[Businessmtg] Back to the Agenda and RE: how's it working for us

[Dawn Werezak]

Hello Everyone,

 

Grab a cup of coffee and sit back and get comfy, this is a long one!  I have
been reading all of the flurries of emails talking about the problem that
needs to be "fixed."  In classic Al-Anon fashion guess where everyone's
thinking went..right to how can we fix the problem.  The problem that has
been identified is "how do we get people to volunteer to be of service."
Then along come the suggestions to "fix" the problem, after all it is what
we are most known for.  The suggestions have been: 

 

1.	Bring the entire meeting into the business meeting because only in
that way will we have a true group conscience and therefore know what all
the members want.

 

My comments to this are that according to the Founding Statements and
Principles of our Group, that everyone in this meeting stated they read when
the joined ASP, #6 states in part:  b) Substantive changes to the meeting
(affect the majority of the membership) requires a 2/3 majority of voting
members.  C) Minor changes to the meeting (do not affect the majority of the
membership) require a simple majority of the voting membership.


Please note that it states 2/3 of the "voting members".  Anyone can be a
voting member if they choose to join the business meeting.  When the
administration of the list changed hands in 2006 the present SC members were
voted into their positions by 2/3 of the voting members in the business
meeting.  In 2006 and there was no problem with doing that.  Today there is
a perceived issue with this and stated so by members who were in that
meeting and voted for those who ran for a SC position.  No one had an issue
with how it was done then.

 

2.	As of 6:21 pm mountain standard time, we have a total membership of
276 members.  Now if the 

entire membership was added to the business meeting; even each person only
contributed one email to the business meeting that means YOU would get 276
emails in your inbox..just for the business meeting, never mind those that
are coming from the recovery meeting and your personal emails that you get
and so on.  Do any of you have time to read 276 emails daily?  I sure don't!
The other thing to consider is WHO wants to take care of running that
business meeting.  I am completely unwilling to do so, so if that is where
this group wants to go then someone will need to step up to do so.

 

3.	There is a statement made that "there are consequences of decisions
made during the early years with contribute to our current dilemma.
Thinking that the group needs to be separated from business may well be one.
We are a more mature group, and holding on to the concept of all business
getting done away from the meeting as a whole is, I believe, hindering us
now."

 

I appreciate everyone's expression of their opinion, but opinions are not
facts.  Fact one is ASP is the longest running and highly functioning
Al-Anon group on line.  Fact two, the structure of ASP is not an issue.the
foundations that this meeting was built upon were not done lightly, nor were
they done without input from WSO.  Ric B. who is the head honcho at WSO had
input into the building of ASP because Steve, who is our founder, spent
hours and months talking to Ric B. in how to get this meeting to run as
close to a face to face meeting as possible.  And guess what!!!  We do that
and successfully.  We have chair people, we have greeters, we have a SC that
runs everything behind the scenes and ASP has continued to grow and thrive
within the foundations it was built on.  So the structure of ASP has no
impact on the issue of "how do we get people to be of service?"

 

4.	In every face to face meeting I have been to (in three provinces and
about 15 states) all business meetings are held either before or after the
regular recovery meeting.  That a business meeting will be happening is
announced more than once prior to that meeting, in fact many hold a business
meeting for an hour or so once a month at the same time and same place.  Why
- so people can plan on attending!

 

The members whose home group it is, members interested in becoming a home
group member and sometimes curious or interested parties attend that
business meeting.  When a decision needs to be made it is brought up in the
business meeting and voted on by the business meeting members (primarily
home group members.  Home group members are those who attend the group
regularly and participate in the meeting by chairing meetings, tending to
the literature, making coffee, putting out chairs, opening the door to the
meeting, etc) vote on the matter at hand and business is taken care of.  At
the next regular recovery meeting the people who are there are informed of
what happened at the business meeting by usually the secretary - briefly in
5 minutes or less (because who cares about business when you are hurting and
just want the meeting to start - I've been in that mind frame when I was
new).

 

5.	Lack of participation in the business meeting is deemed to be a lack
of interest and there is little encouragement to newcomers to participate in
the business meeting.

 

As the current LA I have made it my practice to announce we are having a
business meeting and included the start date for that meeting.  It is sent
to the entire recovery meeting with the invitation that those who wish to be
involved in service at ASP are welcome to attend, please email me with a
request to join.  Generally the announcement goes out about a week before
the start date of the business meeting giving everyone time to think about
joining, request to join and be added to the meeting list.

 

One of the suggestions made that goes hand in hand with the lack of
participation in the business meetings was that those who sponsor people
should tell their sponsees to join the business meeting.  For those of you
who are online sponsors to any of our members have you told your sponsees to
join the business meeting and participate as part of their recovery?  If you
haven't then maybe you need to ask yourself why you have not done so. (As an
aside, yep I did tell my sponsees to join the business meeting and some are
here).

