Process minutes: 2005-01-25

Minutes:

'''[[Process[[Committee]]ShortcutBar]]''': [http://www.gocoho.org/wiki/index.php?page=[[Process[[Committee]]HomePage]] Process Home] [http://boa.willienorthway.com/ Book Of Agreements] [http://www.gocoho.org/wiki/index.php?page=[[ProcessMinutesArchives]] Minutes Archives] [http://www.gocoho.org/wiki/index.php?page=[[PolicyClearinghouse]] Policy Clearinghouse] [http://www.gocoho.org/wiki/index.php?page=[[Process[[JobDescription]]s]] Process Job Descriptions] [http://www.gocoho.org/wiki/index.php?page=[[ImportantProcessDocs]] Important Process Documents][http://www.gocoho.org/wiki/index.php?page=[[LibraryWishList]] Library Wish List]

Process cmtee meeting
1/25/05
7:15pm
CH sitting room

Present: Sarah, Gail, Jillian, [[Elph]] came for part

AGENDA
1. Check-ins
2. Monkeys
3. Cmtee Effectiveness Proposal
4. Process job descriptions
5. Training planning
6. [[Committee]] mandates - need full group consenus?
7. Empowered committees - clarify definition
8. Revisiting Consensus decisions
9. Process cmtee members
10. Next meeting


1. Check ins


2. Monkeys

from the last meeting minutes:

Book of agreements monkeys:
Partially done: MONKEY: Jillian will keep working on this.
Re-MONKEY: Jillian will check in with Willie about the electronic version
MONKEY: Amy will let membership know we were working on hardcopy first. (Not sure if this was done or not.)


[[Committee]] Proposal update
Done: MONKEY: Melisa and Sarah need to sit down and they plan to in the next week or two and come up with another draft and will bring it back.

[[Committee]] participation
MONKEY: Jillian will check in with Alicia about the list she was putting together about people who say they want tasks but can't be on a committee.

Training
Done: MONKEY: Sarah will email with Laird about the Wednesday before NASCO and also just check in about if he's available in June at all.
Re-MONKEY: Sarah will let Sunward and TS know about what we're thinking, maybe they could hire Laird (or whoever it is) for a second day after he has done work at GO. or if we do a subset training, like facilitation etc on a specific skill, then we could all attend together.
Re-MONKEY: Jillian will find out about Julie Mazo. Jillian emailed her but has not heard back.

Short Presentations at Community [[Meeting]]s
Can we go ahead and slot in Melisa and Mary King at the next few community meetings? This is definitely a great idea to do.
MONKEY: Sarah will check in with them.



3. [[Committee]] Effectiveness proposal

Sarah and Melisa met this afternoon, Melisa will make the changes and they plan to bring that to the next Process meet on Feb 9. And hopefully present at the Feb 14 general meeting.

Melisa will turn some of the extra info into a guidebook or handout kind of thing, and then work on presenting that info over the course of 3-4 community meetings in smaller pieces.

Its great to do this work to clarify our structure and processes, but my sense is if we don't also pay attention to making sure members know about this stuff it does not do much good.

Process's mandate is to keep things like this visible and to educate the group about them. Impressed upon me how important this is to do. Not just waiting for the "big" events.

Most people - if you don't have a problem or an idea, you may not be paying close attention to how things work. But them when you do have an issue you do pay attention and engage in a different way. Process needs to make sure the info is as available as possible.



4. Process Job Descriptions

[[Rod]] is compiling job descriptions for all the jobs in the work system. So he asked for:

- a conflict resolution committee convenor description - so maybe he needs a brief description of what they do.
MONKEY: Gail will look up the original conflict res proposal and will email it to Jim Sweeton, Susan King, and Tim.
MONKEY; Susan, Jim, and Tim will write a brief summary and will get it to [[Rod]].

- [[Rod]] has a boilerplate to describe the process cmtee convenor

- Contingency hours - should we say some of those are being used for LiLac? [[Rod]] says he had a generic description that he can put in there.

- he already has one for archivist

- he would like something for book of agreements tech
MONKEY: Sarah will write a brief sentence

- he would like something for book of agreements content entry
MONKEY: Jillian will write a sentence or two

- he would like something for Agenda Planning/[[InfoCo]] coordinator
MONKEY: Sarah will ask Melisa to email something to [[Rod]]

- facilitator - there's a very long description, [[Rod]] would like a briefer overview. The long one is on the wiki already. Logistics, setup, finalize agenda, writing agenda up, make sure minute taker and timekeeper are there, and facilitate.
MONKEY: Jillian will email something

- minute taker - there is a job description already
MONKEY: Sarah will email it to [[Rod]]

- timekeeper
MONKEY: Sarah will email to [[Rod]]

- stacker
MONKEY: Sarah will email something short

- scribe
MONKEY: Sarah will email something short



5. Training Planning

Sarah did email Laird and he responded. He said he could work with us the weekend of June 11-12 OR June 18-19. He had a cancellation. He would be on his way back to Missouri from doing work in Maine. Just one day. He will let us know which of the two weekends he will be available, once another group decides.

And Sarah also asked about NASCO. He said his only window to do something would be Sunday evening 11/13, or Monday, but after that he needs to head out.

His schedule is tight and he asked us to let us know asap.

Sarah asked him about creating a plan for training, that we're not sure what we should focus on. Laird says he feels a group works best on stuff they've had trouble with.

He said his fees are negotiable. maybe he could do a full day for $1000 rather than $1200.

A couple other people saw his workshops at NASCO and were excited about his work.

