Process: Infoco minutes: 2008-11-13

Agenda:

Infoco meeting
6:15-8pm, Sarah's house, BYO dinner (mm Catherine's chicken stew n biscuits)

1. Checkins
2. Next infoco meeting - DATE CHANGE
3. Monday's meeting quorum discussion
4. Exercise around leadership at Great Oak

Minutes:

Present: Sarah, Alicia, Jillian


2. Next infoco meeting will be DECEMBER 17th, 6:15-8pm, Sarah's house. Patti
and Alicia are slotted to bring a topic. (Jillian pulled out the original
schedule sheets people had filled out and December 17th was the best option,
from what we could tell everyone could make it.)


3. Quorum discussion at Monday's meeting

I like the idea of discussing, why do we have quorum, what's the point. Talk
about the philosophy of it. And that will get us into discussion how its
actually been happening, how its hard to get quorum or people are only at
the meeting for a very short time and count toward quorum anyway.

Then we could go a couple of ways - (1) leaving quorum the way it is if
folks feel its the best balance, or perhaps adjusting quorum (maybe a
certain percent of units for a certain kind of decision, for example the
budget, and a lower percent for other kinds of decisions etc), or, (2)
putting more energy into getting people at meetings.

7 year itch - or maybe better termed 7-year rut - seems to me that now that
we've been meeting for 7 years, people have gone into ruts or roles, of I go
to meetings or I don't go to meetings. How much can that be changed?

I just don't want us to have to retract decisions we made if too few people
were there.

Do we want to alter our process in some way, if we don't get quorum? The
smaller group makes a decision, but its posted for 2 weeks and emailed out,
and if no challenges then it stands?

But that's harder if it is challenged, people who put the time in to decide
at the meeting may get frustrated. And people who were not there, would not
have heard the discussion about why we made a particular decision - they may
be lacking the buy-in to help implement whatever the decision was even if
they don't actively challenge it.

Very interesting point about the 7 year thing - that we have patterns and
roles now. Is it possible to shake those up a bit?

And some of the learnings have been very good, gotten comfortable with the
processes, I feel more comfortable.

Make an extra effort to try to get people to Monday's meeting to talk about
this - raise awareness so we can have a fuller discussion?

I feel conflicted about it, about "encouraging" people to come. People know
when there's a meeting.

Idea - maybe we could get a flag, raise the meeting flag! That would be fun.
Get a colorful one. Raise it on the hottub post?

Questions around quorum, eg do we adjust for the few households who have
opted out. Do we need to clarify households, families, units - do we adjust
it somehow so multiple adults sharing one house that are not one family
unit, count as more than one?

Process cmtee can present the current situation of household = unit. As in,
who is *living* in one unit, all count as one for quorum.

Talk about the bigger picture of quorum, why we have it, how its been
working, will probably involve discussion about consensus.

Desired outcome for Monday? Have a good discussion about the issues and if
we can, figure out next steps - does the cmty want to work on altering
quorum in some way, be it how many equals quorum, or how we count quorum,
and/or, do we want to focus on increasing attendance?


4. Leadership at Great Oak

First we took a few minutes, to Brainstorm - what is leadership at Great
Oak?:

- just doing it - make the call, get the quote, plant the tree, take the
vacuum in to the repair store, inflate the flat tire on the wheelbarrow.
- convening a committee
- offering to help however it is needed
- taking on a project, honchoing a project - sandbox, picnic tables - this
is different from just doing it - it involves coordinating with others,
communicating
- volunteering for ad hoc cmtee
- work - doing a little extra work, doing your job really well, pitching in
above and beyond
- a way of being - being supportive, being a go-to person, being a presence
that helps keep things moving - helps keep a balance
- organizing social stuff, contributing to community social life
- stepping in to help when a situation comes up and its not clear whose
responsibility it is.

Next step - then we took a few minutes to think, and privately wrote down
the first 5 people who come to mind as being leaders at Great Oak.

Then we talked about what it was like to write down the names and about who
we had written down and why.

Observations as we discussed the exercise of naming our 5 people:

- lots more than 5 came to mind as leaders at GO, by these criteria we
brainstormed above! Was fascinating to see. Seems like a good thing. :-)
- people have gone through phases of leadership and pulling back
- easier for me to name who I don't think is a leader than who is, there are
so many!
- fascinating that people can be strong in being a leader on one aspect
brainstormed above, but not at all in other aspects
- made me question, do you have to participate a lot in the community to be
a leader? I can think of people who get things done but don't participate
much at all in the community in other ways.
- I was struck by how many people on my list would not be classified as
"leaders" in the wider culture - people who don't have the charismatic
personality perhaps.

Biggest observation - when we think about what it means to be a leader here,
how it seems like half the community or more are leaders - this is a good
thing.

We have more all-around leader types and more specific leader types, than I
really ever thought about.

I have this false idea that there's a core group of people who do everything
- its a much broader group than I realized unconsciously, nice to make it
conscious.

Next part of the discussion - how are leaders faring? Is leadership feeling
supported? We had such a wide list that its not generalizable. It can be
hard, in general, to create a culture of appreciation rather than criticism.
Thank you board, would be nice to re-energize that.

We could do this exercise as an icebreaker or agenda item - put these types
of leadership up on big pieces of paper, and talk about them. Nice to have
people realize that many of us are leaders without being in front of the
room or leading a cmtee in the more traditional obvious sense - there are
many ways we are leaders. Take the time to appreciate and value it.

--end--
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