 

My first sponsor took me to business meetings and there I learned that you
could argue with someone for an hour and when the meeting was done, you
still might not agree with each other by the end, but you hugged each other
laughed and off to lunch we went.  Weird experience for me because I had no
clue that people did that (I thought they were all nuts by the way!)  My
subsequent sponsors have also "told" me what I needed to be doing to be
active in my own recovery.  Every time I did what I was "told" my life was
better somehow when I ignored that, well I was in a world of hurt.  So I
learned to do what was best for me, not always what was easiest.

 

As for lack of interest, how many of you correspond with other members of
ASP off list?  Do you ever encourage them to check out the business meeting
or talk to them about how huge of a growth opportunity that service work is?
And if you aren't doing that, how come?

 

6.	Holding a regular meeting topic on Service related topics like, "The
Importance of Service," "Taking care of business - a practical application
of Tradition Seven" and so on.  We do have three meetings a week that are
Open topics.  This means that the chairperson is allowed to choose what the
topic for that meeting is.  There is absolutely nothing stopping them from
making such topic choices because they are allowed to choose their topics!
When I wanted to do something different regarding CAL, I stepped up to chair
the CAL meeting and one of the things I did was a quiz on Lois' Story from
How Al-Anon Works.  I had a blast putting it together and from the feedback
from some they had fun too.  With open topics you can do virtually any topic
under the sun.  We had a member who did a stint as chair on Service a long
time ago.why?  Because she was the chairperson and that was her choice of
topics!

 

7.	On line meetings face challenges and one of them is holding Business
Meetings.  All of us on the Steering Committee are volunteers and many of us
log a lot of hours each day/week tending to the behind the scenes happenings
at ASP.  For example, I got up this morning prepped to go to work, logged
into my email, read the Business meeting shares and my morning meditation
(all I had time for) and then I was at work until 4.  I came home, made
dinner for my son and I, ate and chatted with him then logged into my email.
Since I left my house at 8:30 I received 75 emails.all to do with ASP, this
does not include personal emails at all.  Two hours later I am writing this
tome and still have a ton of emails to go through in order to empty out my
inbox of ASP stuff.  

 

Guess what guys..this week I am way over the 5 to 10 hours per month that
was suggested by another member to be putting into ASP.  And I don't get
paid for this.  

 

8.	We average between 2 and 4 new members being added to the list
daily.  In the month of June as of this moment we have had 85 inquiries to
ASP and many of those have joined our ranks.  We have also had members leave
the group, so it kind of balances itself out.  Last housecleaning we have
350+ members.  If you remember back to when you came to Al-Anon, either face
to face or on line, how would you have handled walking into a business
meeting?  Would you have been able to figure out what was going on?  Would
you have come back?  When I was new to Al-Anon I was in so much pain I
couldn't stand listening to them read the Traditions and often blanked out
over them because I wanted some relief from the pain I was in.  I couldn't
imagine what I would have done if I walked into a business meeting saw
people arguing, angry, even shouting.I doubt I would have gone back because
it was the exact thing I was living with daily.  I wouldn't have stuck
around to see the laughter and hugs afterwards and I would likely be dead
today.  I am opposed to presenting that to anyone who is new.  Yes, we all
need a helping hand.Sponsor comes to mind.but inflicting more confusion to a
newcomer (many of those who come to us have never been to a f2f meeting - as
someone shared with us today) and we have to be cognizant of that fact and
not confuse them more.   I appreciate the person risking to share how scared
and confused she was by the process of an online meeting when she joined us
and I hope she sticks around.  

 

9.	Lastly, his meeting was convened to find a new Treasurer for sure
and perhaps we would have time to look at filling other positions that need
to be filled.  Our treasurer has done a great job during his term but he
wants out..understandable 3 years is a long time so we are searching for
another volunteer.  Now when I opened the meeting Jerry was prompt to send
in an overview of his position, hours he puts in, and so on.  That was
informative.  I then opened the meeting for asking questions about this
position and to look for a volunteer.  So far I have heard people say why
they can't be of service but no one in this meeting is looking at how they
can be of service.  Is that solution based I do not believe so.  

 

Fact is we need to work on rotating our trusted servants out of their
positions.  Am I saying ignore the problem of how do we get people to be of
service? No, but we do need to focus on the task at hand.  

 

Perhaps you can't commit to three years but are interested in being the
Treasurer.  That's okay, tell us what length of time you can do and let's
see if we can work on that.  I am open to that.  Continuing the discussion
at hand isn't going to solve the fact that we have trusted servants who are
looking at rotating out of their positions.  We can however continue those
discussions after we take care of the business that we convened for.again to
find a new Treasurer. 

 

 

So I ask you all to get back to the agenda and we can add the discussion
topic of "how do we get people interested in being of service" to bottom of
the agenda.  

 

Love and Serenity,

Dawn