We're still figuring this whole system thing out 2.5 years later. We've attempted multiple ways to manage us, but they've not worked out long-term - first because we grew too fast, then because of my own issues, my own issues again, and recently, because we've grown too much.
So we're trying again.
We've hit the point where we haven't been able to find plural resources that continue to be helpful for us - what we need right now simply isn't available. So, I guess we're sharing stuff here, in the hopes it might be kinda-sorta-helpful.
We need to know how to manage a large group. What we've found:
... So, turns out the a government system for a population of 5 million is far too large and complicated for a head population of 2-3 digits.
So I still got nothing.
We did, however, consider that we were part of a club that owned land that people visited and sometimes lived on. They had about 1,000 members at their peak, back in the 70's; nowadays I believe they've been hovering around 2-300.
They also ran by committee.
So we considered what we knew about how they and committees in general run, realised we didn't know enough, and found this resource: https://community.net.nz/resources/community-resource-kit/contents-of-the-community-resource-kit/
It's got a lot of stuff that's unhelpful, 'cause it's aimed at dirtspace committees (we don't actually need to worry about legalities and finances within our headspace...), but it's also got a lot of stuff that IS helpful. Honestly, most of what's useful in there isn't brand new information to us, it's more revision. But it's structured for the same direction we're going in, and we hadn't been able to pull out and structure the information we had in a utilisable way.
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Basically, we're hoping to explain how we are and where we're at, and how we intend to use this info. Intend, 'cause we're still only on day 5 of tryna make changes, and we found that website just a few hours ago.
We have a large system. We're not a system with a lot of outright conflict, but that doesn't suddenly mean we're super co-operative. (Consider the "opposite" of hate: is it love, or apathy? It's a triangle, they're opposites in different aspects. We're lacking in both conflict AND co-operation.) I tend to front, some people seem to help make some background thinky processes work (don't ask, i don't know), and most people now spend most of their time hanging out in the 'inner world' where we set up a grounds / community for that purpose. People have their own little section with a cabin to live in, if they want, while the rest of the grounds is shared / public space with facilities.
I started out with a small group trying to manage all the inner world stuff as well as outer; it didn't work out. One of my colleagues in this group took over and established a few others to help, and they worked on managing things inside while I focussed more on outside. This lead to very little switching and communication. More recently, that colleague told me that the sheer number of people now in this little community we set up was overwhelming, too much for the group handling it to keep handling. Too few people trying to manage too many, with too little structure, familiarity, or sense of direction.
So we got a group together, of people who we knew who were willing to work on this together. It... turned into kind of a big group (20), and a bit smaller is probably better. We have them listed; some have preferences in which areas they're willing to help (internal vs external, though others might have more specific preferences), and some have been listed as "stressed" so we're going to try not to work them too hard, especially not in the medium-to-long-term. Currently, we've really only got a few of us in this working group with any sort of role so far, but we're expecting to end up with more roles as we work through this; in the meantime, everyone's showing up to our meetings.
We've agreed on trying to have in the working group meet every other day for at least one, probably two, weeks; so far they've been the 1st, 2nd, and 5th of this month. The next is planned for the 7th. At some stage we'll hopefully dial the frequency (and length!) of these meetings back.
Internal colleagues are also running larger meetings with people in the inner world community, to ensure they're all involved.
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On the 1st, we discussed the issues we were having (too many people), and tried to clarify those and some possible solutions (eg. do we need to expand the size of the grounds? (no.) Shall we make a second place nearby for people who want to to move in to, and another group can manage it there? (Feels too separatist, feels like it'll create new problems in getting that place managed too. Do we need to recruit more people on the committee, and adjust how we do things? Yes.)). We discussed some options and decided that, regardless of what ideas we come up with, we need to ensure the inner world folk are happy with this. We decided that the best approach was probably to hold a meeting, tell people we don't think this is working and need to change how we're doing things, and ask them for their ideas rather than tell them our own, 'cause the latter felt just a little bit too much like a "top-down decision."
Our plans for overnight were to generally think about these things, including clarifying a bit better exactly what we want to work on and how we might approach it.
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On the 2nd, we felt a little clearer on everything, and had the understanding that in a big group, we're never going to be 100% clear on anything and that's okay; we still want more clarity and direction than we have.
We talked more about how to actually do this:
(We've also had some little, tiny bit of discussion about how to manage external stuff with the system; ultimately we've agreed to focus on the inner stuff first, and I'll continue on with outside stuff as I have been. It's not been put to the side fully; rather, it's something that will be held in mind throughout this process, but it's not being given very much attention, either.)