MONKEYS Sarah will work on:
- ask Laird if he would consider $1000, which would still leave us enough to do something small in the fall
- if we're on the way, how much are travel expenses
- ask Laird about Monday evening 11/14
- let Sunward and TouchStone know about this in case they might want to hire him on the 12th
- email process cmtee the message Laird emailed Sarah

Laird is a very different style from Bea Briggs, Shari Leach, Sandra Greenstone - the other trainers that GO has had. Could be a good thing. He is a very powerful personality. He is extremely skilled. Why not give him a try. We'll need to talk more about what to cover.

The garages/parking issue is simmering, maybe it will have come to the surface by then.

Amy H did gather the U of M HR classes list, and she highlighted a few. Can a list of those few that would apply to us be emailed out to process? Along with cost info? Maybe next meeting agenda.

Sarah went thru her NASCO list and pulled her pages of presenter bios - starting process trainer files seems like a good idea.



6. Whether the Larger community should consense on each committee's mandate

Sarah and Melisa were talking about this, made sense to us that they all should be consensed on - the mandate is the direction the full group is giving to the committee about what they should be doing. We didn't want it to be onerous or cumbersome, as a committee's focus shifts over time, we don't want them to be stuck. Seems like that would not be the case - additions or changes would probably be gradual, or a committee can just bring the description back when needed if it has changed a lot.

Seems like we should do this even for non-empowered committees.

We know that empowered committees need to bring their empowerment procedure to the full group for consensus.

Seems to make sense that all committees should.

Maybe steering could ensure that every 3 years or so committees make sure to review and update their mandate and bring it back again.

Group is setting the framework for the committee to go off and do its work. Hopefully not onerous process. Seems like it shouldn't have to be.

Might avoid confusion later too - does the group only have input into what the empowered committees do? No, that's not the intent. So if all committee's mandates are consensed on then that's clear.

Another angle to think about - the bottom line on committee work is the full community. The committees are managed by the full community. If a committee gets out of hand, its the full community that is responsible for correcting it. Is that clear to the group, do we need an agreement on it? What is an example? If a committee stops meeting. Or if there is only one person on an empowered committee who is making decisions that are not balancing the needs. But how would that actually work? Sounds like it could get hairy. Someone could put a committee up for "community review"? What if its personality related? But pulling it forward rather than letting things fester in corners seems healthier. And if we had a process for it then maybe people would not take it personally - something is going wrong on X committee and I want to bring that to the full community for discussion. or someone strongly disagrees with a committee decision and really feels a full community discussion is needed.
COOLER

7. Clarify the Definition of Empowered [[Committee]]

This came up at the last community meeting, people are not clear on what this means. There is a definition in the [[Committee]] Effectiveness Proposal that Sarah and Melisa are working on.

In some people's minds, being empowered means you have a budget, but that's not how GO has been using it as of now.

All committees are entrusted by the group to do what they need to do to fulfill their mandates. They may all have budgets, or they may not.

The goal in empowering a committee is a way for the full group to delegate decisions so its not managing on too detailed of a level.

But process cmtee, in spending its budget, has to make a lot of decisions, around who to hire, what kind of training. We have been saying we are not "empowered". But where is the line in the sand?

Maybe its getting muddy here, we should look at what committees are currently empowered and what is their decision making process.

Grounds may be the only committee that has a clearly defined process for empowerment.

Common house considers itself empowered to make decisions under its mandate. For instance CH cmtee just decided to formally charge for the guest room use rather than just recommend donations. Their only process is to put it in their minutes and warn that they are going to make a decision and ask for feedback.
(side note, that seems like it might be better to email it out under a separate message with a specific [[title]], so people do really read about it and remember reading about it.)

Buildings is not empowered.
The Construction subcmtee of bulidings is/was empowered.
Steering is empowered and is writing its job description.

The empowerment thing could be different for each committee. Maybe we don't need this kind of clear delineation, empowered or not. All cmtee descriptions are consensed on, and each one can spell out what kinds of decisions they will get input from the group on and how.

why would we not want a committee to be empowered?

The issue is not whether we want empowered or not. Its just that as a community member I want to have clarity about how i can give feedback to a committee that is working on an issue. And I want to know they're working on an issue in teh first place, so I can then follow whatever procedure they want in order to give my input. Seems like every committee is empowered to a certain degree. And then its a judgement call as to which decisions to bring to the attention of the full group.

Cmtees clarify what kinds of things they make decisions about and how they communicate with the larger community about that.

This fits in well with the idea of not just consensing on "empowered" cmtee job descriptions. Consensing on them all.

As committees write their job descriptions, they should think about what kinds of decisions they make and if they think they need a spelled out procedure for getting feedback or not. And the full community will give feedback about the job description.

Seems like we are asking each committee to define their own empowerment and their decision making process, and they will get feedback from the full group on that job description.

Is this a good full-community discussion? Seems like it might be. how could it be framed?


8. Revisiting Consensus Decisions
[[Elph]] did email it out. Should we just put it on a meeting agenda and have a full community discussion?
MONKEY: maybe Jim Sweeton could present? Seems like it would make sense for those who did the most thinking about it, to just explain the thought processes that went into it. And then lots of discussion will be needed, to give people time to digest the philosophy of it.


9. Brief discussion about process cmtee

Agenda cooler - soliciting new members for process. And we will need a new convenor for process, Sarah will take a break next time. And also need to keep in mind that steering reps are supposed to rotate, Jillian will need to move on from that soon too, probably the next work term. Maybe we should ask specific people, if they might want to be on process? Melisa S? Catherine? Alicia? Tammy? Debbi? Nancy?

[[Committee]] Rush like a fraternity! hee.

We need to check in with Jim Sweeton and Susan King and see how they're doing. Maybe the conflict resolution agreement should be reviewed at the full group level.

MONKEY: Jillian will resend Malcolm's email to process, if he sent one in December.

10. Next meeting
Wed Feb 9.