moments more. And I like the idea of grooming the BOA, let's archive stuff
that needs to be consolidated and cleaned up.

Is this an example of a committee looking over what they are supposed to be
doing, and going to be doing, after the 2022 vision process, and bringing
it to the community to discuss?
Yes. through the lens of the 2022 vision.

Yay that's awesome.

I love the idea of training for committee-level facilitation. And, in the
mandate - the bylaws state that the convenor of infoco is the vice
president of the association and the convener of Process is the Secretary.
So something in the mandate needs to mention that there are two roles,
secretary and vice president, taken care of within process.

We are coming up on a new work survey. I would encourage process to seek
out candidates for membership on the process committee, I think we need
more spots on the committee than the existing 3 spots, more help.

I love the focus on making committees better. With our community, the way
we have it structured, the committee work is most of the work of the
community. I wonder if there is an opportunity to consider the option that
a committee structure may not be our best option now. Review options for
local direct governance. Spin around and think about doing this in other
ways. Most of the committees I wander through here are understaffed,
underpowered, not running all that well. So is it an opportunity to step
back and look at other models.

Other comments or questions?

I've had this thought for many years - the weakness of convenor role -
being pressured to do too much. Make it clear they only have to do X and Y,
schedule meetings, announce meetings, compile agenda, make sure minutes are
taken and shared - and if so it might be easier to get a core of convenors
willing to serve.

I'd like to add on and say in addition to updating convenor roles - I think
counted members assume they only have to go to meetings. Counted members
are supposed to do work of the committee between meetings.

I second that, and convenor can arrange meetings and send out announcements
and minutes but if members do not have ownership of the committee it does
not work and I think that that is a place that we have fallen down.

Any questions Process has for the group?
It sounds like there is a lot of energy and thinking about committees. And
building on the curiosity about our structure - that could be a skills and
thrills focus in 2018 as one idea. What are other options. Are people
interested in this topic? Show of hands? 15 or so.

Just thinking about the vision work we did - is there anything from the big
picture aspects to focus on?

Two basic focuses - to support the plenary meeting and to support
committees. Process has not had as much time in a while to focus on
supporting the community meetings and facilitation skills.
--------

It felt to me that people were in support of what we were staying.

We need to add the positions from bylaws into our Mandate.

MONKEY: Jillian will add Vice President (infoco convenor) and Secretary
(process convenor) into the mandate and email out new copy - check with
Debbi first.

I wonder if Yi-miau would be willing to do some cleanup on BOA, with
feedback, maybe we could do it together, and learn about updating it too?
Jillian updated monkey. Sarah will email her now.

We definitely need to bring back community effectiveness agreement asap and
discuss this with the community and figure out how to keep supporting
cmtees. Reinvigorate steering, or come up with ad hoc group, or process. Or
if we want to look at the overall structure again.

Skills and thrills 2018 on cmtees and/or on structure? But a LOT of
prework would need to happen on structure first if we were going to go down
the road of a new structure rather than of improving the current system.
What could the whole group do without some serious pre-work? And who would
do that prework? Using skills and thrills to do some work on the committees
might be a good resource. Setting aside a whole day and maybe we divide
into small groups and give them tasks. One small group does research. But I
think that would be too inefficient. Has to be very specific, focused.

What if we ID’d one or two cmtees and invited that area of GO to function
on a different model. If it feels too overwhelming to overhaul the entire
thing at once. How do we not make this such a huge project.

Maybe next step we could handle would be to make some inquiries on Coho-L
and find out some examples of structures. And then we could pick one piece
from one different system and try it on one piece of GO, not the entire
thing - just an experiment.

I wonder if Shari Leach is still doing consulting? She would know different
kinds of structures.

Can we get stuff done still and what are the fundamental things that must
still be in place - transparency, input, decisions that reflect the will,
needs, values of the group.

It’s hard for me to imagine. If committees don’t do work, the community or
the individual must do it. If it’s the indiv, that means every single one
of us has to be a highly educated citizen and committed to staying up to
date with our agreements and committed to doing whatever needs to be done.

Currently the work is broken down into domains (grounds, bldgs etc),
another way would be to have a list of every single task and everyone signs
up directly for tasks. Then discussion of enforcement. We already have
issues with that though. Sometimes neighbors hold eachother accountable,
sometimes committees do.
More would probably come back to the plenary for full community discussion
if various jobs not getting done, instead of committees.

Maybe an alternative meeting that is like WorldCafe - questions at tables
about alternative ideas for the work of great oak and how to oversee it and
get it done.

We did have a work meeting not that long ago. Consistent dynamic that Work
cmtee always knows about all the issues, so they feel it’s working less
well than everyone else. Good to be aware of this.

MONKEY: Jillian will see if she can find contact info for Shari Leach.

But maybe it’s just that we need to reinvigorate a few committees, NOT that
we need to redesign the whole system. Many committees are functioning.

I think we should introduce cmtee effectiveness agreement as a next step.
Do people want to explore how to live up to this agreement - how do we
improve. OR do people want to come up with a whole new system. Not as a
refreshing policy moment really, more for a discussion item. Have
structured small groups about how to make this work.

And a different agenda item is, what about another structure, who is
interested in this, putting energy into this, evaluating our current system
and other systems and structures out there.

Did each of us hear back from the committees we were asking to bring
mandates back to the full group?

Jillian did not hear back from Buildings or Grounds.
Sarah did hear back from Membership, they thought maybe August.

MONKEY: Jillian will follow back up with Buildings and Grounds about
presenting their mandate and 2018 goals on 8/21/17

MONKEY: Patti will present committee effectiveness proposal on 8/21/17
meeting. And maybe the Sept meeting the item about, do people want to
explore other systems and who has energy to do that. Sarah will see if she
can come back for it.

MONKEY: Patti will email Gayle Turner to see if she’d give an update on
goings on at Touchstone.


4. Next Work season:

Yi miau will continue with BOA
Jillian will email facilitators and will check in with Gail
Sarah will email CRC and work on finding a replacement

Should we add another committee position to process, or hold until after
more discussion about committees?

Sarah will stay with Process but not get hours, thanks Sarah! So we will
effectively have 4 people this fall. A bit of an experiment to see how it
will work for Sarah being long distance.


5. Anything we want to happen at facilitator brunch on 8/13?
Sarah notes that we have had no official notification of the Laird facil
training happening at TS!

MONKEY: Sarah will ask TS process folks to please share information about
the Laird facil training happening!

5. Next meeting: 8/10/17, 7-8:30, at Jillian’s house, common house sitting
room is already booked.
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