Date: 17th Aug 2018
OUR PURPOSE: Build on how we can consciously connect and co-create our future through delving into what we have made together since our last gathering.
OUR WONDERFUL GATHERING PLACE: The Works, Glebe.
With the rapid growth of the CoS space within Jeder over the past 12 months, some CoBu members felt that the community building space needed to be re- assessed based on our position within the organisation and discover our collective future identity; both in practice and language.
An invitation was sent to all members and prior to gathering in Sydney, Kerry and Dee met in July at Kerry’s home in Gloucester and started to discuss a Flow, as follows.
Pre-Gathering Discussion:
Questions:
- Why are we here at this point?
- Who is Jeder?/What is Jeder’s identity?
- Who is CoBu?/What is CoBu’s identity?
- Who is Cossie?/What is Cossie identity?
- How do we grow CoBu?
Process:
- How do we map CoBu/Cossie within Jeder?
- How can we map Jeder the org, CoBu the arm, Cossie the arm and individuals to the reinventing organisations map?
- How does our work align with the Jeder pillars, are the pillars enough?
- From Pere’s Loomio post in the ‘dispersing decision making thread’
So I think the requirements for a Cossie member would/should be quite different from a COBU member. Perhaps there need to be questions to get a better sense of who should be in which Jedi’s. i.e., is it:
- Everyone’s responsibility?
- Cossie responsibility?
- COBU responsibility?
Board responsibility?
Potential Framing/Patterns:
- A Learning Conversation
- Tree of Life Model
- Torus
- 2 loops spiral
Research:
- Venture/initiatives
- Co-op and other structures
- How do we retain identity through promotions/website?
- Other details-coaching/15%contribution/coaching
CoBu Gathering at The Works, Glebe
Present: Kerry, Dee, Michaela, Vanessa and Pere
Zoom: Megan (guest), Om and Jason
With much thanks to Vanessa from Transforming Talk, the CoBu Gathering was held her co-working space in Sydney. We co-created a Flow based on the ideas from Kerry and Dee and also had people join us on Zoom, including one of Dee’s ABCD colleagues, Megan from Wollongong.
We started with a check-in and discussed why we were here at this point and WHO are we here at this point. We moved through some growth discussions and felt it was better to have a discussion around unanswered questions instead of the reinventing organisations mapping activity.
We shared some lunch and discussed the growth of CoBu through the question, “What does growth mean to you?” before looking at the potential activities and tasks for future growth and checking out.
Question: Why we are here at this point?
- You cannot heal until you’ve spoken your truth – path to wholeness
- Healing – reflecting – speaking truth – connecting – love – forgiveness to self and others
- Yearning for a solid base
- Do we need to ask why?
- Some voices – not vocal enough
- Heat gently and slowly
- My personal practice is still forming – support at the edges of practice
- Perception of separation – always asking how do we connect to all org?
- What is separation telling us?
- CoBu “sat back” for 12 months
Question: Who are we here, at this point?
- Collective practice is full of mystery/mastery
- Bring cohesion
- What are our edges? How we support each other…
- Add a chair for the Jeder entity
- What my whole self can contribute?
- Unspoken truths – you can’theal without speaking your truth
Growth conversation:
- Supporting each other
- Stepping up to support others
- Tell the world
- Displaying/sharing the cheese
- Who do we want to invite in?
- How do we invite in?
- How do CoBu work together?
- Slow down to the pace of nature
- The newcomer’s view
- Pavel(?) creates growth – love creates wholeness
- Time to walk the talk
- Mastery collective mysterious practices
- Step up to support others
- Newcomer perception/witness
- Newcomers: opportunity possibility learner curious varied(?) like
Post-discussion questions:
- When time and temperature is right – throw in catalyst “making ricotta”
- ‘Reflaction’
- mystery and mastery
- How do we create space to speak the truth
- Safe to try/fail forgiveness
- What is lack of engagement telling us?
- How do we speak the unspoken
- Self organising order from chaos – driver
- What is separation telling us?
After lunch, our Zoom friends joined us. We gave them an overview of our morning conversations and invited them into the question, “What does ‘growth’ mean to you?” by looking at the question of growth through the concept of, “What’s the idea?” where each person added sticky notes to the question to capture themes and categories.
What does ‘growth’ mean to you?
- How do we strengthen our work together?
- Be brave in order to grow
- Growth in foundational principles
- How do we work with our circle of influence?
- Individual growth is needed and valued
- Torus – maybe we are the sprinkles on top?
- Coaching – on-boarding between teams strategies
- Nurture internal relationships
- Potential areas: growth in the work
- When inviting others in; nurture relationship
- Do we stick with facilitation as our strength?
- Growth in the team (working together)
- Pushing the boundaries of compliance and regulation
- Growth is “us” as a whole org
- Creating the conditions for growth – basic requirements?
- Growth – financial
- Collective identity – inter- dependency
- Growth in impact and learn from each other
- Learning journey as personal growth
- Growth and change: allowing cycles to happen
- Growth in relationships – know people – how they work
- Linking up – connecting – reputation – “touchstone”
We finished the day by checking out and Vanessa gave us an overview of the whiteboard Harvest she had kept going during the day. It was a rich conversation full of possibilities and ideas. Thank you to everyone who attended the day and thank you again to The Works and Vanessa for the use of their space.
