Creating the Future's Integrity Body (Board) Meeting:
Monday, February 12, 2024
10am-12pm Pacific time / 1pm-3pm Eastern time / 6pm-8pm UK time
Topic:
Designing Equitable Hiring Practices via Catalytic Thinking
Watch the meeting LIVE at this post. Just scroll to the very bottom of the page.
Details about how to participate are below.
Equitable Hiring and Contracting: Catalytic Thinking in Action
Over the next several months, Creating the Future’s Integrity Board will be tackling a critical conversation for any social change organization: Hiring and contracting processes and practices.
During 2023, a big part of our work was to determine the plan for accomplishing our mission in the remaining 3 years of our 10-year mission. That process gave us the opportunity to slowly think things through, to consider alternatives, to talk with our community members and have their thoughts guide our direction.
That plan is now done, and we are taking the steps to turn "planning" into "reality."
Some of those steps include hiring and contracting with folks to get the work done. Before we can do that, though, we will need to design a process for doing so. A process that fits with our values. A process that is guided by Catalytic Thinking. A process that is not only equitable and inclusive, but joyful!
That hiring / contracting process is what we will begin discussing at our next few meetings, starting with our first conversation on February 12th. And that conversation will be a lot richer if it includes YOU!
Please note: If you cannot join us on February 12th but you are interested in the topic, please add our discussions to your calendar for the next few months. Second Monday of the month, at 10am Pacific time / 1pm Eastern time / 6pm UK time. And remember, you can always watch the recording and comment here after the meeting!
How to Prepare
First, let us know if you plan to attend by sending a note at this link.
Second, please look through the links in this post, to familiarize yourself with the topic at hand. Our planning to get to this point has been extensive and community-driven, so those links will help you be up to speed for this important conversation.
Third, if you are not familiar with Catalytic Thinking or the Integrity functions of our board, the following will be helpful:
The Catalytic Thinking Framework is described at this link, with links to videos and other documents that can help you understand the framework. You can also check out the questions that guide Catalytic Thinking at this link. We recommend having those questions available during the meeting, to spark your thinking during the discussion.
To get a sense of the context of our Integrity Board, this post introduces our thinking about that.
3 Ways 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 you are already familiar with and committed to Creating the Future’s work, and you would like 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. Read more here about what it means to participate in that way. (Please note that these seats are limited, to ensure everyone's voice can be heard. If you are not able to be in the room with us, no worries - there are still two other ways to share your insights with us!)
- 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 the discussion!
* All Creating the Future's board meetings are open for anyone to participate, or to watch afterwards. To learn more about the thinking behind this openness - and our experiences with being open - click here.
Logistics: The meeting will happen right here at this post. Details are below.
Watch the meeting HERE on Monday
Note: if the meeting does not start on time please be patient as we may be running a few minutes late.
or, After the meeting - LISTEN TO THE MEETING HERE
or 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)
Thank you for this wonderful conversation. While listening to it I revisited Creating the Future’s core values on the website and one sentence in particular jumped out at me in relation to the discussion – to ‘create conditions that hold space for people in all situations’. Ultimately a lot of employment contracts and situations squish people. Employers get the right people through the door but there is no space or air to bring anywhere near their best self to the table (and some of the members on the Board meeting talked of this trauma both within corporates and NfPs). Creating a wide welcoming net and space for diverse (yet values aligned) people in hiring practices, and then within daily organisational life – to co-create, to learn, to flourish, to listen and to have a voice and a seat at the table, while still delivering on clear performance outputs (within an ecosystem rather than a hierarchical structure) is no mean feat – but this would certainly be a model that would be likely to attract employees in a tight labour market. I look forward to engaging in the next discussion around ‘what good looks like’:)
Charlotte, thank you so much for sharing these insights. Appreciating that our meetings are early morning for a New Zealander, we hope you can be part of the next conversation. Sending you much appreciation for adding to the richness of this discussion.