Process minutes: 2004-06-09

Minutes:

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Process cmtee meeting
6/9/04
7:15 pm, Gail's house

Present: Sweet Jim, Sarah, Gail, Susan K, Jillian, [[Elph]], Melissa, Amy H

1. Check-in
2. MONKEYS review
3. Review who has which process jobs for summer session
4. brainstorm a list of policies to review at general meetings
5. b-ball de-brief
6. clarification of decision re-visiting process
7. Discussion about future community trainings including possible topics/focus/dates
8. Conflict Resolution Check in
9. LiLacc Check In
10. Agenda cooler
11. Next meeting

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2.

Finished MONKEYS
done - Amy H. will get a binder for the book of agreements
done - Jillian will print out the agreements she has
partially done - Jillian will check with Sandra and Bea and Ruth at the Michigan Friends Center about possibly doing a GO training - Jillian talked a bit with Sandra, will wait to do more until process has more clarity about what we want to do.

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.
- 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 - Jillian talked a bit with Sandra, will wait to do more until process has more clarity about what we want to do.
- 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.


3. Review who has which process jobs for summer session

Infoco- Melisa
Agreements Tracker - Helen
[[Archivist]] and Bulletin Board organizing- Gail
Contingency hrs - Gail
Book of Agreement Creation - Willie
Convenor: Sarah
[[Meeting]] Restore/Setup - Rachel, Nancy
Minutes - Laura, Catherine
Timekeepers - Amy N, Aaron
Facilitators: lots!

what about the bulletin board? Did that fall thru the cracks? It should be part of the archivist. For now Gail will do it as contingency.

MONKEY: Amy H will add that in to the work program, together with [[Archivist]].

(NOTE - new info from CH cmtee after the meeting, the bulletin board upkeep is covered under CH hall cleaning.)

MONKEY: Amy H will finish the agreements binder and will put it in the common house sitting room, with labels, and will let Helen know to print out new agreements and put them in there as they happen.

MONKEY for Finance cmtee - when the "Can't pay your dues" agreement is finished they should please email it to process cmtee

MONKEY: Amy H will talk with Work cmtee about priorities for Willie - re book of agreements.


4. Brainstorm a list of policies to review at general meetings

One way to keep us current, keep things transparent and in people's minds. What do we want to go over?
- Recycling
- Pet policy
- Conflict Resolution was done recently
- Fence policy
- Membership definition/agreement
- Common House usage policy
- Bulletin Board?

Policy review theme song - ask Tom for help. :-)

MONKEY: Melissa will talk with membership about current new member buddies - new members should get a copy of all the agreements Jillian printed out and gave to Malcolm (Megan has a set), and the new members will probably have questions or might need help going thru them. Need to be proactive about helping get new members get up to speed quickly on existing agreements, and community norms etc. Some urgency around this with the cat policy, process cmtee has gotten some emails about a new cat.

Should process review the process steps of new members? They have to attend a meeting, and Nick's meetings, do we want to require an orientation with GO membership people. They'd get a GO membership packet. This seems like a Membership thing. One of membership's main functions, to integrate members into GO.

MONKEY: Amy H will talk with Malcolm, about someone from membership getting together with Bill as soon as possible and going over the binder of agreements, or at least the membership packet and any agreements that seem the most urgent.

MONKEY: At the next meeting [[Elph]] will present the common house usage policy as a reminder to the group.

5. b-ball de-brief:

Had a great meeting last night, with a lot of people who had attended the first meeting with Sandra. Altered the proposal to meet some concerns. Sarah emailed out another draft to that group. Then they will "shop it around" to people and talk with them outside the meeting. They plan to mail a final version out on the Wednesday 6/16 before the Monday meeting.

COOLER: - Once its over: Evaluate the Process committee's role in this situation; is it in line with our mandate?

Email dialog today about the last community meeting. One person felt like there was "attacking" going on. Sandra facilitated that part. We do want people to speak their minds, its really important to hear how people feel about issues, especially on something with as many layers as this. Facilitators should try to get people to speak to the facilitator not to direct their comments at another meeting participant. So no one feels attacked. Also a topic to bring to the facilitator meetings. Facilitators should jump in when there's sarcasm.

Ground rules, its good to have those posted.


6. Clarification of decision re-visiting process

Sarah has packets of info with the current agreement, an old version, community meeting minutes, committee minutes.
Are there 2 or 3 committee members who would work on the Revisiting Consensus Agreement, look back at it.
MONKEY: [[Elph]] and Jim Sweeton will work on it.

Brief summary of issues that have been brought up -
- timeline
- those who sign a "petition" to reopen need to be involved in the work of coming up with a new proposal.
- does the 6 household thing create factions - discussion piece
- process advocate to work with people, neutral process advocate to work with households to bring a decision back for reopening.
- clarifying that the way consensus works, a consensed on agreement still stands until we have a new consensed on agreement. Revisiting a topic is what we're doing, asking the group to spend some more time pondering an issue again.


walking the line of keeping a process open enough that everyone can feel heard while being contained enough to hold the whole community structure together.

the only way to change consensus is consensus. but there are different avenues by which consensus can be approached. to have a policy that says that something is not working and these are the reasons we have of why its not working and then there are some guidelines that can be followed when bringing that up. Rather than immediately jumping to an either or situation. Modifying, amending, completely revamping, replacing altogether, are all different options of what might happen. Some language that addresses this, that encourages us to think about, what is it that are the issues, What in the consensed decision has revealed a problem or an issue that six households are in agreement about. What are some solutions to that and what are some ways that the community could speak to that and add their sense of what might be possible solutions. and not automatically make it so that the community gets presented with only thinking in one track, of adopting this or nothing.

