Appendix A

Groundwork Professional Organizer (PRO)

Note: the position is as organizer, not just paid worker. The important thing for the paid organizer to understand is that their position is one of creating time, space, and energy for the rest of groundwork people to do good political work. It's not just doing things, but organizing things so that others can do them, i.e. taking RR for the groundwork collective's work.

Requirements:

• Be willing to aspire to residual responsibility -- aggressively seek work.

• Be together (not flaky).

• Make groundwork your highest priority (outside you personal life).

• Agree to work 40 hours per week minimum.

• Create space for new people to take on more responsibility.

• Take RR for at least one high energy groundwork job (hopefully, this is a temporary requirement until we get more energy).

• Make a 6 month commitment to the job. Make clear time commitment to collective Agree to the Core Collective agreements:
  • Make 7 hours per week of your political energy subject to a social decision of members of the collective and the rest subject to criticism.
• Develop socialist decision-making
• Take residual responsibility for the collective.
• Come to all meetings-it is a collective decision not to come
• Develop a critical relationship with the members of the collective.
• Make a disciplined withdrawal when leaving the group-setting aside time to clarify with the group the reasons for leaving.
• Keep any other agreements between members of the collective.
• Work toward taking residual resp. for the bookstore.

• Make a monthly report to the collective which:
  • evaluates the work load and its distribution.
• evaluates the effectiveness of crit/self crit and discusses open criticisms.
• evaluates the 'state of the union,' how the relationship is working out.
• outlines the progress at creating space for other people to take on responsibilities.
• Make a disciplined withdrawal from the job -- train a replacement, make sure the rest of the collective is aware of any responsibilities that need someone, etc...

Appendix B

Groundwork Meeting Skills

Meetings are a place for a group to make decisions, plan some work or maybe get some work done. If you only need to make announcements or transfer information, then there are more efficient ways, such as newsletters, phone calls, a daybook, etc. If one of the purposes of the meeting is for the group to get to know each other, try holding it in a unique place like a pub, pizza place, the beach... Better still, the group could work hard to make decisions and then do something more enjoyable.

This outline of meeting skills should facilitate a kind of meeting where the business at hand is effectively handled by everyone. The outline deals specifically with a chair-less meeting of a collective: A meeting in which everyone takes responsibility for the meeting process. However, most of the skills will help in any meeting. For larger meetings, or meetings in which some people are not so familiar with meeting processes, a formal 'chair' is desirable (see "Notes for GW Chair" in the GW job descriptions if you want to learn more about chairing a meeting). Meetings are best when everyone has chairing skills and can take responsibility for moving the meeting forward.

Before the Meeting

• Find out what's going to be on the agenda and familiarize yourself with issues to be discussed. A consequence of not coming prepared is that everybody's time is spent to explain something that could have been clarified earlier.

• Be prepared to take notes for recording things you take responsibility for.

• Try to be physically and mentally alert, ready to focus energy on the problems under consideration. If you're not feeling 100%, it might be a good idea to share this with people right at the start.

• Prepare questions or proposals you have for the group.
  • know what you want from the group and communicate specifically like: "I wanna brainstorm such and such," or , "I'd like approval for..."
• talking with others before the meeting will give others a better chance of fully understanding your issue.
• gather any information necessary to make a decision. for example, if you're asking for endorsement of an event, you should already know who's sponsoring it, what their politics are, and why the endorsement will make a difference.

• People should clarify specific meeting responsibilities such as taking minutes and informing others not present. Someone must be responsible for each meeting decision so that it will be carried out.

During the meeting:

• Keep to the issue.
  • deal with divergences. If someone recognizes a divergence, they should point it out. Then everyone can decide whether to continue or get back to the problem at hand.
• it's possible to discuss the topic without approaching the issue, i.e. talking around it, which should be avoided.
• know what the issue is and why it must be resolved. Anytime you don't know what the issue is, you should ask for clarification.
• try to focus the issue, or ask for it to be focused, that is, restated in a clearer manner. Summarize the facts or differences anytime it will move discussion forward.

