The Issue
There are a lot of decisions that need to get made in order for the Spring conference and community to exist. Every year, some of the members of the community volunteer to dedicate their time to help make those decisions and to work towards making this community and conference happen.
Though it’s not the only way to help, certainly the biggest volunteer time commitment is joining staff. However, dedicating a half dozen weekends or so over the course of the year and many hours outside of that doesn’t make staff’s opinions more important than other community member’s opinions, or mean that they are the only ones who can help and/or work to shape the conference. Lots of people who feel strongly about the community and who want to help can’t join staff for a large number of reasons.
A lot of the work of staff was originally intended to be for the very specific purpose of making logistical decisions – the organizational grunt work of running a weeklong event. In reality, however, an ever-increasing amount of staff’s time is being used to attempt to address a range of highly challenging, emotionally charged, community-wide social issues.
So there are two problems. First, the staff simply doesn’t have the time to handle all of the policy making and setting of community standards and priorities that is currently needed and wanted by the community. And secondly, major decisions about the whole community really need the input and buy-in of more than just the few who have the time to volunteer to organize the conference.
The solution we’ve come up with is to hold meetings to which the entire community is invited, to discuss issues and vote on actionable proposals. Although we have considered holding the meetings during the year, a major concern is that only a small percentage of the community would be able to attend, often only those who happen to live closest to the meeting location. It is also difficult for community members with children to attend meetings. Therefore, in order to include as broad a swath of the community as possible, we plan to hold at least one of these meetings at the conference itself.
Community Forum
This year, we are going to hold a community decision-making meeting at the Spring conference, a meeting which we will call the Community Forum. It will be held on Sunday afternoon at Glen Brook in the afternoon workshop slot. Members of the community who aren’t otherwise attending the conference are welcome to join the meeting and to have dinner afterwards, so we can ensure that issues, especially issues that involve access to the conference, can be addressed by the whole community. We will also provide childcare for the duration of the meeting, and everyone will be welcome to eat dinner with us on that day.
We first introduced this proposal at the open staff meeting, where we discussed some logistics of decision-making; a subcommittee of those who attended then came up with a decision-making procedure, which will be discussed below. The procedure is not set in stone, but is a starting place from which the community can work.
The Community Forum will be non-mandatory, but everyone is encouraged to attend. The general procedure for the meeting will be that just before the meeting starts people will be invited to propose topics to discuss by writing them down on a board (poster board, bulletin board, or similar). We will start the discussion by asking whoever proposed the topic to make a few overview statements about it and why it is important. A main component of this portion is to outline and briefly explain a problem that needs to be solved so we have a clear idea of what a solution would need to do. This portion of the Forum should be relatively brief – it is primarily for information and clarification rather than for discussion, so that everyone is clear about the general nature and subject matter of each issue being raised. Then we will use what we’ll call Sticky Dot voting (described below) to prioritize topics for discussion.
Once the community has selected its highest priority topic(s), the general discussion will involve a more thorough exploration of the issue(s) at hand, with the intention of generating one or more actionable proposals. The ultimate goal is to shape a proposal that fits the needs of as many of the community members as possible.
We will use a voting method called Fist to Five (see below) for occasional temperature checks to see how the community feels and to shape the discussion. When it feels like a final version of a proposal has come about, we will use a modified version of Fist to Five that acts as a vote on the issue: Basically this is a regular fist to five, but we will add up all the votes and check if the average is greater than 3.1. If so, the proposal passes.
The goal of this endeavor is to get substantial unanimity on a course of action, rather than strict consensus. We decided this would be useful if we wanted changes and decision-making to happen with any kind of speed. We are aware that full consensus is generally preferable, but much harder to attain, and we’re worried that if we endeavored to use a full consensus method, no decisions would ever get made.
Once a proposal has been voted upon, we will move on to the next topic if there is time. It is possible that one or more issues will have to be tabled, due either to time constraints or to a failure to achieve substantial unanimity. A possible plan is to make this an annual event so topics not gotten to can be pushed to the next year, and topics that weren’t resolved satisfactorily can get another chance in the future.
Nuts and Bolts
Official Meeting Positions
The Forum will have a few official positions that will be appointed by staff. The first of these is the facilitator. The role of facilitator is to keep the discussion moving, listen to how the discussion is going, and intervene if it seems stalled in any way. The facilitator does NOT decide who is right or who has won. There will also be an official stack taker (see below), and a minute taker. There will also be a note taker (who may also function as a second facilitator, if needed) who writes down main discussion points/ideas in a large format (such as a flipchart) for the audience to see and modifies them to reflect their current state as a result of the discussion.
