Board/Steering Committee/High Council for Social.Coop?
Matthew Cropp
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As we've been discussing the formation of the Ops Teams, I've been giving some thought to the question of whether our scaling will require an empowered, delegated body like a board of directors to scale our capacity to take on members and projects in a more coordinated and focused way.
So, let's use this thread to discuss (A) whether such a shift from pure participatory collective governance is desirable, at this point or at all, and (B) if so, what should the architecture look like.
To start the conversation, one approach would be for the body to be composed of a representative from each Operations Team elected by that team, and an equal number of non-operations team co-op members selected via an election or sortition process of some kind.
Mayel de Borniol Tue 22 May 2018 6:58AM
I would be disappointed to see a central board appear, defeats the purpose in my opinion.
I also think social.coop's current challenges have to do with labour, not governance (discussions are flowing pretty well, consensus is being reached, but then who works on the "action points"?..)
Robert Benjamin Tue 22 May 2018 4:33PM
Agree that current challenges right now are more labor driven and spreading out the burden and access for operations critical roles, something that hopefully the Admin Ops teams approach will help improve.
Disagree on how well current overall governance/management of both identified and un-identified issues/needs is flowing. It seems wholly reliant on individual members spontaneously generating the right proposals at the right time and then shepherding them through the consensus process.
This seemed to work well when the community was smaller but as SC scales (which it seems like it is and needs to in order to generate enough surplus to adequately remunerate ops critical contributions and ensure continued platform existence it) it could become even-more dis-organized and overwhelming .
What seems to be missing is a managed centralized place that is at the very least "accountable" for keeping tabs on the overall outstanding issues and activities a-foot to resolve them.
A steering committee need not override group governance but rather could augment it nicely.
Though not sure if that is what you mean when you say " defeats the purpose".
Michele Kipiel Wed 23 May 2018 6:35PM
What seems to be missing is a managed centralized place that is at the very least "accountable" for keeping tabs on the overall outstanding issues and activities a-foot to resolve them.
I wouldn't call it a "centralized" place, as communication can flow among workgroups without need for such a bottleneck to exist. I'd rather see this as a workgroup itself, let's call it "Operations & Management working group" for the time being. Far from being a board or a committe, it would be the place where those members who have a talent for organizing work, events, projects etc.. would reside and help other groups orgnize themselves to their fullest potential, without acting as a top-down control entity but rather as an in-house self-management school.
Rules should be put in place on how to set up this group (eg. there will need to be at lest one person from each WG to ensure balance, or a strict rotation duty...) to avoid the group becoming a self-referential semi-bureaucratic entity, but overall it seems to be a reasonable working group to have.
What do you think?
Robert Benjamin Wed 23 May 2018 6:57PM
Doesn't sound like a bad approach to me.
On the centralized I was thinking also about the need for some info to be organized, packaged and held in a more accessible way. For people that are new, aren't on Loomio much, don't have a lot of time or inclination to go through threads, or just miss a few days on a quickly evolving thread it is a daunting task to engage and participate.
The managed is to give some accountability to that process. The who do you go to address or raise organizational issues beyond starting another thread.
Maybe a "committee" is needed and an Organizational Working Group is the answer though I kind of though that was part of the Governance/Legal WG but maybe not.
emi do Tue 22 May 2018 11:08PM
@mayel I just noticed your post regarding the appropriate use of working groups and your concern that key issues were being discussed without the larger membership being consulted. It is this question that has driven me to participate in this governance discussion.
If we refer back to the diagram being proposed for the ops team: https://loomio-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/files/000/140/156/original/SOCIAL_COOP_ORG.png
where would this 'steering committee' reside? Could the output for this 'steering committee' be a pegboard/bulletin board with proposals for the membership to vote on?
Matt Noyes Wed 23 May 2018 2:27AM
This is helpful. Per Matt Cropp's suggestion, it would be good to include an arrow from the membership, and make all the arrows bidirectional since this is primarily about organizing communication, right?
emi do Wed 23 May 2018 1:39PM
Right! Too bad I deleted the file as soon as I made it...
Matt Noyes Wed 23 May 2018 5:09PM
How about this, as an image that incorporates Emi and Robert's images?
Robert Benjamin Wed 23 May 2018 7:02PM
Not sure there is a need for an Ops team in Governance/Legal as there isn't day to day Admin requirements?
Per @michelekipiel suggest (above) could the Coordinating Committee just be an Organizational working group rather than a Committee/board of members that are voted on to serve a term? Do you @matthewcropp and @emido see some inherent advantages over a committee/board vs another working group?
emi do Wed 23 May 2018 9:26PM
I like the idea of the coordinating committee of being a working group!
About the diagram, even though the WGs are now nested within the Membership (duh!), is there should be some bi-directional arrows from working group bubbles into the general membership? Maybe the fact that there are no arrows from ops bubbles into their working groups indicates that by being nested within, there is going to be communication taking place?
Or are we imagining that the central committee (or organizational WG) will be the one disseminating info to the membership?
Perhaps as per @robertbenjamin 's comment re: there not being a need for an ops team for governance/legal, that the governance/legal ops team is the one that manages pertinent threads/conversations/decisions happening in different WGs in a way that less engaged members can access. This will play a big role into inclusion/diversity as well.
Matt Noyes Thu 24 May 2018 2:56AM
Coordination WG is a nice idea, makes it clearer that it is a functional role, not a leadership position. Robert is right about no need for an ops team in the Gov/LegaI WG. I was thinking of the arrows as indicating person/people from each working group being part of the coordinating working group (along with members at large). The arrows show that interaction, but maybe that is confusing? The working groups and ops teams could continue to function openly like we have on Loomio with posts to social.coop to share info and seek engagement.
Robert Benjamin · Mon 21 May 2018 9:26PM
I like where you all are heading with this. I support any ways that could make things more more organized which would make things more accesible.
There is definitely some "governance drag" going on the way things are currently laid out that makes it difficult for a lot of people to participate in the entire process or to get focus on complex initiatives..
A steering committee that has representation from the Admin Ops teams and general membership could help a lot even if it is only to organize and communicate the governance structure, pending proposals, and keep the Bylaws updated with approved changes.
It seems like the best place to start this is inside the Governance Working group.
How members become voted in, the term they serve, scope of the committee/board focus, and additional considerations needing deeper discussion of course.