Process minutes: 2004-02-24

Minutes:

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Process [[Committee]] Minutes 2-24-04
Present:- Sarah, Susan, Gail, Jim Sw., Amy H.- Mel, Mary SC

Decisions
Decided to keep meeting at Jim Sweeton...™s for now. It...™s quiet and comfortable. Good snacks :-).

Monkeys
MONKEY: Amy H. will recontact Nick & JD about inviting one of them or a Touchstone representative to tell GO about Touchstone...™s plans.
MONKEY: Gail to pursue relationship-building ideas with Touchstone via LiLaC, including the idea that GO could offer to be an information resource to TS during their construction decisions.
MONKEY: Susan will check to see if she can convene the Wednesday March 10 Process meeting.
MONKEY: Jim Sweeton will write up a brief proposal to change the community meeting start time, and alert [[InfoCo]] of this agenda item.
MONKEY: Process will revisit in May or June the question of how many times the community meets per month.
MONKEY:- Sarah will ask Lisa to check in with the cooks about choosing very simple menus with minimal cleanup on the nights of community meetings.- Consider paper plates on these evenings only?-
MONKEY:- Sarah will do some research on committees and we will resume this conversation next time.

1. Check-ins

2. Monkey Review
MONKEY: Amy H. will recontact Nick & JD about inviting one of them or a Touchstone representative to tell GO about Touchstone...™s plans.
MONKEY: Gail to pursue relationship-building ideas with Touchstone via LiLaC, including the idea that GO could offer to be an information resource to TS during their construction decisions.
All other monkeys are off our backs.

3. Housekeeping
Decided to keep meeting at Jim Sweeton...™s for now. It...™s quiet and comfortable.
MONKEY: Susan will check to see if she can convene the Wednesday March 10 Process meeting. Amy H. has to work that night. Noted that Sarah can...™t make it on Wednesdays for a while because of a class.

4. Book of Agreements Update
We learned from [[Rod]]...™s e-mail that he has been working on the Book of Agreements ... yay! Willie offered to help him with some technical issues. We...™re not sure what the current status is.

5. Community [[Meeting]] Start Time Proposal from [[Elph]]
We recalled that the community agreed at the 2/16 meeting to start the 3/3 community meeting at 7pm, with dinner at 6:15 pm. The meeting will end as usual at 8:45. Facilitators and cooks may need to be reminded.

[[Elph]] proposed to Process that we make a proposal to the community to make this our regular practice. We will lose 15 minutes of meeting time, but this will enable us to have a consistent meal-start time every day.
MONKEY: Jim Sweeton will write up a brief proposal to change the community meeting start time, and alert [[InfoCo]] of this agenda item.

[[Elph]] also suggested that we retain our two-meeting per month practice for the time being, to allow time for discussion, which was appreciated at the 2/16 meeting. Some concern was expressed about the difficulty of dealing with time-sensitive decisions if we only meet once a month, especially at this early phase of the community. Rather than write this into the proposal, we decided to task ourselves with revisiting this in a few months.
MONKEY: Process will revisit in May or June the question of how many times the community meets per month.

Jillian suggested that we ask cooks to make simple meals on the nights of community meetings, to make it easier to clean up.- For now we will suggest this to the cook for next week...™s 3/3 meeting, then let the Cooks group that Mary plans to convene take this up.
MONKEY:- Sarah will ask Lisa to check in with the cooks about choosing very simple menus with minimal cleanup on the nights of community meetings.- Consider paper plates on these evenings only?-

6. Process & Work Program
We reviewed the tasks assigned to the Process [[Committee]] on the Work Survey. Recognized that if people doing these jobs have problems, they might come to Process for help. Also recognized that we might want to keep an eye on how these jobs seem to be going, in case a worker needs some help.

We weren...™t clear on the difference between Minute Taker and [[Meeting]] and Time Poster.

7. [[Committee]] structure discussion
We reviewed two handouts that [[Rod]] had prepared. One showed an ...org chart... diagram of GO [[Committee]]s. The other was a text document listing committees, convenors, regular meeting times, etc.
Concern that a lot of sub-committees seem to have sprung up lately. This is a good thing ... this is how things get done. But we shared some worry about what will happen if people are finding more passionate work in the sub-committees, draining labor from the Standing [[Committee]]s, which do work that is essential to the community.
Another concern about committees that spring up independent of standing committees is that sometimes one person or a small number of people end up doing a ton of work with no support, and they burn out. This wouldn...™t happen if there was more structure. The person/people in danger of burning out could go to the standing committee and ask for help. Ideally, sub-committees would keep their standing committees informed about what they are working on (such as a regular agenda item on the standing committee...™s agenda). GO-Neighbors is an example of this. GO-Neighbors is a sub-committee of Membership, and reports back to Membership as a regular agenda item.

