[CRNMC] Three organizational design suggestions

[Charles Cresson Wood]

Hello community rights & anti-fracking friends,

In line with John Anderson's recent comment about decision-making chaos, I suggest three specific next steps. These suggestions are all consistent with well-established organizational development principles, and there is no magic here. But there is evidence that we need work in these areas. These suggestions should help to organize, streamline, and rationalize our activities.

(1) Each working group should come up with a concise list of tasks describing what they are taking care of, and then publish that on the list-serv, asking for comments and feedback. In this way, we will know who to go to for what, what essential tasks have not yet been assigned, and where there may be duplication of effort. Having such lists will also allow us to prioritize the work, reallocating people from one group to another, as circumstances may require.

(2) After they have prepared their list of tasks, each working group should come up with a schedule, through election day, showing critical milestones and deliverable dates. The core group can then integrate these working group schedules, making sure that the work of the different working groups is coordinated, and that dependencies between the groups are both known and finessed. Rather than there being a series of crises, we can do better work, and have calmer dispositions, if we have agreed-upon schedules.

(3) Sometime soon, the media group should publish a list of guidelines for what gets posted on the listserv. I suggest that the listserv is appropriate for calls to action, requests for volunteers, notices about events, concerns about things that are not adequately getting addressed in other ways, and similar matters. I suggest that arguments between individuals, a "he-said-she-said" type of back and forth, those are not appropriately posted to the listserv. It is also probably not appropriate for details of working groups discussions to be handled via the listserv. So as an example of the latter, the details about selecting a printer of brochures, could proceed within the working group that has taken on that task. In this way we reduce the chances that people get overwhelmed with messages that do not pertain to them, and as a result stop reading the listserv messages. Such guidelines for posting could also help clarify what types of work are partitioned off and assigned to working groups, and what work is done in the wider community of volunteers.

Blessings,
/s/ Charles