Attendance: Chris,
Chicken, Ryan, Mel, Bill, Margery, Natasha, Vinny, Jon (on the phone) Seems that the
steering committee may have taken away a lot of the chair responsibilities Margery: If SOP reorganization happens, then we should re-eximine goal setting for the group. Wants to look in to why most of the ICO volunteers are not involved with many off-river roles. Agrees with Mel about clarifying what all the jobs are and ensure that they have the support to do those jobs which will ultimately feed in to the major positions such as Chair. Think about potentially recruiting new volunteers that could be involved off-river to help the steering commitee. Ultimately, we need to figure out who will be responsible for "where the buck stops". Ryan: Emphasize that the SOP's are a big part of defining chair responsibility and we really need to sort out the a better definition of the job. Vinny: Majority of the job has entailed conflict resolution, dealing with email exchanges and basically glorified babysitting Bill: Chairs have been involved to uninvolved over the years. Looking forward to the DRACI meetings so that we can define the chair responsibilities - In bill's opinion, chair is the glue that holds ICO together, checking in with TL's, committee chairs to ensure that their roles are being fulfilled.
Chicken: In terms of changing the culture of ICO, that seems to be the biggest
challenge that we need to work on, Beyond Basics will look at some of the soft
skills needed with working with each other, and is one of the things we need to
fix.
What do we want to accomplish for the retreat: Bill: Conflict resolution training, Project LifeRaft, DRACI, SOP's -- update , (Bill is offering to run rescue rodeo), add off-river jobs should be added to a post training evaluation. Mel: Appropriate and inappropriate behavior and touch (Harold); group discussion of goals @ the retreat. Ryan: All of Bill's suggestions with an underscore on DRACI, Will lead Trivia game/ Jeopardy, Compliance -- include CARP (Ryan will lead it if Jon is not around). Recruiting for jobs should be a business item to focus on.
Margery: recruiting for jobs, try and keep the business meeting short. Do more
events to have fun. Current committee members should start mentoring other
volunteers so that they can be part of the organization. Could Teresa lead the
discussion on 2012 goals conversation, it could help everyone in attendance
feel part of the decision making process. Start with mission and norms for the
meeting to start. Margery will work with Chris to set the agenda. 2012 Goals: Ryan: More weekday trips, giving apprentices opportunities Mel: Connect our participants more with what we do, could include Project LifeRaft education, providing leadership opportunities, make a cultural shift Natasha: Broader off-river involvement from new volunteers
How many trainees/Training? Getting a lot of responses from the trainers that they cannot help this year. Needs to decide if we need more than 2 trainees in a raft because we may not have too many trainers. Ryan: Training committee should be enabled to decide based on resources how many trainees would be accepted. Vinny: Strongly suggest we
stick to 2 trainees per boat, with 3 trainees it is very difficult to get the
necessary training and we may end up with losing more trainees than needed. Expedition training to add advance trip curriculum.
Jon: SC Water Committee wants to continue PLR activities. There may be a modified PLR training in the spring.
Selection: Ryan: previous participants, people who are going to stay with the program -- we tend to give a lot of weight to people with trucks, people with outdoor experience, fundraising experience (these are all things that we can train for, but rather they can be trained) we should be looking for people who are going to stay long term. We underweight people with passion for whitewater rafting – this may not be a popular concept but that is what Ryan feels are important to factor in. It will never be perfect, but we should consider a new direction based on historical data. Natasha: Wants to reweigh
the rubick sheet, wants to figure out how to make an accountable and actionable Mel: Strongly agrees with what Ryan is saying about the participant demographic. Also agrees that finding people that stays is an important factor, add passion for whitewater and passion for working with teachers and trying to find a balance. Looking for potential off-river (non-guide) volunteers as well. Margery: Currently everyone
(excluding mary) are required to be guides. The question is about the process
around the point system and we used that as a guideline but ultimately people
went with their gut about who would be best for the organization. As volunteer
coordinator, really afraid of a lack of good volunteers and concerned about the
health of the organization because of the lack of volunteers and volunteers
leaving including TL’s. Bill: We are accepting people from far distances – look at people who in close distance to SF. Chicken: We’ve been looking
for most people that had stable lives to accept in to ICO and the kids that we
accept will most likely leave in 2-3 years but as part of the mission we need
to evaluate that part. Everyone is encouraged to attend the selection committee meeting that will help evaluate the candidates and prepare for the interviews.
River Meeting vs Steering Meeting:
SOP discussion: Mel: Would like to propose that at the Retreat we encourage everyone who are interested to come participate in helping look at the SOP’s. We have learnt a lot along the way and is prudent for us to reexamine what we have as a guiding process. There are things about points of reference and procedure that could be in the SOP’s. Bill: Would like to see some background information go out prior to those meetings. Margery: Are we purposing that we are going to toss the SOP’s out and start over again? Vague notion of the SOP’s being completely rewritten is very concerning and scary. Fully embracing looking at them, but want to be less vague about it. Chicken: There are specific
problems that need to be addressed including the ATA/ATG policy – having more
general language in that policy would make it easier for trips Mel: (Speaking for the Sierra club) – Was at the Risk management conference and brought up a point about the danger of having things written down that we don’t pay attention to, we need to take a hard look at SOP’s and decide what will get us in trouble.
DRACI meeting: Bill: We should work on the structure of the organization before working on the SOP’s. Margery: Disagrees, we should be able come to a consensus about the SOP’s with out the organizational structure. Ryan: SOP’s should notate the
ideal ICO, but first we need to formulate what the ideal ICO is … Happy to take
ownership about leading the reevaluation of the SOP’s where ever that may take
us. The OTHER meeting should all take place, but there is still no one that can
lead it, we do a lot of work to get to a point where we are ready to start the
“real work” and everything stops there – which is the issue. The problem that we need to attack is to
clarify what ICO is and means to everyone and how we go about our mission means
a different thing to everyone which needs to be clarified. Chris: will try and set up a DRACI meeting along with Harold – perhaps it’s a meeting about organizational structure. Ryan will take ownership for a TL meeting. Specifically for current leaders.
Next steering meeting: Feb 8th @7PM. Chicken will send a car.
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