• Interrupting: It's okay to interrupt someone to:
  • recognize a divergence
• make a necessary clarification
• refocus an unproductive discussion

It's not okay to interrupt someone so you can present your ideas.

• Abstracting. Abstracting is a tool for dealing with a problem where matters of principle are confused by special interests. Abstracting an issue can show what principles are involved so they can be applied to the real issue. Also, abstracting an issue can show what principles are involved so that they can be applied to the issue. Also, abstracting can remove an issue from an emotionally loaded context. if the abstract is resolved, it can be applied to the specific situation with a greater chance of solving the problem. A pattern for abstracting a problem might go like this:
  • abstract to a simple model
• get both sides to agree that the model might focus the problem
• analyze the model out of the context of the present issue
• apply back to the original problem
• Then, either make a more accurate model or refine our theory and position. Using an example might work too.

• Criticism or self criticism of the meeting process can be made during the meeting as they come up or held for the end of the meeting.

When a disagreement gets bogged down, the groundwork document on "techniques for struggle" offers alternatives for working it out.

Allowing everyone to participate (cutting back of aggressive people, encouraging those who may be less meeting conscious). Some suggestions:

• Agree to pause 3 seconds between speakers. This gives people more of a chance to figure out what's been said and formulate a response.

• Divide the available time by the number of people to find out how much each person should speak. More than twice this time is definitely too much; less than 1/2 is not full participation. Point it out to the over talker and encourage the under talker.

• Pass out a given amount of match sticks to each person. Then, to speak, each person throws in one match stick. No match stick, no speak.

• Or???

After the meeting -- Questions to consider:

• Who, if anyone, lead the meeting, and was it good or bad?

• Who talked too little or too much?

• How could your participation have been better; should you have been better prepared?

• What bogged the meeting down, and how could it have been avoided?

• What's going to keep the same mistakes from happening again?

• Was there a time when people should have broken up into smaller groups or discussed things more informally, as during a break?

• Was the meeting size okay?

• Have other criticisms or self criticisms become clear?

• What would make for a better meeting next time?

• Should these notes be changed? Given to someone?

A problem in collectives is that collectives as organisms are not too bright. If you want it to think about something you have to do all the work - spoon feed it. To illustrate, imagine a collective of five people trying to rearrange the furniture in the room you're in. Any one of the five could do it in about one-third the time it would take the whole group. The point is to not expect communication with a group to be as simple as it is with one person. Many times you have to discuss an idea with each person separately to get it across. Some things to keep in mind are: If you want the group to do something be explicit about what it is; before you can expect people to help you solve a problem you have to get them interested in it, show them why it is an important problem; the more clearly you know what you're trying to say the better you can translate into other people's terms or paradigms.

Appendix C

Notes for Groundwork Meeting Chair

General Responsibilities of the Chair

• Getting important items on the agenda.

• Making the meeting as relevant as possible and the business as short as possible. Your participation should be somewhere between the heavy hand that stifles the meeting and the weak chair that asks the group for each detail (e.g. "what should we do next?")

• Making sure decisions and other important info get recorded and made available to those not at the meeting.

• Passing on to the next chair what you know about chairing.

Between Meetings

• Put up signs announcing the meeting.
  • on the bulletin board at the end of the meeting before (the one where you said you would be chair next time) with a place to write agenda topics (and who's suggesting them).
• In the daybook a week or more in advance to remind people.

• Gather agenda items from:
  • the last meeting, minutes and any items left open
• list on the bulletin board
• any problems written up in the daybook that did not get resolved there.

• Make a tentative order for the items to be dealt with in.
  • think about which effect others, so that it is necessary to make a decision on one thing before discussing others.
• a few easy items at the beginning gets the meeting off the ground and rolling.
• particularly difficult items can be put just before the break. Then if the discussion bogs down it can be continued informally during the break.

