Email Consensus Process Agreements:
Facilitation:
If you are offering the proposal to the list, it is your responsibility to facilitate the email consensus process unless you make prior arrangements with someone else to do it, or to assist with doing it. It is also your responsibility to indicate who that will be in the explanation portion of the email. If it is a proposal that you, the proposer, has strong personal feelings about, then it would be appropriate that you find another facilitator who does not have any potential conflict of interest. Proposals specific to committees will be facilitated online by someone in that committee since anyone from a specific committee would have more information/access to information about the origins and intent of the proposal.
To initiate a discussion use the heading DISC: in the subject line. This may or may not be related to an imminent proposal.
Layout:
A proposal is offered. The subject line reads:
PROP: Tea on Calls
The text of the body offers the proposal statement:
Communications committee proposes that each committee member agrees to come to all of our conference calls with an already made cup of hot tea.
Then any further explanation if necessary:
Communications thinks it would really support our committee to be present and grounded if we were all drinking tea together while we discussed our business. Sometimes our calls can seem kind of tense, and sometimes we can feel very far away from each other, so we like the idea of drinking tea together as a way to be connected and to take care of ourselves too.
Invitation for any comments, questions, concerns…
When responding to an email proposal, change the subject line to CCQ: Tea on Calls
CCQ= Concerns, Comments, Questions
Try to separate different CCQs to support the discussion threads and the facilitator.
One thread might be about not liking tea, can we drink cocoa instead?
Another might be about feeling irritated about the belief that Communications committee is overstepping its bounds with its assumptions about what would offer more connection.
Etc..
Make a slash mark after the proposal heading in the subject line and then add one word to signify your content: CCQ: Tea on Calls/ Cocoa? or CCQ: Tea on Calls/Assumptions
While this may seem tedious or unfamiliar at first, we believe that it will help to keep the process more organized than it has been to date and further to allow both the online facilitator and the call facilitator greater ease with tracking the threads and actually addressing the concerns, comments and questions.
Time frame:
Unless it is a time sensitive issue, assume that any unfinished discussion and/or the test for consensus on the proposal will be placed on the agenda and will occur on the very next conference call. The facilitator of the call will facilitate the process at that point, taking into regard any potential conflict of interest.
(Once consensus is being tested for, it should be noted if there is a greater than 10-20% decision making cell member stand aside contingent. This is often an indication that it is not a strong proposal and could use more time. This is something we as a group may want to consider and make agreements about.)
Consented decisions will be recorded in the minutes as such, and also indicating who are the stand asides, who might have blocked and who has actively consented. These consented decisions will we posted on the CoCo elist, and published in the Raddish.
Edited by jphartsong on May 18, 2011 11:19 am