Last July, we came together for our monthly in-person gathering. This time, the meeting would be grounded in logical thinking; a focus on the practical as we turned our attention to assertive decision making. 

Our previous meeting gave space to voice the tensions that exist between us. Facilitated by Rivers Coaching, we braved delving deeper to reveal our less comfortable feelings. Free from judgement, we exposed inner thoughts that collide with the viewpoints of others in the room. With courage and confidence, we named them out loud, allowing the tension to fizz and bubble to the surface, and, in turn, release. We were left with a growing curiosity, respect and understanding for one another. 

Now the air feels clearer. We feel more seen, heard and held for all our complexities, contradictions and conflicting perspectives. We can proceed forward without ignoring what is, was and will be present along the way. Our focus now would be a call to action. We would take practical steps to review current dilemmas and agree – there and then in the room – on decisions that need to be made. Some roles have also shifted, due to capacity, Ruth has stepped down from facilitating the group to becoming the Temporary Steward for Young People, while Viv, Afshan and Virginie have stepped up to lead on facilitation over the next stage.

We took a twofold approach to our decision-making. The morning session focused on ‘quick fire’ responses and a voting system from the whole group. The afternoon saw us split into smaller planning groups for lengthier discussions and a more reflective process.  

Viv guided us through a ‘categorising exercise’ where we assigned outstanding decisions to who / where we feel the responsibility lies from a range of options provided e.g. Core Team, Whole GMSC network, Specific People etc. Individually, we drew from a pile of standing-decisions (ranging from specific to more thematic), read it out loud and placed it on the floor under what we felt was the appropriate category, to be agreed by consensus from the room. Categories were fluid and open to discussion. The exercise demanded quick responses and as we moved at pace through the process, subcategories emerged and were added to the existing options e.g. Governance, Practices &  Processes, Comms. Time was given for people to add their own decisions-to-be-made or questions at any point and these were considered and categorised by the whole group. It helped to be able to visually map out the different levels of decision-making and the pace of the activity. The exercise was creative and brought clarity. The map on the floor presented the breadth of things to be done before moving on to the afternoon, where we would action all, at least most, of them.

Before lunch, Afshan talked us through the budget. As we are stewards of GM SC finances, it is essential that we understand our current financial position as a self-organising group and are transparent of where the money is currently going. Most of it is currently used to cover our waves and rent our meeting room. Seeing the numbers was helpful and added a weight of accountability and urgency to our decision making focus. There is still much to explore here in how we decide to spend the rest of the funds and how, if the partners want to, we can navigate a path towards self-sufficiency as our philanthropic dependency on Lankelly Chase dissolves. 

In the afternoon, Virginie, split us into three small groups to reflect on the following areas: Event Organising & Planning; Admin, Governance, Finance & Processes and Learning, Evaluation & ‘Capturing our stories / work’. Here we discussed in detail and at length the decisions to be made and started writing a strategy to address them before feeding back to the room. The session was thorough and productive with action lists drawn up and accountability shared. 

The Learning, Evaluation & ‘Capturing our stories / work’ group asked why we were not communicating about our progress to partners, which highlighted issues of internal communication since we already publish monthly blogs with visuals, regularly post on social media and send a monthly newsletter to partners. So the action from this was for all the Temporary Stewards to follow our page on social media and sign-up to the newsletter so they wouldn’t miss it in the future.

The Admin, Governance, Finance & Processes group were now going to replace the former core-team and were going to be in charge of managing the budget, writing policies, taking minutes and oversee the operations of GM SC while we are stewarding it.

Finally, the Event Organising & Planning were created to decide how best to collect the perspectives of partners from GM SC network, so we would have a clear goal for what happens next. Initially, the Temporary Stewards had been recruited by the core-team to oversee specific organising themes and were tasked to hold meetings with partners under those themes, to gather their perspectives on the future of GM SC. Unfortunately, we are now in July, and the majority of us did not complete this task. So a solution was found: holding a series of events (similar to the Dream Weavers ones, but more focused on the future of GM SC) across Greater Manchester as an opportunity for our communities to come together, share wisdom, and give space for ideas about their dreams for GM SC to cross-pollinate. We are mindful that the invitation, intention and expectation of these events must be clear from the outset. We are thinking about alternative ways we can capture the wisdom of the communities we represent and work with, without being taxing on people’s time. We want to support, not burden. This is work in progress and we will dedicate time to plan accordingly over our next meetings. 

As with any deep work, questions emerged. Questions that we will need to address, work through and seek to resolve at a later date. For example, some temporary stewards believe that we should agree among us what we want for GM SC and then hear the feedback from partners, others feel like that this would be abusing our power and could repeat the hierarchy created by Lankelly Chase. For now, we will record and acknowledge that they are there. We may not have all the answers right now but we have a responsibility and cannot let the fear of failing prevent us from trying.