Process minutes: 2004-05-25

Minutes:

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Process meeting

Tuesday, May 25
7:15-9 p.m. at Sarah's house, Unit #30
Present: Sarah, Gail, Sweet Jim, Jillian, Melissa, Amy H

Agenda

1. Check-ins
2. Monkey review
3. Two Community [[Meeting]]s per month
4. Basketball meeting debrief, next steps for process
5. Revisiting Consensus Decisions agreement
6. Conflict Resolution Cmtee check in
7. LiLaCC check in
8. Facilitator's meeting needed for summer facilitators
9. Agenda cooler


2. COMPLETED MONKEYS
- Sarah will check infoco/agenda setting job description on wiki - does it include meeting with facilitators before community meetings to discuss/strategize about agenda? Also, does facilitator job description include such a meeting?
- Sarah will talk to membership and ask them to find out if Touchstone would like to use our CH one Saturday a month for their community meeting. If so, membership would be the GO sponsor and reserve the appropriate room or the meeting.
- Gail will create a calendar for facilitators to sign-up for four months worth of community meetings. The sign-up will be on a hard copy in the CH, possibly putting the schedule on the wiki once it is set.
- Jim will get on the agenda for the Community meeting on May 5, to present a reminder on the conflict resolution agreement the community consensed on a while back.
- Jim Sw. will check with Sally Johnson at UM about possibly doing a GO training. She is the head of a mediation group. Done - she said she's not doing outside work right now but she recommended three people: Sandra Greenstone, Neb Neistrom, and a third person. And then she came back with some more names - Clair Tinkerhess (she works for the U and also something called Peace Talk, involved with Quakers), and others. Also looking at people for conflict resolution. Jim also went to a meeting of a group of arab and jewish women, led by a woman who has a consulting firm dealing with mostly workplace issues. They were in a dialog group talking about the israeli palestinian situation. She made some strong points about the difference between dialog and discussion and how they each can be done. I was very impressed with her work.
- Sarah went to the alternatives to violence conflict resolution training at the friends center a few weekends ago. It was very wonderful. Highlighted the importance of listening skills. How transforming it is to listen in a way that is effective.


Re-MONKEYS
- Sarah heard back from two people re: how their work is going. She will contact the others in person to get some feedback.
- Sarah will talk with Membership re: picking a date for a GO / Touchstone community meal at GO and inviting Touchstone to join us. A part of the evening would include a chance for GO members to learn about the Touchstone site plan.
- Amy H. will get a binder for the book of agreements
- Jillian will print out the agreements she has
- Sarah will write up goals/feature list for the electronic book of agreements
- Jillian will check with Tree about suggestions for info on community organization structures
- Jillian will check with Sandra and Bea and Ruth at the Michigan Friends Center about possibly doing a GO training
- Gail will contact Jim Johnson, from Perrysburg Ohio, familiar with consensus, trains people to listen, he did work with a church Gail and Jim are involved with. His company is Partners for Innovation.

FREEZER
Make sure there is money in the budget for a new easel next year




3. Two Community [[Meeting]]s per month still?

Two meetings per month still seems to be needed. We got several email comments about this item on our agenda, that people are saying there's no way we could cut it down. Lots going on.
COOLER: Look at this again in August.


4. Basketball Debrief

[[Meeting]] happened on 5/12, was productive in some ways but didn't go as far as people had hoped as far as specifics. On the 12th people had a chance to hear eachother. But it started out on several misunderstandings. Process thought grounds was wanting this feedback, but grounds did not see it that way. And somehow some people didn't realize the meeting on the 12th was also for listening to eachother to start to work thru feelings, not just to come up with a new solution. At Monday's community meeting, 5/17/04, Amy H gave as neutral a summary as she could. Then there was discussion. Was good, let some feelings out in the open. Came back to the revisiting consensus agreement. And another thing that seems really important, the way this is handled will set a precedent for the future. Important for us all to think about the best ways of proceeding. Also revealed a need for more process training for the group. Then the action step was everyone who was interested met with Tim at the break to form an ad hoc group to move forward.

Who is the ad hoc committee? We should make sure they have a convenor.

MONKEY: Sarah will ask Aaron if he can announce to "talk" who is on the committee and when they plan to meet, when they plan on bringing something back to the community.

I think this is the tip of an iceberg. And the individual members of the conflict resolution committee are too involved on this to be neutral. Plus we need more conflict resolution trained people in general.

The intensity around this issue is somewhat inappropriate so that shows us that it is not really just about a basketball court.

