The following message was emailed by the current moderator group
to all NI Members on
___________________________
Outcomes of the NI Moderators Meeting
In the dark days before
Christmas your current moderators (Colston, Uly and Tony) met to discuss options for going forward in
New Intermediaries in 2004. One option before us after a challenging year with
one founder (Fiona) leaving, another (Tony) all but
resigning, and with many upset or dissatisfied at what was happening, was to
put NI out of its misery.
Before taking such action we
undertook a thorough review and as we did so we noticed the more
gentle, positive energy in NI in recent weeks. We reflected on what NI
has achieved and what NI does best and noticed a renewed excitement starting to
arise between the 3 of us. We became clear on a basis on which we were prepared
to continue to serve the community in the coming period.
At the heart of our discussion
was the insight that NI is at its best when it is a "Respectful Community
of Enquiry".
Local learning sets
With that in mind, your
moderators would like to encourage the formation of local learning sets in the
localities. What we envisage is a series of "mini-NIs"
in the regions. We're in learning sets ourselves with other NIers
and these seem to be places where NI's purpose is
alive and strong. In the past there have been occasional grumblings about the
dearth of NI activities outside
If you'd like to set up a
local learning set, Julie Bickerton has a one-page
guide on how to do it that will give you a head-start. If you'd like a copy to
help you get started, please email one of the moderators.
NI boundary crossing events
Secondly, we are planning a
further series of boundary crossing events so as to encourage closer links
between internal and external change agents, and to demonstrate and test a
different way of joint working.
What we're planning is a
series of afternoon events where a small number of NI members meet face-to-face
with an internal change agent (who could also be an NI member) at either the
company's site or a neutral site. These will not be commercial sessions, and no
liability will be accepted on either side.
The general idea here is to
build on similar, successful events in the past - for instance the workshops
with shop stewards at AEEU in 2001, those between internal and external change
agents and a session with Rosemary in the NI Health Group last year.
NI advisory group
Thirdly, we will be inviting
NI members to join us in a broader Advisory Group for NI. For NI to flourish
and become what it may be, we do need more co-moderators. We envisage any one
person serving for no more than an eighteen-month stint.
Introducing NI's new owner
To this end, NI's new owner is neither Tony, Colston
or Uly, but …. N.M.Diador (geddit???) who will henceforth be the embodiment and
guardian-angel of NI. Emails addressed to nmdiador@yahoo.co.uk will be
answered on his/her behalf by a current co-moderator.
Paying for the website
On a practical note, we need
to find a way of paying for the newintermediaries.co.uk domain name and webhosting as this still provides a global shop window for
NI and a source of new people. Currently, Tony Page does this out of his own
pocket. Initially we are asking all members contribute the equivalent of a book
of 12
Linking to NI
We are also interested in
whether NIers with websites might wish to make a link
to the NI website, perhaps through a clickable NI logo, thus wearing NI as a
badge of pride, along the lines of "Intel inside".
NI: Getting clearer about purpose, values and rules of
engagement
Although NI has been an
experiment in operating with minimal rules we have been learning afresh that
clearer boundaries are needed to engage happily together. For example some people
have indicated a long-standing reluctance to post emails to the group, and
recently a new concern about what face to face events will be like.
Although we recognise that
NI at its best is emerging, learning, growing and thus provisional, we will be
providing clearer guidelines to make NI a safe and enjoyable place to bring
your creativity. To this end we have restated below in the email footer what we
take NI to be about - please see below.
Regarding emails, we will be
encouraging short, "respectful" postings rather than long information
dumps. When a question is asked of the group we will encourage the asker to take replies off-line and to post to all a summary
of responses. The moderators will give gentle off-line reminders to people
where necessary and will expect a positive response. Ignoring such guidance will
be taken as a decision to leave.
We encourage commercial
activities and discussions in NI provided these are in our domain (at the
intersection of "people, organisation and change"), and NI values are
observed.
We encourage all face to
face events in the spirit of "Respectful Community of Enquiry", and
will seek to clarify offers where made and for NI events to be genuinely safe
spaces to be creative, rather than hostile, unnecessarily conflictual,
or participants becoming facilitators showing off their moves to each other.
Re-contracting to NI
We are now looking for your
commitment to what we set out here. To show your commitment to continuing with
NI we now need 2 simple signs from you:
1. An email to
nmdiador@yahoo.co.uk with the following subject header: RE-CONTRACT
2. Your book of stamps or 5
euro/$ bill in the post to Uly Ma, NI c/o Greenfile Developments Ltd, Suite 5 Harvard House, Manor
Fields, Putney, London SW15 3NB UK
Warm regards,
Uly, Colston
and Tony
Current co-moderators, New
Intermediaries