Submitted by Oswald Norton & Jim O’Halloran

When your committee meets once a month, we have found it helpful to anchor our work around a rhythm of the following agenda:

1. A Moment of quiet and checking-in with each other
2. Review and approval of agenda and previous meeting minutes
3. Helper Report
4. Financial report
5. Spring Street Center/itrips reporton alternate months
6. Group Activities
7. Committee Member Vacations
8. 8. Date/Time of Next Committee meeting
9. 9. Date/Time of Next general meeting
10. A review of the center’s maintenance calendar and pending projects

One week before we meet, Jim puts together our agenda and sends it out, requesting that the rest of the committee review the agenda and make corrections/additions for any area that they want to expand on. Our goal is to keep the meeting to one hour, so we’re respectful of the time. However, if there is something that could take a little longer, having the agenda ahead of time prepares us for this.

Areas 4, 5, 6 and 10 might have projects that are associated with that area.  These projects, and a report on their status, become a part of that area’s agenda item.

Projects are areas that we worked on between meetings.  In the meeting, committee members who haven’t worked on the project are brought up to date on progress. Next steps are then reviewed and comments or suggestions on how to move forward are made by all committee members. After we reach an agreement on direction, new assignments might be made and goals we hope to accomplish before the next meeting are then recorded in our meeting minutes. If a decision with a large impact needs to be made, we may test on it and we also may opt to bring it to a general meeting.

An example of a project that took us many months to work through was our move from center members managing Spring Street Center to having an organization take this over. The process for that large project follows.

We began by looking at different types of rental options for our building. There were two: Renting to a business or school; Continuing with a style of rental that we’d been used to.

The idea of renting to a business came from Paul Nelson, who, as rental agent at the time, was approached by a real estate company looking for a suitable building for a boy’s school. We decided to see what this would entail and offered to meet with them. In the end they decided to not move forward. Thinking that others might be interested, we approached other real estate organizations who could represent the building for the business rental market. This option too did not pan out.

I had the feeling the year before that we might be seeing the end of a desire by members to continue  managing our Centerprise, and had begun to approach rental organizations that were in the business of managing other AirBnB types of organizations. The advantage of these organizations was that they had the ability to advertise Spring Street Center on multiple platforms – something that we’d not been able to do before. What I discovered was that our old model of renting individual rooms was not something that they would consider. After bringing this idea back to the committee, we began to explore it again.

After the outbreak of COVID-19, it became clear that the only option for renting our facility was to rent the whole building to one single group. AirBnB, which was struggling with their business, made this mandatory, along with a strict cleaning regimen.

Fortunately, we were already well into a process of reviewing potential organizations to take over our rental business. When we decided on iTrips, we knew that we were embarking on a change that would cause significant adjustments with the group’s usage of the building. However, we felt it was important for us to get the business moving again. So, after a group discussion and vote at a general meeting, we signed our contract with them.

This process has been well documented in the past, along with the challenges we’ve faced and the benefits we’ve received from having a professional management company. The purpose in describing it here is to show how our meeting process, aided us to – over a period of many months – take on one of the biggest challenges a committee would have to take.  We broke it down into steps, we divided the work amongst us to keep the load balanced, we tracked our progress, we brought the decision to the group and moved forward.

The Dewan will be meeting this Saturday, and one of the topics on the agenda is the Christmas party December 12th. If you have any ideas for the party, please let Jim, Bhakti, Oswald, or Marston know before Saturday. Thank you!

Many Thanks to Jim O’Halloran, Rayma and Oswald Norton for their work Saturday on the Fall Cleanup at the Subud House. 

What I learned by being a part of our committee

Part One – What It Takes To Make a Team

I have been a part of a lot of teams both in a leadership and in a support role. As I have done that work, I came to understand that the best teams have the following components: 

• Trust for each other and a respect for the skills that each member brings to the work.
• Clearly defined roles and responsibilities for each committee member
• Clearly defined roles and responsibilities for others that the committee works with
• A rhythm of monthly meetings with similar sets of agenda items allowing the team to track progress between meetings.
• A priority ranking of the goals that the team works on
• And finally, but equally important, a set of core values that anchor the team. I’ve found time and time again that this is particularly important when there are challenges that each team must face.

When I became treasurer in February of 2019, I was pleased to discover a committee that already had in place all of these components. 

I was welcomed into the work that they were already doing and brought up to date on current issues facing our group that I needed to take care of as the new treasurer.

I was aided in my transition into this new role by Sherwin O’Bar who handed over the documentation I needed to begin to learn my duties. I had been the group’s treasurer when our family first move to the area in the early 90s. A lot had changed since then. I so appreciated Sherwin’s guidance and his answers to my many questions.

As the newest member of the committee, I needed to learn our committee’s processes. In our monthly meetings, I mostly kept my head down as I tried to recreate the excellent reports that Sherwin had been providing our group for years. The rest of the team was very patient with me. After about 3-4 months I began to feel comfortable with my new role and took on more duties working with our Spring Street Center (SSC) team. 

Jim had created job descriptions for each role at SSC. Each staff member had read these descriptions and signed their acceptance of them. The job descriptions included rates and rhythm of payments for services. It included how we would pay for the supplies for SSC. This documentation allowed me to see when payments were due for payroll and supplies. I appreciated the order that this created in my early work. 

The work of any committee – if it just involves taking in the donations and paying the bills – takes on a rhythm that is pretty easy to maintain. It’s when you are faced with challenges that you learn what a team is really made of.

The first challenge I saw as a member of the team was the need to repair our sewer pipes that were experiencing a lot more traffic than they had before we started our Air BnB business. We would have eventually discovered the roots blocking the pipe. The business just brought it to our attention sooner. 

Our house manager at the time was Marston Gregory. He interviewed multiple contractors and hired Bob Oats Plumbing. Soon our pipes were clean and running again. I wonder how long it would have taken us to get this work done without a House Manager with a clearly defined job description who could help the committee with the care of the building.

In my next part, I want to talk more about how our monthly rhythm helped us to make bigger decisions.

As I posted last week, there is a garden weeding day at the Subud House at 10 AM Saturday. There will also be a Subud USA kedjiwaan event with an Ibu Rahayu talk that day at 9:15 AM. The link for the kedjiwaan event is https://api.neonemails.com/emails/content/DBF__ZnnMLVyr2ETVOfilUJGhJ-W_jCn0QmboyISUD8=

Subud Pacific Northwest’s “Virtual Menucha” will take place Sunday November 14 from 12:30-2:30. Additional information and the event Zoom link will be coming soon!

Thanks to Regional Helpers Rosalyn Need, Elisa Sunflower, Margarite Charney, Albert Palmeter, Leonard Dixon, and David Lynch for their efforts in creating this event.

We now have new batteries in all the fire alarms, Co2 detectors, and locks in the Subud house, thanks to Ricardo and Debbie. Many thanks!