We also talked about the notion that sub-committees would send any proposals they generate through their standing committees before presenting them to the Community. So if GO-Neighbors had a proposal, it would be Membership that presented it. Seems like we need some guidelines about how committees form, and how they should get support.
The current Standing [[Committee]]s are: Process, Membership, Grounds, Buildings, Common House, Finance & Legal. Steering and [[InfoCo]] have in theory been committees that form an intersection of the standing committees, with representation from each. This has worked pretty well with steering, but not [[InfoCo]]. But [[InfoCo]] is going to vanish with the new work system, in which agenda item tracking and planning will be a job.

We reviewed a list of recently formed or soon-to-form committees to see where we thought they might connect with Standing [[Committee]]s:
Parents (Membership)
Kids (Membership)
Caring Cohort (Membership)
Neighbors (Membership)
Workshop (Buildings)
Conflict Resolution (Process)
Cooks (Common House)
Budget & Contingency (Ad Hoc) (F&L)

There was a lot of discussion around LiLaCC and GO-Work [[Committee]]. We wondered if they should report to Steering, or whether they might be like Steering, with intersections with many other committees as issues arose. We talked about how initially it was thought that GO-Work would evaporate once the work system was up and running. Now we think it might need to last a while, to wrangle with various issues that need wrangling, and the two Work Coordinators would serve as co-convenors. But who should Work Coordinators report to if the Work committee eventually goes away?

Gail pointed out that LiLaCC has to decide what it is when it meets, and it hasn...™t met yet (next week).- There were some concerns at Sunward about LiLaCC holding too much power.- Sunward needs to decide itself how LiLaCC will function for them, while we decide how it works for us.-We decided to defer further discussion about this until after the first LiLaCC meeting.
What is Steering going to become when there...™s no more communication with CDC?- Couldn...™t Steering become representatives of all standing committees, to provide some oversight for all the committee activities?

What is responsibility of Standing [[Committee]]s to Sub [[Committee]]s?- What are the roles?-
MONKEY:- Sarah will do some research on committees and we will resume this conversation next time.
Note that we are NOT trying to create a hierarchical structure.-

8. Conflict Resolution [[Committee]]
Jim Sw has contacted Susan and Tim about getting this team together, to figure out a process for how they will offer services.- Tomorrow night Susan and Jim will facilitate the Parents meeting; they see this as part of their work.- They will let community know what their vision/process is, so people know how to access them.
Conflict resolution training for community members will be part of what they do.

It would be a good idea to report back on the number of hours Tim, Jim and Susan spend on conflict resolution, but with complete confidentiality about what they were working on. Rather than count these hours as part of the work program, consider counting them toward community work days? We need to be very careful about assigning ...value... and ...credit... to work. Lots of people do a lot of different kinds of work. It...™s difficult to measure and compare.

We...™d like to ask the Work [[Committee]] to revisit how committee work is reflected in the work tally, so that it doesn...™t seem like committee work ...doesn...™t count.... Develop some language in a way that we can bring together value/worth/work.-

Some people would rather do more ...other... work instead of committee work.- Maybe we need to pull all of this together like we did with integrating the meal program into the overall work program?

9. Process Teaching Moments
Listening exercise at an upcoming community meeting?- Teaching skills on how to talk with our neighbors, to listen and talk without partaking in ...running things down....- Listening and talking in a way that builds community.
Susan used to do crisis training and crisis listening training, and knows some simple exercises for training people on this.--- We could do this with role modeling ... or could do this in triads - and then bring it back to the full group.
A little concern that people might take this the wrong way, might personalize this too much.- Teach people to use ...I... language.-
Let...™s talk about this again before bringing it to the group.- This could go under the auspices of the Conflict Resolution Team.

10. Ideas for Process Work
Sarah has prepared a list of ideas for Process to work on. Many of them were touched upon during tonight...™s discussion, especially about committees. This will be discussed again next time.