Common good and individual good, common needs and individual needs, community values, - we need a full community discussion about this and I think we need outside help.

Its also around trust that we could make something work no matter where it is. Trust that we would try something no matter where it is, parking lot or basketball court, work on the best solutions, meet the concerns as best we can, change it if it just did not work out.

Concern around having a process so chaos doesn't break loose. And then the opposing concern that its too hard to change things. Rigidity and flexibility - trust issue, experience issue, people coming with different worries.

People talking about how long it takes to get things done might make people scared of trying something - if it doesn't work how long will it take to change it. That might increase fear of a trial hoop.

Issues also around the informal steps we take as neighbors. People who were signing Judith's letter were not people who were thinking they would be working on a solution. So there was already a miscommunication happening from the get-go, setting up for some difficult process.

conflict resolution training and use this as our test case?

what is Process's role going to be in the specifics of this?

What if the ad hoc cmtee works on a proposal, seeking to meet the safety concerns as creatively as they can. And in the meantime process cmtee seeks to get outside help for when the community actually discusses it.

How about if the ad hoc group could actually flesh out both locations - more details on what it would be like in the basketball court and in the parking lot. propose quiet hours, locations, safety (signs etc), for both - so neither is such an unknown.

would this be a meeting with an outside facilitator where we would make a decision? Maybe if this session started out with some training - a refresher course on consensus - eg a block is only meant to be for something endangering the community, and also techniques to get past the anger people are feeling.

have the issues, individual and community, disassociated from names so we can talk about it non personally.

exercises that explore the tension between individual and common needs. that tension can be there respectfully - we need to learn how to do that respectfully.

also are seeing some unwillingness to budge from a variety of people. lack of trust that the group can weigh all the issues, come up with something to try, and alter is as needed.

this almost sounds like a weekend event - a saturday training and a sunday dive in and work on the issue to make a decision. with a requirement that you have to come to the training on Sat to be part of the decision on Sunday!

But a weekend event needs to be a ways out. But there is pressure to make a decision fast.

We'd have to pick some dates farther out.

would bring something positive out of something that has been pretty uniformly rough.

We learn from these experiences. Its not as personal as a parenting issue. This would take longer. But so would any proposal, will take at least two meetings probably for us to do it on our own in any case.

One key piece of info we don't have is what timeline would be friendly to the ad hoc cmtee and what weekend could work for people and what weekend could work for an outside facilitator. Ad hoc group is probably planning to give an udpate next Wednesday.

we also need to be finding out who from outside could help us, on what timeline.

June 12, 19, 26 - weekends in June.

MONKEY: Jim Sw will talk with Claire
MONKEY: Jillian can talk with Sandra
MONKEY: Jillian will send out an email to talk about what weekends people could and could not make it.
MONKEY: Sarah is going to talk with ad hoc cmtee.

sensitivity around email too, needs to be in people's cubbies.

Maybe we need to have another meeting before June 2 so we have an idea of what's going on. How about Saturday afternoon at 4pm? Melissa B's house.


5. Revisiting Consensus Decisions Agreement

We've had some feedback from people about what changes they think need to be made to the Revisiting Consensus Decisions Agreement. We need to work on it. Also it doesn't make allowance for committees to reopen an agreement. Doesn't really talk about if the committee thinks it needs to be revisited. We know we need to clarify this for the future. We will work on it. Its too late tonite to dive in to it. in the COOLER for this meeting but to be picked up very soon.


6. Conflict Resolution cmtee check in

There's tension in the community about a variety of things. People seem to be tired of having meetings, wanting to get their LCEs and homes in shape. And we still have lots of stuff to do. Need to remember the cycle Shari Leach told us about, how we will all go thru phases of how we're feeling about the community, cyclical.


7. LiLaCC check in

Had a successful brunch on Sunday and the newsletter went out. Gail does not know how communication is going with TouchStone. Doesn't get a lot of responses. Would it be better to use snail mail, mail stuff to them? Once they start meeting here can give them print copies of stuff.


8. Facilitators meeting

We should have a one-hour get together for all the facilitators, so they can read thru the job description and discuss it. Perhaps something more will come out of it, its a starting point.

MONKEY: Jillian will email Gail the facilitation job description.
MONKEY: Gail will email out 2 date suggestions for facilitators to get together

9. Agenda Cooler
Revisiting consensus decisions
Convener support group
[[Meeting]] setup/restore person - needed?
Reviewing consensed on policies at meetings
[[Committee]] mailboxes