I have finished a first draft of the proposal on an absolute minimum commitment (internal link). Could you please have a look before I send it on for peer review by people from other teams?
As a side question, in the section that says “do not stand in the way of decisions moving forward” I noticed that we don’t have any reference (as in nowhere) to the thing that we used to call “doocracy” or “participation means power”. Do you think we should write this down somewhere, and if yes, any suggestions on where we could do that?
I have a small comment about this paragraph: “-Associate Members commit to showing up at one Reef event in every six weeks and to make an effort to get to know The Reef and the other Reeflings.
-Full Members are requested to show up once in every two months (if possible).”
→ It is not clear to me if you are talking about social events or do you refer to any type of event, plenaries included? I assume you refer to social events? If so, I would mention this explicitly in the text.
Another question about: “Once in the Full Members stage the need for presence is less important, even though it is nice to maintain a minimum of connection.”
→ I wonder why it gets less important to be present once you are a full member? Do you mean presence at team meetings or at plenaries or in general? Are you not expected to be even more involved (and thus present) once you are a full member?
For your second question: I don’t know. I am afraid that I haven’t read enough so far about sociocracy to be able to help you with that (for now).
Looks good. I’ve replied to your comment, although the text box was doing something odd before I closed the page…
I think this is something that could be added to the Onboarding Manual, perhaps in section 5.1. And then link to that in this document. It feels important to connect it, but it should be clearly stated somewhere other than a proposal. Have we got any resources that explain this concept clearly. I always feel that ‘the doer decides’ and ‘participation means power’ are easily misconstrued without any explanation…
I would also say that it is just as important, if not more, to be present and involved as a Full Member. But perhaps less important in terms of needing the contact in order for both parties to make a decision about actual full membership beforehand…
Before going into the detailed replies, I think it is important to specify that the absolute minimum commitment is an emergency mechanism, e.g. for families with young children, people with health concerns, people going through emotionally difficult times etc.
Here are some replies …
Given that this is an emergency mechanism, I prefer to keep it as flexible as possible.
For Full Members I am not sure we should specify anything, given that in case a Full Member has difficulties showing up at any Reef meeting, it means they probably need some support (rather than an expectation to show up). And so I imagine that if appropriate we’ll contact them every once and while to invite them to an event, but in a way I am reluctant to put in an expectation. What do you think?
I fully agree on the lack of clarity between “doer decides” and “participation means power”. I’d be happy to include it in the Onboarding Manual, but don’t you think it also deserves a place in the Governance Document?
As per my reply above, given that it is an emergency mechanism, I would prefer to keep it as flexible as possible, and just ask Team Community Life to see how we can support and involve them?
@reef-full: Team Recruitment & Onboarding has made a draft proposal on an “absolute minimum commitment”, which is an emergency mechanism for people who, for one reason or another, temporarily can’t meet up to the minimum commitment.
Would there be 2-3 people who have the time to do the peer review? If so, can you please add your name in the “proposal admin” section?
@Lea and @RyanB, if you’d be up for it, I’d also be grateful to receive your feedback. It can be here in this thread, or else in a PM if that feels more comfortable.
Thanks so much for drafting this and also having our case in mind.
It sounds good to me for emergency situations.
At the same time, I’m wondering if it can apply in our case: Caring for a small child is in my opinion a bit different to “emergency situations” like taking care of one’s mental health in a particular situation or caring for a sick relative, which is usually limited in time.
Caring for a small child is like a 14-hour job every day which leaves us exhausted at the end of the day and it is hard to set an “end date” when we will be “back fully” (at least I don’t see an end in sight ).
If it is fine for the group to consider this a “long-lasting” emergency situation where this absolute minimum requirements apply that is fine by me, even though we’ll strive to be more involved than that obviously.
I’d be happy to discuss further this Sunday if you prefer.
I completely share your view, and I will look for a way to be clearer on the duration of the absolute minimum commitment. As far as I’m concerned, as long as we have the carrying capacity as a group, I think it should even be possible to make space for somebody who will always need to be on the absolute minimum commitment, e.g. because of chronic illness, taking care of disabled child etc. For me this is part of our commitment to inclusion.
I have reworked the entire proposal along the lines of what we discussed at the Team R&O meeting last week. I even took it a bit further, and reframed the proposal around “creating clarity around commitment”, instead of focussing on the “absolute minimum commitment”.
I let go of the 4-level taxonomy though, because frankly, why go for a 4-level taxonomy if you can have 3-levelled one, with 3 sub-levels in the third level. I mean seriously, I don’t want to be seen doing half work .
It’s great Lie!! Thanks for putting so much effort into it!
I’ve added a few comments and some minor corrections. I’ve made a first comment that I cannot erase on this computer for some reason, and that shouldn’t be given attention, I just hadn’t read things properly, sorry!
I have accepted your corrections and introduced some small changes to address both your comments, including the first one, which I think was a good point.
Can you please have a look to see whether we are getting closer?
All good for me now
I wanted to asnwer about the extension for applying but nextcloud is not letting me make a comment . Here is what I want to say :
Personally I would take out the whole paragraph, and stick to what we are saying now, which is 3mo. And people will ask for extensions when they need it, but at least it won”t become systematic (I’m worried people will think they have 6mo as a default). And when they apply for an extension we can tell them they have 3 mo max.
But maybe we can take this to the plenary and discuss it together?
I needed to update the Onboarding Manual, and I didn’t want to make the text too long, so I restructured the text of the proposal in a separate document. Feel free to have a look and check: https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/f/97686
While I was at it, I have also made a couple of small corrections to the Onboarding Manual and to the checklist. In the checklist I used tracked changes (to be accepted shortly) and in the Onboarding Manual I didn’t (because not significant).
Looks great! And I like the abbreviated version in the Onboarding Manual itself
Checklist changes also look good!
@mieke - we might need to be clearer in the ‘Onboarding: membership manual’ around Nextcloud sign ups. The checklist says that the Exploring Member should request it, and provides info on how to do that. The wording in the doc we edited the other day is a bit unclear, but it implies that the buddy will send Team R&O the request. I think we take ourselves out of the equation and use it as a test of both observance to detail and motivation to find out more
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