I thought we would have a meeting once the governance doc was reviewed, but we are doing that online instead.
So I am wondering whether we still need to organise one?
Here are the main things I see in our backlog:
voting on sites ( @Sophie_B will you have time to work on this now? Let us know if we need to redistribute the task )
team reviews : @ChrisM - anything you would need to discuss?
selection of the different bodies (société simple, ASBL board? ), starting to look for our Sages: could wait but we could also start thinking about it
selection of negociators team: starting to be a bit more pressing now I think
I am thinking it would be nice to have a meeting in January, even just a short one to touch base. What do you think?
Happy to hear we don"t need to, I think we could also just appoint a helping circle for the negociators team, and see later for the rest.
Hey @Sarah, indeed it’s been on my list for some time now (after I eagerly took if over from sb else…). I am flying out tomorrow so won’t be working on it until next year. Could do it in January, unless somebody else has some time beforehand.
@reef-governance : Here is a poll to try and find a date for a meeting!
The aim is to meet before the 11/01 so that we can finalise the governance document.
Following today’s meeting, here are the tasks that we picked up (I added them to our backlog):
Voting on sites: clarify approach with regards to personnal preferences and subjective criteria
Working methods:
Respecting deadlines
Plan – Do – Measure
Four-eye principle
Teams set-up:
do the consent process to joining a team only when the personn becomes a full member
“zombie teams” and fast teams remix ( Regularly assess are we enough or too many for this team? If we’re too many in a team, disperse the team and re-assigne people)
Teams’ work appreciation rounds, and generally how to work in more appreciation
How to deal with the lack of workforce for some teams (team inclusion, team external relations)
Here is what I would propose: the helping circle for voting on site reconvenes and makes a proposal for clarification, and then we meet as a team to discuss the final version of the manual, and the most pressing things above (I think we could keep the meeting very short).
So @ChrisM@Sophie_B can you fill in the poll below? And can the last one to fill in ping me on signal?
Tuesday 13/02
Saturday 24/02 am
Saturday 24/02 pm
Saturday 24/02 evening
Sunday 25/02 pm
Sunday 25/02 evening
Tuesday 27/02
Wednesday 28/02
0voters
When we have a date, I’ll do a poll for a team meeting
Ha sorry, I thought the dates were for a Team G & WM meeting.
For the voting manual I’m afraid we don’t have so much time any more. Let me know if you need help to finalise it?
Also: the teams set-up thingy I’d like to get out of the way as soon as possible. I can write a short post to explain my point, and then we can see how we can take it from there.
The first vote on buying a site is likely to be in 6 weeks, but it would be good if we can have the manual all sorted by the next plenary, which, if we have the feasibility studies in, should be the beginning of the 3-week countdown to that…
@Sarah and @Sophie_B - I’ve put 13/2 down for the meeting on that. I am actually available on some of the other dates, but as that’s the earliest one and we all seem to be free, we may as well go for that…
Following up from yesterday, we have to make a proposal for the statutes on the voting threshold at the GA.
Talking to chris about this, we figure that it makes most sense to use our notary’s experience and trust his expertise. So we would suggest to keep the 80% and adjust our governance documents.
Which would imply preparing a post asking FM for written process on amending our governance document (which I would do)
Does that seem like a plan to you? Or do you see things differently?
I am torn between not wanting to spend time on something that seems relatively minor, and wanting to spend time on it, because it’s maybe not that minor either.
Part of where I am coming from is that I did not have the best experience with these statutes: they had several inconsistencies on points that matter, one of which was in breach with the law.
The difference I see between 75% and 80% is that in the former you protect the group against difficult people, and in the latter you protect people from the group not respecting their needs.
In our group I worry much more about the former. One scenario could be one where the households who joined at the very latest develop a grudge against the households who were there from the start. If a decision only needs a “no” from 25%, it becomes more difficult to block the entire group.
Putting a higher threshold on the other hand entails a bigger risk of getting stuck when a decision is needed.
As a first step I would like to clarify with Mark which threshold they used in Brutopia and in l’Echappée. It’s just a number, so we should have until the 6th before we need to decide on this.
So the Sosim incorporation is happening sooner than expected, so we will need to get on the case.
Here are the main points that I see :
Board : we need to reorganise the selection process as some people left.
Board insurance (altghouh still not a gov task, so maybe that can be taken back by team finance now that they have a bit more muscle power)
Comité des sages: we said it was a team finance task to find people, but in the end discussing it at the coordination meeting, we thought we needed wider profiles than legal ones (also mediation for instance could be interesting); so it seems that the task should stay with us. For starter, I think it is just a network activation needed, with a post asking Reeflings to look into their circles to see if they could find somebody who could fit. I think we would need a role description for that though…
We are also long overdue a team coordinator review and seleciton process. So ideally we would organise a meeting. But everything feels quite full atm
Plus, we need to get started on this, but we don’t need a comité des sages on day 1, and I think Board selection shouldn’t be hard as we had the set up already. So that’s maybe not super pressing to meet and move things along…
Personnally I would say let’s meet calmly after 15/7 about this, and refine the plan.
But let me know if you think differently.
We could do this at the plenary on the 23rd. It’s easy enough to redo the survey thing that led into it, and there are no other changes to incorporate since the last time that it was on the agenda…
As far as I understand it, this comité des sages does need some legal background, in case disputes go that direction, but perhaps also some conflict resolution etc. background as well, so that they don’t always make it that far. So ideally some lawyers/judges and some others. Although as we noted in the meeting the other day, it may be a matter of taking whoever we can find, because there can’t be that many retirees from these professions who want to spend their time giving free services to a random cohousing project…
I would personally postpone the selection for the Board until the moment that we incorporate. The reason is that this way it is possible for people who are currently not yet Full Members to be a candidate.
For the Comité de Sages I tend to disagree. The way I understand this, this is a pre-arranged way of extra-legal mediation. Therefore I think it’s highly recommended that these people have a legal background (most of those also come with mediation skills). The first step would be to make a one-pager that explains what would be expected of these people. To me personally this is a task that fits in the domain of Team Finance, not Governance.
As for a meeting, I love meeting up with you, but I’d rather not organise a team meeting if there’s no urgent agenda points. Always happy to hang out though
)