Transition Task Force (TTF) Meeting #4 Official Minutes

August 15, 2018

Please note - we make edited notes of our conversations public in the interest of transparency. These notes reflect the conversations and concerns of the TTF, but are not our final positions or decisions. All decisions taken by the task force will be published in our letters to the community.

Aug 10, 2018, 10 Pacific Time

Present (on Zoom): Katrin Stelzel, Suzann Duquette, Sharon Owyang, Charlene Leung, Arawana Hayashi, Basia Solarz (Facilitator)

Absent: Andrew Sacamano (busy with a retreat that day).

Agenda:

• Defining the role of the Process Team, esp is the PT responsible for healing the sangha?
• Time permitting - advisors, helpers, and deadline extension

Action Items:

• Some members of TTF to reach out to advisors
• Subteam of TTF to start drafting second letter

Discussion:

Process Team: Is PT responsible for healing sangha?

• Feels like they should be, but we can’t tell them.
• Choose someone for the PT who would take that forward?
• Be explicit about the criteria for the team, that we will select for people who do that?
  • Team people, lacking agenda, who have confidence and working skill – this will cue people to what we’re intending
  • Also maybe suggest PT have circles in every center.
    • Sensitivity to trauma, training in collective trauma, POC circles
• We can advocate this, but ultimately the people who are chosen will decide what they want to offer.

What criteria are important:

• Transformative justice;
• Organizational development on global level;
• Expertise in cultural change within an org
• Innovative
• Entrepreneurial spirit
• Not afraid to borrow and integrate
• Open-minded people who are not caught in bias or with agenda
• Willing to prototype small things within centers
• Familiar with design thinking, able to make it all hang together.
• Making space for things to emerge from the community; want people who will encourage that process throughout the mandala
• Someone trained in collective trauma and healing
• Appetite for chaos!  Soft vs. hard qualities
• Meta level soft skills;  facilitation skills and organizational development;
• Listening
• Process facilitation

Other PT issues

• lineage has integrity and our governance structure cannot be total democracy; we need to talk about integrity of lineage within entrepreneurial spirit
• some non-Shambhalians have more respect for Sakyong than those inside

IB Criteria:

• Previous corporate experience in a leadership capacity.

Looking for more advice:

• Some names of sangha-members to ask for advice about language for criteria (informally).
• Decision to be transparent about the advisors we’re working with. [Advisers’ names withheld until they agree and we’re actually working with them.]

Second letter:

• Mention meta qualities in second letter, third letter for actual qualifications
• Try to get letter out by Tuesday or Wednesday