Board / Community Meeting: April 8th

Creating the Future’s
Board / Community Meeting:
Monday, April 8th from 10:30am – 12pm Pacific time

Topic: Continued discussion of
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE / DESIGN
If there were no such thing as organizations as they currently exist,
what would we build to accomplish social missions?

Logistics: The meeting will happen right here at this post. Details are below.

Watch the meeting

or, LISTEN TO THE MEETING HERE

Star Icon Blueor Download the MP3
(To download to your hard drive, right-click {or click and hold on a Mac} on the link above and select “Save Target As”.. or “Save Link as”… depending on your browser)

The clock is ticking on the 10-year experiment at the heart of Creating the Future’s mission. We therefore need to be assured that every possible condition for our success is in place. That goes beyond program needs – it starts at the core, with the very design of the organization. What organizational structure will create ease and effectiveness for accomplishing our mission?

For the past few years, that question has been our board’s primary focus. (Click on the Category Link for “Organizational Structure” to see the history of these discussions.) We are now at the point of building what we have envisioned. 

At our meeting last month, we began applying Catalytic Thinking to the first step in this process, re-designing our board to focus on “compliance” (or to use the language that felt more right than “compliance,” focusing on “meeting people’s expectations.”)

As we continue the conversation, we will continue working to create the conditions for our success. And you are invited to be part of that discussion!

A NOTE re: Meeting Start Time – 10:30 PT
To those who are used to our meetings starting at 10am PT, the board will be meeting in Closed Session from 10am until approximately 10:30. If you arrive at 10:30 and we are not yet on screen, we will be here soon.

If you are familiar with Creating the Future’s open, participatory meetings, you may think it odd that we would have a closed session. As you will find in Creating the Future’s policy on Closed Meetings, there are rare times when going behind closed doors is necessary. The topic we will be discussing this month relates to establishing credit / getting a credit card for the organization. For security reasons, we felt it was safest if that conversation not be public.

We will post the salient minutes of that closed session immediately after the meeting, and the rest of the meeting will be open as usual. Because as you will read in our policy, “In most organizations, the assumption is, ‘It’s all private, unless it’s not.’ For us, the assumption is that it’s all PUBLIC, unless it’s not.”

How to Prepare

To help you feel as up-to-speed as possible on this meaty topic – the “doing” stage of a 4-year effort to determine the structure that will best accomplish our mission – you can read more about this journey in this summary post here.

In addition, the agenda for this month’s meeting will be posted here soon, along with supporting documents for the meeting.

How to participate

If you have never been part of Creating the Future’s work, all our strategy and board meetings are open and participatory, for anyone who wants to be part of the discussion. You can see more about that at this link.

Where we meet:

The board meeting will take place right here at this post. If the video does not appear precisely on time, please be patient – we are probably just running a few minutes late.

There are 3 ways you can participate in our meetings.

  • If your familiarity with and commitment to Creating the Future’s work is calling you to be actively involved in the meeting discussion side-by-side at our online “meeting table,” let us know, and we will send you an invitation to join us online.
  • If you want to participate but are unable to be in the meeting itself (perhaps you’re at work, or maybe at home with kids running around, etc.), watch the live-stream in real time and tweet your questions and ideas to us via the hashtag #CreatingTheFuture. We read those tweets aloud during the meeting, just as if you were there. This is a great first step for those who are not as familiar with our work, but want to get more involved.

(Please note: We will only see your tweets if you use the #CreatingTheFuture hashtag. In addition, during the meeting, we will not look at blog comments here at this post. While we will check those comments later, during the meeting we will only be following the #CreatingTheFuture hashtag in the Twitter stream.)

  • Lastly, if you want to simply watch, or you want to think about what you’re hearing and respond later – or if you will be watching the recording after the meeting happens – please add your thoughts into the comments here at this post. We will include that thinking into the mix of things.

We look forward to your being part of our discussion on Monday, April 8th!

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