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On the 5th, the big meeting had been run and we discussed their ideas; which was basically yes, we need some sort of governance or committee, people nominated and voted into committee roles; there were some thoughts about how this might be structured that can't be decided until we have other things clarified. But it means we know this is a direction to work in. We have some ideas that will be brought back to the big meeting for discussion.
Things we're currently wanting to discuss with the wider group / general process we're wanting to go through:
Next working group meet (7th) we also want to establish our own vision / goals, to ensure we're very much on the same page, and hopefully better be able to decide on a general process / direction, so we're better able to set more specific actionable goals and roles.
(no idea if we'll edit this to update, or post new articles with updates. Assuming we remember to update; we're spending enough of my functional time on this stuff as it is!)
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Saturday 8 October
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Had another meeting, a day later than planned. That's 2 meetings this week - we won't manage tomorrow - which is less than we wanted but not too bad.
We've basically just had feedback from the internal group: some agreement on how they generally want the grounds to be (home / community / pleasant place to live & visit, with community work & events sometimes)
Also agreement on rough plan for how to get there:
1) Basically create something like membership forms for everyone to fill out. These will be handed out at the next big internal meeting, as well as copies at the entrances to grounds (in case of new people), club rooms, etc. There'll be boxes emptied daily for the forms to go in. [note: this is fully internal; I have no intention of externalising those forms and writing all that information out on physical paper / computer]
This will ask for "some sort of identifying information" (name, description, whatever), any caregiver-type support they may need, where they reside on the grounds (if the do), and if they're a known subsystem, noting down other fronts on that paper too.
-> We started working on this and discovered we have an AI who is very willing to help. The AI now has a screen in a cabin being utilised as an office, and our main fronting room. Apparently we've also got one in the main lounge. Seems they can see & hear what's going on where those screens are, can scan paper that's shown to a screen, and print stuff off. So, they're gonna be a fantastic asset for this step and the next.
This is also roughly the beginning of creating bureaucratic committee roles for the main committee (Chairman / facilitator, secretary / minutes-taker, membership / onboarding new folk)
2) Sort and collate that info to figure out basically
How many 'kids' we have (children, teens, and adults that could do with the sort of support typically provided by a caregiver; could be physical eg. food, safety, routine; could be more emotional support / guidance)
Guesstimate guesstimate roughly how many caregivers we'll need (start out assuming 2 kids per CG; some will be able to handle more depending on the need of the kids)
Recruit caregivers from the main group and idk, find some way to match them with the kids
Recruit people willing to provide support (babysitters?) who are happy to lend a hand but don't want the full responsibility of caregiving. There are certainly some of the teens who want a caregiver but can also provide babysitting support, it's not strictly one-way. Hoping to try and get 1 babysitter per 2 caregivers.
[Later: it'd be cool to have like a nursery, so the smaller kids can sleep in a shared room, with adult not too far away.]
This will likely end up a whole sub-committee; talk about that later.
3) Start sorting out more committee roles:
Social convener (organise events or bonding and fun, organise people to run the bar and shop (not because Money or Worry of Theft, but 'cause there's an element we like of having someone to interact with to get your drink or whatever, but if someone just wants to grab their own drink then that's cool too. Role would be shared around, ideally.)
Grounds: maintain and construct gardens and new buildings. Already got a couple people maintaining the gardens.
[Later we might get a bit going on in the way of food production? dunno for sure, but seems like a direction to go in.]
4) Complete committee officially!
(Would love to be able to do this on December 1st because Reasons.)
So have an AGM, be clear on what roles there are, how many people in various roles, etc.
Nominate, and vote if there's competition.
We also want to:
Have someone in a role to help settle any conflicts or disputes
Figure out if there are any more roles needed, & fill them
In terms of main committee and sub-committees:
Basically, if for example we've got 10 caregivers and 5 babysitters
They can have their own subcommittee or subgroup or whatever, including making sure someone takes notes and facilitates the meetings, and meet idk, once or twice a month to sort out their stuff and issues that mightn't matter to the main committee, generally make sure everything's going well.
Then they can have one or two people who are On The Main Committee to attend those monthly meetings, so they can bring up any of their group's stuff that's relevant to the main committee.
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We also clarified some stuff on the working group: Ensuring we have an idea of not just where people are happiest to help out (inside, outside) but also a bit a better idea of what they might be able to help with (eg. a couple of the younger ones can help with practical tasks like handing stuff around; some have been noted as continuing whatever they have been doing + "standby", 'babysitting' if it helps out someone else in their stuff, etc.) And yeah, we got a bunch on standby. Particularly those who are willing to help externally, 'cause let's be real, I am not yet at the point I can do much switching / have them help.
