Process minutes: 2018-01-28

Minutes:

Tri-community facilitator's brunch
1/28/18
12-1:30
Present: Jillian (GO), Lesli (TS), Yi-miau (GO), Ralph (SW), Mary King
(GO), Dalinda (SW), Wendy (TS), Olas (GO), Jennifer (GO), Maggi (TS), Elph
(GO)

Minutes: Jillian

AGENDA
1. Icebreaker: Name, community, and something fun you've done lately
2. Announcements
3. Brief summary of process-related situation at each community - what's
up, and coming out of that, topics arising for more discussion
4. Next meeting date(s)


2. Announcements:

Sat, April 28, Mary and Sarah are doing an Intro to Consensus Process - how
to be a good meeting participant, how does it work, how do we get to
agreement. How YOU can be a part of helping your community meetings go
great!

Next Laird training at TS: Feb 15-18, don't know yet if there are any
openings. Wendy Stewart would know if there are any openings for people to
pay. Thurs night, all day Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Topics; Managing
conflict, and difficult personalities.


3. Brief summary of process-related situation at each community, what's up

Sunward:
Struggling with issue of uninvited kids coming to Sunward to play
basketball. Very contentious issue. Got close to decision but got derailed.
We were going to have a team who were going to deal with the kids that come
to Sunward.
Question, what goals did you want to accomplish?
Walk a fine line of being welcoming to the kids but also being firm.
Decided to try to get them to not play basketball here. We had said
previously if they has a sponsor at Sunward, a kid who would play with them
or adult who would stay with them, it was ok. But we moved away from that
to, we really don't want you playing here. There are some people who would
like to have the kids play, or don't care if they do, but others care a
lot.
What was the concern?
Kids who come in to the common house, say they want to use the bathroom but
then won't leave. Kids who backtalk. Bicycle thefts. Everyone reacts
differently. Some think its terrible, others not worried about it. Safety
concerns, accountability, legality. The thing we were working on was how to
approach it. A lot of charge around language. Relationship building and
clear boundaries. This has been going on for a year and a half.
Got derailed more on technicalities.
Have class and race issues been discussed?
Yes, there's been that, and also the concern of using that to ignore the
other aspects of the issue.

All three communities have struggled with the same thing.
GO took our basketball hoop down altogether.
TS put a lock on their hoop.

Sunward has a clear Private Property sign, and Great Oak and TouchStone do
not, still debating this.


Greatoak:
In general, we go through phases where there is use of our common house
that is not good, things get broken or messed up, and we're in that again.
Broken blinds in guestroom, fish tank, used condoms, burns in rug, places
that get used as teenage basement hangouts. If I were a teen here at GO I
would be here in the CH too! I just wish it could be used respectfully.

Touchstone:
We have some parallel CH issues. Hard for us to know if its adults or
teens, or both. Question came up, who left a messy guest room with broken
glass, no one responded. Concern that people are not being honest. People
staying in guest room with no one signed up, so there's no host and it gets
left.

Question, what are the underlying concerns with the common house usage?

GO
- safety for the people involved in the activities - heavy drinking,
smoking pot, starting fires (holes in carpet)
- safety of other kids who come in to the CH and get involved
- safety of adults confronting kids
- adults coming in to use CH and seeing something upsetting, not wanting to
invite friends over or to stay in guest room
- repair costs, spending budget on repair

I hear about the fact that these are bad behaviors, not just safety. How
dare you use our common space to do this bad stuff.

Disrespect - they should not treat me like that, they should not treat the
CH like that - desire for respect

Need to have agreements first, first step. Then the challenge of enforcing
them, but you have to have them and then there's the work of enforcing
them, keep talking about them as a group. You get to use this resource if
you follow the norms of this community, and one is you listen to adults
even if you don't agree with it.

We have so many little kids at TS and I love them but I don't always agree
with the parenting styles.

Great Oak spent six days (two 3-day weekends) in our first two years, on
the topic of Living Well with Children - it takes a lot of discussion!

Sunward - we also had a similar issue about CH usage - came up around the
Acton school at Sunward. A lot of people felt that there just simply was
not enough process before we allowed the school to move in. Became a very
hot issue. Dalinda facilitated. Big underlying issue was that we did not
give people the opportunity to speak their piece before the decision was
made. The school moved.
CHOPS made the original decision because they thought they could, initially
Acton thought they only needed X amount of space, then the school got
bigger. Went to the Board, but the community was upset. And there was bad
behavior on many people's parts, pretty much all around, which made
everything much worse.

To me the process point is - we have empowered committees also at Great
Oak. Sometimes historical knowledge gets dropped, but seems like most of
the committees know when they should bring things to the full community -
yes in theory you could made this decision, but if its big or complex, its
like putting a bullseye on your chest if you try to make the decision in
committee. Bring it to the community. Committees are empowered because its
not tenable to bring every little thing to the full community.
But committees need to feel that decisions can be made in full community.
Do we have a way to bring it forward, or feel like its hopeless os they try
to do an end run.

Sunward - we just can't make decisions in a hurry - its always a disaster
when we rush. So many people are involved.

