During the plenary meeting of 15/07 we consented to team external’s proposal on Outreach activities. One of the amendments was however that the team would have a review of their activities by mid september.
I understood earlier this week that this hasn’t happened yet and that you would discuss it during yesterday’s weekly all hands with the intention of launching a poll to hold an in-person review, open to all Reeflings.
I couldn’t find the minutes for the meeting and haven’t seen any post on ER about it, so I want to check in on the status of the review.
Could you let us know where you stand and by when you intend to organize the review.
I’m not sure I can be motivated to attend a meeting on a Friday evening if there has not been any preparation. I don’t see how that can be a fruitful use of our time, and it’s also not in line with our agreed working methods. I would therefore suggest to reschedule the meeting, and if that’s the case, then I think it’s time for @reef-coordination to take up its responsibility as the parent circle and activate the Plan B that was set out when the outreach strategy was consented to, so we can attend to the group’s interests while we wait for this issue to be resolved.
Great! So let’s have our meeting on Sunday 11 October from 10-12 am.
Preferably it is an in-person meeting. Could everyone come to Nahmann?
Or is someone joining online? Let me know; if that’s the case, we’ll need to set up a hybrid meeting.
Another thing that came up at yesterday’s meeting, is that we wanted to make sure that there is a shared understanding of what is expected. As the Coordinator of Team Governance I volunteered to provide with you an overview of a few things that I think are important to do or keep in mind.
I don’t think it will be possible to cover all three points below in one go. The urgent things are selecting a new Coordinator and getting a grasp on the learnings from the outreach strategy since 15/07, so that we can move forward again. Once that is done, I would suggest you create a short post on ER and tag all Reeflings and the Coordination Group to sollicit their feedback.
The important thing to me is point 3, which is about learning for the future what to do when money is at stake, and concerns about that are received as an act of hostility. Once you have done an evaluation of this aspect too, I would recommend you create another ER post, and invite all Reeflings with an informed opinion about what happened for a dialogue about what we are learning, and possibly also for some accountability / impact digestion.
My personal recommendation would also be to invite a facilitator from outside the team, so that you don’t need spend energy on staying on topic, but you do you of course.
Final note: I imagine that this exercise might be triggering to some of you. When in need, don’t hesitate to reach out to get the empathy that you need, and please also don’t forget that this is not about blame or guilt, but about learning for the future and about restoring the harmony in the group.
Make sure to have clarity about the fact that one of the objections on 15/07 was that the team’s domains would get split. Concretely this means splitting the team in one team that does Outreach (or Communication) and another one that does External Relations. If you wish you can all go on both teams afterwards.
The way I understand things it is fine to just select one Coordinator, and to task this Coordinator with putting the split on the agenda of the first meeting. After that you open up membership to the new Teams to all Reeflings, and then in the first meeting each Team selects their own Coordinator.
2. Evaluation of your performance since 15/07
The question here is related to the outreach strategy that was consented to on 15/07.
Things that I would recommend you check beforehand:
The how-to perform an evaluation: see Team management resource document section 3.
A post that clarifies what it means to take responsibility: Taking responsibility => it is really important that there is a shared understanding of what it means to work together as a self-managed group.
Once you have gone through what has gone well and what could have been better, I think it’s important to have a look at what you are learning from this as a team, noting that responsibility for the performance of your team is collective.
3. Evaluation of how we work together
This topic is also in the domain of @reef-conflict, whom I warmly encourage to offer support with the disentangling of this episode of our history.
Having been quite involved in this issue, I am taking the liberty to offer you a few suggestions coming from a fellow Reefling.
Personally I am less interested in the evaluation of your performance since 15/07. By all means, let’s learn from it, but to me this is not what this whole issue is about.
What is really important to me is that we look at this issue as a growing pain and use it to learn about how we function as a group. In that context I would be interested in having your views on the following:
Looking back at your performance since 2025, can you offer some acknowledgement about why concerns were being expressed since April of this year? I heard you say “we hear the concerns,” but I have personally heard more things à la “we are being blamed for the units that are not sold” than actual, very specific concerns voiced by @els and myself. Getting a sign that there is actually a shared understanding would personally do me good.
Looking back on the frictions that arose since April of this year, what do you think were the main causes? What do you think we could do differently when an issue like this happens next time?
Looking back on words that have been spoken by some of you, including “this is a slap in the face,” and “this is an act of aggression”, would you now have the distance to translate that into an observation, a feeling and a need, so that this becomes easier to hear? Even better still: maybe there can be space for some empathy for those who have been on the receiving end of these words?
thank you for this summary. it’s interesting ! but it’s a very long thing to digest. i will start doing my part to integrate and understand all the concerns. specially those that are related to team performance . thing that can be improved.
and some concerns from @leethat can be acted upon [quote=“Lee, post:6, topic:22699”]
Time: These recruitments activities are taking up a lot of energy and time (e.g. presentations). We could have had more participants if we would have had more effective outreach strategies (website updated in time, posters, a more engaging newsletter etc). I don’t mind giving a lot of time to The Reef, but things like this trigger quite some frustration in me.
More focused attention to the both the “outreach” and the “external relations” domain: At some point somebody made a joke about the so-called “Teams Ladida”, which sort of endearlingly suggested that some teams are more or less important than others. Five years in, funny as it was at the time, I will beg to disagree. Every domain is just as important. I observe that Team External meets every two weeks, and at the same that both domains could use more attention and frequently need some prodding from @els or me. As an example: going to the meetings with the neighbours I was surprised to hear that they had not yet been invited. When I reported back (19/06), I asked for a confirmation from Team External about the follow-up (e.g. because the neighbour continued to complain about shady business), and that point is still pending.
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As mentioned in the coordination meeting of this week: @reef-governance did a review of Outreach frictions in our last meeting.
We looked at it from a governance perspective and what we - as team governance - can learn from it and where we can bring more clarity / what we can install for the future.
Here is our summary:
More clarity might be needed on the fact that the process that was followed was fully sociocratic
The Coordination Group circle leader invited the Team Coordinator for a chat about how things were going (as part of the task to be an accountability buddy).
The issue was then escalated to the Coordination Group, where consent was given about the way forward.
More clarity might be needed about what is meant exactly when we speak about taking responsability
More clarity might be needed about what is and is not expected from a Team Coordinator: contrary to a standard workplace a Team Coordinator is not responsable for the performance of the team, this is held by the entire team.
More clarity might be needed about the relationship with Team R&O: they want a partnership, not a service.
More clarity might be needed on the need for transparency and information flows:
Information needs to flow and be accessible to all, so it shouldn’t matter whether somebody was in a meeting yes or no
All team decisions and conversations need to be accessible on resp. Nextcloud and Edgeryders.
More clarity might be needed about what team autonomy does and does not entail:
Working methods must be followed (making minutes, exchanging information on Edgeryders etc).
Decisions that affect the entire group are a level 3 decision and must go to plenary.
At group level:
We should invest in learning to see feedback as a learning opportunity and not as a conflict or an attack.
The two proposals that were presented at the plenary, supposedly for a selection process, should not have made it to a plenary, based on the guideline that we only discuss proposals that are fully mature.
When the proposals were presented, we should have insisted more that only informed opinions are welcome.
Efficiency is a core value in The Reef’s working methods.