Stocktaking and Planning Meeting
Teddington, 19th July 2001
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Present
Andy Harmon, Colston Sanger, Fiona Coffey, Jean Marc Le Tissier, John Wilkes, Karen Welch, Richard Cooke, Terri McNerney, Tony Page
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Where did we end up?
In Colston's words:
My sense of where we ended up was with a strong, yet flexible backbone of
events for the autumn, together with one or more organisers or helpers-with
for each event
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What happened?
Nine of us met at Fiona's house to review the last 6 months of NI and make plans for the remainder of the year.
We began with introductions and a review of highpoints and low points leading into the discussion of a number of ideas for moving forward. Ideas were written onto post-its and sequenced to give us an outline programme for the autumn.
So what did we think of the last 6 months?
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High Points |
Low Points |
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E groups have flourished in an extraordinary way Was "Tony and Fiona show", but no longer, we've moved on The stats suggesting high levels of participation Memorable meetings eg dream & deliver We've stretched our wings from half day to one day to 3 day meetings First whiff of cellular division ie. NI North ______ Face to face Emails when Tony does a summary Workshops Contributing to the Masks workshop Listening to points of view and sharing experiences Little groups _____ Face to face gives a real kick - grey matter sparking Idea of projects Surprised by what gets people going - not always what I would expect Sheer potential _____ Sense of community - able to reach out to people and get a personal response Masks really stimulated me - to think of more creative ways of doing workshops - went to Tate and bought 50 postcards Egroups wonderful - read most of it - I'm a sorter and filer - lets me connect when I couldn't come to meetings ____ Incredibly excited - was a huge admin problem to keep email lists up to date - now shifted Can pick things I want to do eg, not go to NVC Online dialogue including James's provocations _____ NI is an attractor - not forcing itself down your throat Email forum - I'm part of many, but this one makes me react - it provokes me _____ I'm an attractee, wanting to find a way to ground what we do in the real world NI is not a hungry group, trying to sell work - interested in deep ideas to follow through |
Workshops have become a bit like people putting on their party pieces
Fear of getting dragged into emails when skimming through then find a day gone - liking the emails going on, but this is not a highlight for me
Oppressed by volume and intensity of emails Making money is not a dirty word - stuff gets more real as it gets more commercial "After you Claud"!
Struggling with email problems eg. - Email junk like Steve L is out of his office - Steve M getting angry about "lines of red" - Messages to individuals mistakenly sent to whole group
Feeling slightly more responsibility than I want to - eg. offline grumpy reactions to online Worry that we should be a "doing" force, not just a network Do we reach enough people inside organisations? Are contributors a self-selecting subset? Could we have a bigger spectrum of opinion?
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Initial Ideas for the forward programme
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Links with Tomorrow's Company which has always wanted to develop regional network
Commercial/business interest - when we do something commercial, then it's real
Joint projects - Jeremy R's idea - work up a topic to produce a leaflet, publication or workshop
Recruit more internals
Doing work together - things that attractive to people - different flavours
Produce resources for people who are looking for something a bit different eg. a tape of people discussing an issue, an article, a web page
Rapidly sampling what's out there eg, is NLP valuable? A market place
Clear messages like CHANGE = ENERGY, WORKSHOPS = FESTIVALS
Market Place, like Freshers Fair but who are you selling to, and what for?
Offer just a process and a space, like Brain Pool Café. Turn up, not sure what will happen but sure it will be interesting.
Extreme Tuesday club.
Active link from website home page to egroup message summary - but don't get too hooked into discussing this because it is a distraction - mostly we're interested in the face to face aspect.
Open Space principle - facilitator not mothering, when people sidle up, refer them back to the group
Action in the world, rather than just being a sanctuary for us individually.
Animated discussion of Community Cookbook.
Discussion of Open Space as a method that we ought to bring to NI, since it is so congruent with NI values.
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Proposed Programme
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Sept - Live surgery/problem page - Host: ???. Colston's note on this:
Problem Page day in September - either as we've done this before or
action learning set style or maybe as cooperative enquiry (which I'd be
keen on)
2nd week Oct - New leadership/servant leadership with Tom Co - Host: Colston plus Andy, Terri, Tony. Colston's note:
New leadership event, second week in Oct if possible, jointly with
Tomorrow's Company maybe. At Royal Mail London Conference Centre, Mount
Pleasant - probably afternoon only. Programme to be worked up, but could
include some of Tony's thinking on new leadership (as we discussed
briefly after Gestalt day), Terri McN on servant leadership and an Andy H.
spectacular 'Railtrack Mk 2' bit of forum theatre
Mid Nov - Second Birthday - Host: Fiona provide location, all bring food
Dec - Sage Christmas Stuffing - Hosts: Jean Marc & Karen. Colston's note:
'Christmas Stuffing', mid-December - a bit like Problem Page Day, but
without the problems? More like several people talking about projects they
had worked on that had really engaged their passion, where they had
explored new thinking and new 'stuff', and which had been incredibly
successful ... and how and why
Jan - Spirit & Soul - is it just new age crap? - Hosts: Nick (?), Richard, Terri. Colston's note:
'New Year, New age, new crap ?', provisionally for January 2002, but to
be confirmed with Nick H. who suggested it in a conversation with Fiona.
Maybe if needed in Dec/Jan - Open Space Planning - what do people want NI to be? - Hosts: Jean Marc? Tony?
Ongoing activities
Practitioner Research Groups - produce a leaflet, publication or workshop, CD Rom, including Annual Research Large Group - bringing together all the research teams for a day of reporting/learning. Possible groups included:
Colston's note:
Self-organising 'research' groups. This was a suggestion of Jeremy Raymond's on the NI list:
>However I suspect that some spectacular learning - as well as good work and enormous arguments - would also derive from us working together, if the opportunity arose. How about a few NI research projects? Joint work, joint learning, not fee earning, but a slightly more focused stream to run alongside the valuable meanders of the present.
It's something that I'd very much like us to take forward if we can. For me, it connects with the idea of workplace- or practitioner-based research (rather than academic research). This was a strong point of the old Deming association. People would put up a topic that they were interested in and invite others to join them to form a group to research it. Usually, there was a goal to aim for - publishing a pamphlet or article, for instance.
Some groups produced several; others met for years and didn't produce anything - but that was OK too. There was also a rather grand 'research committee': in fact, simply a reason for whoever wanted to from all the research groups to get together for a whole day two or three times a year to talk about what they had been up to... and so forth.
The 'Energy' project arising out of the 'Small change' day could well be one such group; and I'd like to see what interest there might be in writing up common patterns of org.change and maybe developing a pattern language
Shadow Consulting
- ask for a shadow - Jean Marc?Forum Theatre/Improvisation Group - Andy
A series of themed Open Space events - Jean Marc
Recruit internals including reprint postcards - how to cover costs? - Fiona
Experiential thingies rather than After You Clauds - ?ask Richard?
Community Cookbook - Food for Thought - Dandy Xmas Annual - Fiona. Colston's note:
Finally, there was the idea of an ' NI Annual' - rather like the Dandy or
Beano Christmas annual , or the by now traditional 'Barry Curnow's Bumper
Review of the Year' .... which might be a neat thing to do to take stock of
where we are, publish some stuff, and so on.
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