Coordination meeting notes: 2022-09-05
Made into a wiki. Please edit if I (Alberto) forgot something or made mistakes
Present: @Lee, @Pieter, @manuelpueyo , @Sarah, @Laurianne @ChrisM @alberto.
Excused: @Sophie_Beese.
Lie explains what the coordination circle does in sociocracy. Ideally, two people for every team should be present. Delegates should be appointed in teams, and accepted by the coordination circle. All this is to be taken with a pinch of salt in The Reef (many teams, none of which has formally appointed leaders and facilitators yet).
Sarah does not like the hierarchical connotation of “Team Leader”. A discussion on leadership ensues.
Teams check-in
What people are working on:
- Building: le programme; estimating the financial impact of architectural choices (example: futureproofing). Organizing visits. Preparing a plenary discussion on the common spaces, including a questionnaire for all Reeflings.
- Communication: the flyer for the next presentation.
- Coordination: preparing the agendas.
- Conflict resolution: conflict resolution process in place
- Facilitation: take over from Lie in plenaries; build capacity on facilitation; maybe innovation in the long run.
- Finance: setting up the confesseur process and an accounting system.
- Governance: field-testing the appointment of the team leader. Working on a membership document. Maybe expand and complement sociocracy/NVC.
- Inclusion: good meeting with Luc Lampaert. Looking into financing modes of inclusive units.
- IT: most of the work is done, so now we are on support and maybe some enhancement
- Logistics: no need for now, but of course next month we have a presentation coming up.
- Recruitment and onboarding: Ralf wants to onboard a couple of people ahead of time
How it’s going
- Building: mostly OK, but Emmanuelle left, and so is Giulia, so this team is understaffed.
- Communication: good vibrations, no problem to report.
- Coordination: it’s lonely, at the end of Lie’s comfort zone. No action requested for now.
- Conflict resolution: going well.
- Facilitation: take over from Lie in plenaries; build capacity on facilitation; maybe innovation in the long run.
- Finance: understaffed (also we lose Giulia). We need two more people.
- Governance: going well, even with Alexandre leaving.
- Inclusion: going well.
- IT: smooth, perhaps too smooth, since we do not have meetings and so maybe we are missing needs that should be addressed.
- Logistics: no need for now, but of course next month we have a presentation coming up.
- Recruitment and onboarding: smooth and easy, only two people.
Support needed from other teams
- Building: facilitation (help prepare the discussion on common spaces). Finance (costing of options, in the medium term).
- Communication: clarification on our role concerning the website; from onboarding, do we have a role to play there? Clarifications on which languages to use?
- Coordination: need a system to “break out of teams”, so that people can take on tasks for teams that they are not part of.
- Conflict resolution: going well. Also, thinking about a task force to come up with a checklist for purchasing a site.
- Facilitation: no needs.
- Finance: no needs.
- Governance: no needs.
- Inclusion: finance and legals + building to cost the options.
- IT: none.
- Logistics: none.
- Recruitment and onboarding: flyers from comms, but also materials like pictures of Reef. Assessment of financial capacity from finance (and building).
Topics for the plenary meeting
We look at a list of topics that people are working on, and try to schedule then for plenaries based on how close teams are close to finishing. It is agreed that team Coordination (Lie) is the guardian of this document.
To do list
Some tasks on the to-do list are more urgent than others. We move them offline with the people on whose table they fall.
Decisions
Planning coordination meetings. These meetings are needed in connection with the plenaries, to make the most of the latter. However, teams should be minimized Proposal: monthly coord meetings, monthly facilitation meetings, so that the facilitation people are involved biweekly. The need to plan plenaries is important; if there are no dedicated coordination meetings, we should have another mechanism to populate the agenda of plenaries (for example, not we have planned the next plenary, but not the following one). There is a risk of having meetings about having meetings. Decision: monthly coord meetings for now, re-evaluate at the end of October.
Understaffed teams. The main bottleneck is finance. Ideas: ask Ugne; ask Marcel Heymans; and hopefully get someone from the early recruitment pool. The second important bottleneck is building. Ideas: draw on the early recruitment pool, and use the buddy system to speed up onboarding.
Single tasks. How can we find help for single tasks? Ideas: just ask a person directly, either by direct message or by tagging. Ideas: try to involve more the group. Decision: for now, we try one-to-one involvement.
Checklist on things needed for purchasing a site. Proposal: convene a task force. Lie to think about it and start drafting people into it.
Chris to facilitate the next coordination meeting.