Stack and Facilitation
The Stack is a structure for making sure everyone gets a turn to speak. It is essentially a list of everyone who has raised their hands; it is maintained and updated by the stack taker. Whoever raised their hand first gets to speak first. Occasionally, the facilitator(s) can “jump stack” or speak out of turn for meeting related business, i.e. “We only have about five minutes left,” or “After you said that, five people raised their hands at once. Do we want to address that statement now or move that discussion to the end of the stack?” etc. These are points of process, not insertions of opinion on the topic being discussed.
Another tool that is available to the facilitator is to “Close Stack”, saying that no new people can be added to stack for the time being. This is usually used either when a discussion is starting to wind down and a temperature check or a vote seems like a good idea, or when time constraints are an issue. A downside to stack is that it can take a long time between raising one’s hand and getting to speak, but an upside is that a few louder voices are less likely to dominate the whole conversation.
Sticky Dot Voting – a prioritization method
Each participant receives 3 sticky-dots (or gold stars or whatever).
After all topics have been explained and are written up on the board, each participant comes up and sticks their dots next to whichever topic(s) they feel most strongly about. If someone feels strongly about one proposal, they can put all three dots next to it. If someone feels like there are 2 or 3 good proposals, they can divide their dots accordingly.
After everyone sticks up their dots, the proposal with the most dots takes precedence. If there are 2 or 3 issues that are tied or quite close together, then if necessary the group can discuss those few issues further, with the aim of prioritization. Often times a general consensus starts to build around one choice as the discussion progresses, at which point a straw poll is often sufficient. If necessary, a second round of sticky dots can be utilized.
Pros: Allows for prioritization, nuances of feeling, multiple choices
Cons: Works best when the decision is not yes/no, but rather where several proposals or ideas are possible.
To consider: In this structure, the voting is public. Those who vote later can view the votes of those who have gone before – not votes by individuals per se (although that’s possible too) but the later voters can see the quantity of votes each proposal is getting. This may or may not influence their own voting choices. However, this voting method also could be done by private ballot to avoid the problem, with the downside of slowing down the process so that someone can tally the votes.
Fist to Five – making a final decision
This is a way to take a straw poll for a proposed issue. After a proposal is made and people are given a moment to think about it and propose any tweaks for clarity (though usually this happens after some discussion), each person raises one hand with a number of fingers that represents their “vote.”
Holding up five fingers is a vote of super-agreement. Holding up 0 fingers (a fist) is a vote of super-disagreement. 0 is considered a block. Fours and Ones are solid and relatively strong agreements/disagreements. Twos and Threes are mild positions of disagreement/agreement. There is no middle vote, so this system forces participants to decide if they are for or against something, even if not very strongly.
After the vote is counted there may be a clear outcome, overwhelmingly positive or negative, in which case the proposed issue clearly passes or fails.
Very often, there is less unanimity. In this case discussion is re-opened, starting with anyone who put up zeroes and anyone who put up fives.
This is a tool for shaping proposals to meet the people, not the people to meet a proposal.
Fist to Five will be used as a final decision-making tool. Since all votes are either for or against, we can use an average of all of the votes to see whether or not something passes. If the average is greater than 3.1, then it passes. This method has the advantage of allowing moderate opinions to count, without the consensus-related problem of a small number of people stopping a generally acceptable proposal.
Pros: If a proposal doesn’t work, change the proposal, not the people. Discourages division, encourages working together.
Cons: Only works for one proposal at a time rather than picking a plan out of several.
Some pros and cons about the timing of the Forum:
The Community Forum will take place during the long weekend. Pro: Weekends are generally easier for most people to attend even if they aren’t attending the whole conference. Long weekenders can participate. Cons: early-on interruption of the conference, takes disproportionate time from long weekenders’ experience, potential “rock-starring” by non-conferees.
Legal structure to make the forum binding
The Community Forum will be officially a subcommittee as appointed by the Board (the staff) and in that way will be given authority to make decisions. The Board is then bound to approve the decisions made by the group. Technically, only members will be on the committee, so first year attendees can have a voice, but no vote. This is the easiest method from a legal perspective, utilizing the current bylaws to set up this structure so that it has binding power over the organization.