How do we evaluate our committees, empowered and not empowered? GO is
encouraging committees to report out to the whole community at least once a
year, what they've accomplished, and then we can discuss. Not consistent
about it but hopeful this is a start. We're going to change over to longer
work seasons at GO and I think that will help.

At GO and SW you do get work credit for committee work. At TS we have a
little credit for chairing them, and taking minutes.

SW we stopped focusing on work credit and took a very voluntary
laissez-faire approach. It was working but our work coordinator quit and
now we don't have anyone to pick it up. A lot of people got burnt out based
on bad behaviors. Its been about 2 years, worked well the first 1.5 years
but lately been difficult.

Credit that people get at Great Oak - convenor and a few counted members.
Buildings has more because buildings members also do work.

TS - typical convenor term of 2 years and then expected to give it up. But
no process for training. Love-hate situation sometimes - someone does a
task for a long long time, very good at it, but might not be good at
communication or process around that area. Some happy and some unhappy.

Institutionally you need redundancy.

Leadership issues - if someone is a committee convenor and no one likes
working with them, then what? Hard to tell them, we don't want you to be
that leader any more.

Great Oak - trying an experiment - Mary - I'm not a buildings person, I am
not knowledgeable about the content, but I'm leading the buildings
committee - I'm focused on the process.

TS - Facilitation committee - challenge that no one wants to pick it up.
Decided that you don't have to be a facilitator to convene. It worked.

In Sunward - I don't think we have a policy - informally we decided someone
would convene facilitation Group. Ralph, picked it up about 8 months ago.
Facilitation commitment is one year at a time.

TS - Process cmtee is split into 3 parts - with three duties and
responsibilities documents:
1. Planning and structure of process in the community - "Framework" -
manage the documents, maintain the information.
2. "Facilitation"
3. "Peacekeeping / conflict resolution" - we decided the mediators would be
elected. Elected two out of a pool of four. More trust if they are elected.
How did it work? Was paper ballots.

Discussion about how to get on GOs CRC - preassigned by Process cmtee, lots
of discussion, care and concern about who is on it. CRC is not to rotate
off all at same time, and if going to rotate off, discussion among CRC and
Process about who to approach to fill the spot. And, need to make sure to
make open calls, who is interested in a job, let process know.

If you were to look at GO committees over time - giving people work credit
and having a rotation is working on the whole. If you look at who is on
committees over 3 years, you would see significant change. Nice to be able
to rotate on and off committees.

TS - at GO you have a lot of people who know what they want and will speak
up about it. We have a lot of people who do not know what they want, and
don't take time to think or speak about it. They don't have the tools to
get closer to realizing what they want.

As a process person I wonder if there is some way - are there processes to
put in place to support people in wanting to be more engaged.

Yes, working on it... being on a committee is one entree point but they
don't do it.

GO spent the first few years with the expectation that everyone be on a
committee but no work credit. That got harder and harder, less and less
effective. Spent a year discussing and then gave work credit for committee
work. Has its drawbacks but on the whole has been positive.

Does GO get credit for plenary?

No. Higher incentive to come to plenary since we're making decisions
there...

Start with the end in mind. What is it you want to achieve and then work
backward from there.

4. NEXT MEETINGS

We've been having these potluck brunches once a quarter, so that would put
us in mid to late April.

I would really like it if we could use this conversation to build an agenda
for more structured conversation about one or two items. Such as today the
big common topic areas were:

Common house usage
Use of the outdoors - uninvited guests
Committee work (structure, hours)

If we picked a topic and came prepared to talk about that one topic. Goal
that we could leave with something, a takeaway - a shared understanding of
what's working and not working, but at a higher level, how could this group
help the communities get to a better place.

Just to keep in mind I really also value just sharing with this group, the
social nature and the support.

But it seems like of all groups, this one would be up for both - sharing
what's going on, and, also tackling some issues to make progress on.

At TS - When we have a commonality where it would be good to have
consistency in response, like Lakestone - perhaps task force it.

If we meet quarterly, and more social informal sharing, keep that. But if
we decide to meet more frequently, the in between meetings could be more of
a focused conversation, task force. If they had a topic and I knew the
topic ahead and maybe homework/prework.

Lets pick a champion for each topic-focused meeting to make it happen.
Jillian will continue to convene the quarterly meeting.

Next quarterly check in meeting:
April 15 at noon. Potluck. Ralph of SUNWARD will host.

Next topic-focused meeting:
March 4 at noon. Potluck. Maggi of TS will host and champion the topic.

Topic: Outdoor communal use for members and non members.
HOMEWORK / MONKEY FOR ALL: Talk within our own process cmtees, look in our
books of agreements, gather information about your current agreements are
around use of your outdoor spaces by members and visitors. Minutes. Maybe
look at what other committees are doing.

How to have the conversation on March 4? Idea - Start by going around and
sharing what they think is most effective about what their community is
doing, and what areas struggling. Then we could potentially group them and
start working some of the struggles. Maybe there are ideas of collective
action.

Should we invite members of our communities who will be key in the
discussion? That could be the next steps.

Thanks for coming all, and the yummy food!

--end--
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