... We should probably have some of us have our own little meet and some point, huh.
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I think one thing that's been important in this attempt at organising things, that hasn't existed in some prior attempts:
I'm not trying to know Every Detail. Like... it's so easy to feel the need to go "oh, if we're tracking all our system members and noting them down, then I Must know all this and write it all down externally," and you know what? I the fuck do not have to do this. It's more than I can handle, and frankly, it's just its own form of micromanaging.
I'm writing down more info re: who's on the working group, roughly what they're doing, but that's all stuff kind of more relevant to me because I'm the one of the ones facilitating the working group.
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Tuesday 18 October
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Okay so we've had a couple meets since that last entry. We were kinda-sorta gonna have one today, but people are busy with headspace stuff, so likely that'll happen tomorrow.
Currently, people are sorting out matching the people who are happy to be caregivers with people who want that type of support. Not sure of all the details, but I think they're basically having a big gathering, facilitating interactions, discussing like, roles and expectations and familiarising themselves with all of everything. Mostly it's trying to let people naturally and comfortable pair up, and then go from there with I guess more randomly-picked pairups.
This was organised by the two people that have been looking after some kids for ages; they've kind of taken on more facilitator roles in the caregiver subcommittee, at least until we end up doing a more formalised AGM-type meeting and have people vote. (It's a bit hard to vote between strangers / people you know little-to-nothing about...)
We've also got some people who are happy to open / serve at the ice-cream shop a couple days a week, and some at the bar some evenings. A few have also volunteered to sort out food for the more formalised hui we'll want to have (and the current caregiver event)
I've also just gone through our old minutes to remind myself of previous stuff we'd noted down to deal with Later, just so I can briefly bring it up when we meet again, rather than have it all fall by the wayside.
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Friday 2 December
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Well, I have no clue why we are typing this up when we are so brainfoggy.
Off the top of my head, I think we had one meeting shortly after that last update, and then I fell of the wagon of keeping up with meetings as planned, but seems like people were still working on stuff in the background.
Most of the kids got caregivers, I believe there were a small few who weren't matched up, but they also weren't too fussed about it. We're hoping they'll find someone in the meantime. We do want the whole community to be supportive, anyway. It just often can be reassuring to have Your Person, yunno? Which is a big part of why we wanted this.
We had another meeting shortly before the AGM, then had the AGM on Dec 1st.
It took three hours to go through agenda, discussing the roles in place, nominations and people giving a quick spiel about why they'd like the role, then votes, and sorting that out. There was one wee scuffle, but they sorted themselves out. We were hoping to go through policy stuff beyond the Very Rough Partial Drafts I'd had written up, but we ran out of time 'cause we only wanted to do three hours. We haven't done them yet.
I do feel a bit better having done that - though at the moment, I think they're sort of working on getting themselves sorted over the next month, while I need to focus on external stuff (it's December, that means routine changes, and a trip home with all the planning and visiting that that entails).
I did find there were some people, I'm not sure if they didn't have names (or other identifiers) or if I just somehow couldn't pick up on that, who are now on Official roles, so I've just got them down as "[name missing]" in my physical document. It'll do in the meantime.
We've also had a recent experience which reminds us that we may have different headmates also helping out with various cognitive processes, and how often stuff being a bit messy / uncertain / whatever in the innerworld does seem to affect our own cognition.
Anyway, the past few days, for the most part, I have been pretty decent on doing our morning and evening routines, and spent the bulk of the daytime just dicking around on the internet. Today was spectacularly bad for that, and I suspect whatever's going on in headspace while the committee sorts themselves out may be a contributing factor. (Certainly not the only factor, we can think of 2-3 others not related to multiplicity quite easily.) Hopefully this will sort itself out in the near future, but I will confess to being a little worried about how the next month in particular will go, since it will be a messy, cognition-heavy month.
The committee is basically structured as having one person in each role. Many of these people have Officially Accepted helpers for their roles. We plan for committee meetings to be monthly, those are considered mandatory only for those on the committee, and open to anyone else. I think a fair bit of the purpose of having regular meetings instead of just on an as-needed basis is to aid cohesion between those taking on some sort of responsibility, to be honest. But that cohesion should help things run a bit smoother, too.
Roles:
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.... I also realise now, I should probably touch base with the facilitator to discuss the next month and suitable times to come talk to me about stuff, 'cause I'll be around people a lot. Or maybe I should go to her for those chats, idk.