• Have something to write the agenda on that everyone can see-chalk board or computer paper or something.

Starting the Meeting

• Have tentative and suggested agenda items already written out on the chalk board.

• Take responsibility for getting the meeting started. Unless informal discussion is particularly productive, ask at the announced starting time if everyone is ready. The start of a meeting should not be delayed more that 15 minutes without the consent of those present.

• Choose a scribe. First explain the duties: take notes, write them up in the daybook, and chair the next meeting (there are notes to help, the person does not already have to know how to chair.) Encourage new and non-aggressive people to take the position. It's desirable for everyone to be chair at least once, since a meeting of people who have all chaired has the potential to transcend the need for a chair.

• Ask for new agenda items (tell people that announcements can come at the end so you don't have to list them all as items) and get consensus on the agenda. Do not let talking about what to talk about become time consuming.

• Get an agreement as to how long the meeting, including crit/self crit, should go. Of course, this decision can be changed later if people want. Take responsibility for meeting this deadline (e.g., if discussion is taking too long say, "Do people want to extend the meeting deadline to continue this?" or warn people as a deadline approaches: "We've only got 5 minutes left; can someone make a proposal, shall we continue in the daybook?" etc.).

• Go!

During the Meeting

• Continually try to keep the discussion focused and moving toward the goal (a decision?). This means:
  • Cutting people off when they ramble or don't speak to the point. If what they are saying is important, just not applicable to the immediate question, the issue can be discussed separately.
• State the problem under discussion, summarize the points made, or say what the disagreement or difficulty is, whenever the discussion gets confused or bogged down. This helps focus what needs to be dealt with.
• Formulate a proposal when one is needed. This might be a call for consensus, a suggestion to deal with the question at some other time, or in some other way, etc.
• Look for where differences lie: are they political? a matter of differing expectations or subjective probabilities? is it just poor communication? One technique is to ask each side in a disagreement to state the other side's position.
• In considering new projects or proposals, keep in mind that we need several things: the energy, money, and consensus. So if the discussion bogs down on one, mentally check to see if the whole thing might not be ruled out by one of the others, anyway.

• Try to make sure that everyone with something to say can say it. This means cutting off someone who dominates, slowing down the pace if less aggressive people cannot get in before someone else starts talking, being sensitive to cues that someone is dissatisfied but not saying anything (e.g., bored or disgusted looks, shaking head, repeated but aborted attempts to talk, etc.). You can make space for people by soliciting their opinion, or, if there are a lot of people in that position, by going around the room for opinions, or whatever else you can think of.

• Ways to resolve a discussion (in order of preference):
  • agreement: everybody says "yes"
• consensus: somebody says "yes" and nobody says "no." This means that everyone will help carry out the decision.
• take a break so people can talk about it informally or collect their thoughts.
• Continue the discussion in the daybook and try again at the next meeting.
• give the problem to some person or committee to try to work out for the next meeting.

• Whenever a decision is made, someone needs to have responsibility for seeing that it gets carried out. This person should be recorded in the notes.

• Make sure that meeting time is well spent, i.e., that trivial issues do not take a lot of time just because they are easy to talk about.

Two other groundwork documents have helpful info about these problems, especially focusing and struggle; they are "Groundwork Meeting Skills" and Criticism and Self Criticism.

Ending the Meeting

• Ask if there is anymore business.

• Ask for announcements.

• Criticism and Self Criticism. Comment particularly on any meeting dynamics that did not get dealt with, e.g., someone who did not talk at all. Ask for criticism of the chair or meeting in general.

• End the meeting definitively, e.g., "The meeting is over." Or sing a group song or something. A common thing to happen is a criticism dragging on as other people walk out the door...

"Work hard, play hard," i.e., be aggressive with the business; get it over with and then kick back and have fun!

After the Meeting

• Criticize and correct these notes

• Pass these notes on to the next meeting chair!

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