Team Governance and Working Methods: getting started

The Reef
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A post was merged into an existing topic: Voting helping circle

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Hello @reef-governance

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?

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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’EchappĂ©e. It’s just a number, so we should have until the 6th before we need to decide on this.

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Hi @reef-governance!

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)
  • ComitĂ© 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 comitĂ© 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.

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Thanks Sarah !

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 comitĂ© 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


Fine with me :slight_smile:

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I am clearly not up to date - do we have a deadline/timeframe for this now?

Sounds good to me.

Dito :slight_smile:

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Yes that’s a fairly recent development. For now the idea would be to do the incorporation at some point in september


New word!

Ok, will get to do the poll soon

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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 ComitĂ© 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 :grinning:

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About the comité des sages, I think the question is mainly a pragmatic one. Yes, ideally we would have only ex-legal profiles, but it might not be possible. And I think the point is to have third party members who can help by just being sound and neutral. So to me it makes sense to look broad (and take only the judges and lawyers if we find a ton!).
But that can be picked up at coordination meeting if it needs to be rediscussed with finance.

On another note, following the full members meeting,we’re thinking it would be good to plan out a new process for plenaries and how to include associates. And it would be best to do that before our next plenary on Tuesday

@reef-governance : Any chance you guys would be available for a quick chat on Sunday early eve, like 6-6.30pm?

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Possible for me.

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Just to let you know, Chris is having a “can’t deal with the Reef” day, so meeting adjourned. He’ll make a post tomorrow with suggestions. Let us know if you have thoughts on this


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Sorry everyone
 couldn’t face my Reef-related to-do list yesterday :-/

Back now, and as I mentioned on the thread for tomorrow’s plenary, we should be clear about how we’re going to find the balance between including new members and moving forward at a reasonable pace. Particularly as tomorrow’s plenary will be setting the precedent for the next period. Here’s a suggestion to bounce off:

We make distinctions between agenda points, as to whether new members can be involved in questions/clarifications rounds, comments/concerns rounds, both or neither.

This distinction could be planned in the coordination gropu phase, or between the coordinator and Team Facilitation on the day


Thoughts?

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Sounds sensible to me - if we decide on the day of a plenary that it’s a “FM only topic” associates might feel left out or like their wasting their time.

Might be worth asking our new members how this discussion lands with them, i.e. during a chat with their buddy?

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For the plenary meetings the way I understood the conclusion from the last FM meeting was that we would keep the plenaries as they are (or as much as possible), and that we would just organise more FM meetings.

I made a post about that, with a proposal in another thread (Increasing our meeting frequency).

What is important to me in all this are the following things:

  • Agility, as much as possible: deciding whether a topic goes to a FM meeting or a plenary can just be left to the Team, the Team’s Coordinator, and if necessary, a quick chat with the group’s Coordinator.

  • Including Associate Members as much as possible: this we could do by organising plenary meetings just like we do now. I would not restrict access to the questions and comments rounds (or else only exceptionally).

  • Flexibility: I would rather not be pinned down in terms of “setting a precedent”. Everybody knows that everything is in flux, and that we are trying to deal with it in view of the best interest of the group. As long as we maintain transparency and explain the what and the why, I am confident that people will be understanding of a little chaos.

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