Slippery slope. Spectrum that is acknowledged that we will be stepping into.

Would we run the danger of people being more unclear of what it is they're supposed to do if we open it so widely? We already had a critique that there was not enough context. Need to frame it in a context. Line between allowing it to be open for discussion but not so open that its a mess. The community made a decision, there's a commitment to live with that and try it. that's why we talked about a threshold of six households.

some language about personal involvement and personal stake if you sign an agreement, so you have incentive to work on it.

wording that provides guidance, use the resources that can help. if you sign you will be driving the process but others could and probably should be involved. Don't want it to be too intimidating, idea of process advocates.

Sandra's suggestion about getting people in a room who have the strongest feelings on all sides of an issue, as soon as possible.

process advocate - the idea of having someone come to a first meeting where people have gotten together, and they should make step A - to determine if this is actually the problem. so you don't work on symptoms and not the real problem. The conflict resolution team? Training - how do you assist that group of people in distilling the focus and find the issue that comes out of that focus. Once you've gotten there, the question of how to proactively speak for addressing the need is more likely to emerge. then you can bring a proposal or an amendment or maybe something entirely new. Maybe we don't need to relook at that one, we have something else. At that point a shift can happen.

Conflict management - the core initial step is recognizing that we're in a conflict management point. Need to employ conflict management techniques. Yes!

Sandra had encouraged us to bring this to the meeting on the 21st. To reassure people re the basketball proposal.

Its important that the community see that we are working on it. Also important not to rush it. [[Elph]] and Jim can report on it.
MONKEY: [[Elph]] and Jim will do an info item on the 21st

7. Discussion about future community trainings including possible topics/focus/dates

Sandra - gave us 5 billable hours so far, that's $500 of the $1500 we have for the year that was supposed to be for group training, was spent on emergency facilitation rather than on training.

ideas -
- we need assertiveness communication training
- give people the opportunity to learn skills about how to talk with their neighbors about something they feel uncomfortable about - need to give them practice at it. chances for people to go thru scenarios.
facilitation training is for the smaller group. We need that too. and also full group communication, conflict, group process stuff.
- overview of consensus - history, philosophical foundations.
- meeting behavior techniques
- language to use to communicate effectively in groups and one on one
- group skills, and individual skills - how are you an effective neighbor. Do you know how to intervene in situations, in a way that supports healthy interaction and community building.

we need not just training but something that could be called a retreat. community building. circumstances have shown me that we would benefit from having something like that, before we put on the table something else that we need to step up to and learn how to do better. Opportunity for refreshment, mutuality, activities geared towards mindfully creating connections. weaving community.

something to break us out of the geography of living here, our habits.

I like the idea of a retreat style. I worry about the program. That is the hardest part, to have it have the appropriate materials - can go over or under people. Don't want it to be cheesy or hokey.

(cooler - Patti's farm as a fall location??)

MONKEY: Everyone think more about this retreat idea - what could it be like? Where might it be?

Hope to schedule something in the fall. Or maybe two pieces.

COOLER: We need another line item - emergency facilitation fund, AND a training fund. They're very different. Our bylaws even stipulate that we'll have outside faciliation when we need it.

I'm not sure if this is a training item or not - open vs closed community - parents wanting to establish safe zones for their kids, and outside kids coming in that feel unsafe to them. We don't have foundation principles around this issue that some communities have, we kind of have a blank slate here. tricky. how should this issue be approached? Seems like it can just start with feelings-sharing, what's going on.


8. Conflict Resolution Check in

How do we help facilitators to deal with very hot emotional issues.

Also something else came up - from a while back - a couple of meetings where people attempted to bring something up that was not on the agenda, there was a time issue, and they didn't get answers to their question. One issue, a question was asked to the community that was misinterpreted in what was being asked, and because of time issues it was put aside. And then the facilitator moved on. It points out that that's something we need to watch for in meetings and be clear about as facilitators - making sure that when someone asks something that they get a mirror from the facilitator - "I hear you saying x...", even if there's not time to go further - to reflect what they said, and they can say yes or no and know that they were heard. conflict resolution team can talk about it, but really need to talk about it with facilitators too. Goes back to training. I feel conflict resolution group needs to be more visible over the summer in the community, we need to reconvene, we have not stepped up to it enough.

People are trying hard to make something theoretical work in reality. we've put our money and our families where our mouths were. We need ways to be able to be hearing eachother, being gentle, calm, supportive, patient. Fears being displaced into external issues.

we're punchdrunk at this point.

we rally well but we need to know what to rally around.

most people have thought about moving out at one time or another - it might be good for people to understand how many others have shared those feelings. we're all having to work hard, deal with a lot.


9. LiLacc Check In
Minutes went out from the last meeting. There will be another newsletter coming out within the next week.


10. Agenda cooler:
- Process jobs tracking - New work assignments, check-ins, etc?
- Conveners "support group"
- Policies for review a general meeting
- Non-policy agreements
FREEZER
Make sure there is money in the budget for a new easel next year

11. Next [[Meeting]]
June 22, 7:15pm, Jim Sweeton's