'Squads'

[Milan]

Right from the outset, I want to say that I dislike the military analogy and would prefer another name.



That said, it seems possible that setting up a large number of reporting relationships between volunteers and organizers could help Toronto350.org more efficiently make full use of the talents of our volunteers.

The idea was raised in a half-formed sense at the planning meeting on December 23rd, 2014: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/toronto-350/E8j1EFuQMOA/mfOBTghJICkJ

In an article well-worth reading, Rebecca Solnit describes how:

So this is the time to find your place in a growing movement, if you haven’t yet – as it is for climate organizers to do better at reaching out and offering everyone a part in the transformation, whether it’s the housebound person who writes letters or the 20-year-old who’s ready for direct action in remote places. This is the biggest of pictures, so there’s a role for everyone, and it should be everyone’s most important work right now, even though so many other important matters press on all of us. (As the Philippines’s charismatic former climate negotiator Yeb Sano notes, “Climate change impinges on almost all human rights. Human rights are at the core of this issue.”

To me it seems that if we want to make full use of all the talents of everyone involved with Toronto350.org we will need to find an efficient way to match up people who need help on important projects and people with the time, skill, and interest required to assist them effectively.

This is all very much still an idea in progress. I think the most important things we need to think about are: first, whether some change in our form of organization could help us achieve more success in the face of climate change; second, what will work practically for a group with our base of volunteers, potential funding, information technology infrastructure, etc. We need to have a global vision, but an ever-present local focus on what is important here and what we can do about it.

I look forward to discussing this in any forum.

Happy holidays!

Milan

[Milan]

Here is another, earlier, explanation of the idea:

1) Informally, have two types of active members, referred to here as
volunteers and organizers (but potentially called something different
in practice).

2) Each volunteer would be assigned to one specific organizer. If
there are willing volunteers and they feel that it would help them,
organizers can coordinate multiple volunteers.

3) Organizers will assign specific tasks to volunteers, communicating by email.

4) Organizers in turn will report on the activities of their little
'squads' at planning and/or campaign meetings.

There could even be a sort of 'job board' system, where volunteers
list the skills they have and the sort of work they want to do (web
design, postering, photography, public speaking, etc). Organizers
could post updates on what their groups are doing, and request
specific skills or volunteers for specific tasks.

Could such a thing be done through NationBuilder?

This is all pretty pie-in-the-sky at the moment. People may hate the
idea of reorganizing in such a way. Also, there may be nobody willing
to serve as a volunteer reporting primarily or exclusively to one
person.

On the other hand, some sort of distributed system might work better
than having one volunteer coordinator trying to keep track of
everything. Of course, the volunteer coordinator would be a natural
choice for putting in charge of running the job board.

Anyway, perhaps we can think about whether there is any more efficient
way in which we can accomplish this parallel processing task. People
have different levels of commitment, skill sets, and sets of tasks
they are willing to perform. It seems the more easily we can match any
particular person to a set of tasks that match their preferences, the
more tasks we can get accomplished overall.

[Stu Basden]

Milan's right. Let's say teams.

We're talking about the snowflake model of organizing—which is awesome. But I feel we're talking about it abstractly.

So, for example, our campaigns should have strategies where needs such as outreach, data input, and actions are defined, so that people can have that duty defined, and people they can go to concerning it.

This conversation makes sense in terms of campaigns and what they are doing. In other words, the snowflake model doesn't make sense to us abstractly, it makes sense if we apply it to how we campaign. As in what our campaigns actually need, and what they actually do.

I would encourage all other campaigns to make teams, but based on their needs. Campaigns should know team functions (e.g. Outreach, research, action) and build their own lists of who is doing what. Campaign heads should make sure new people get added to teams and given responsibilities when they join.

The idea is half formed now, but where it works and makes sense is as part of a training for our next strategy session. Maybe we could aim for campaign leaders to internalize the snowflake model of organizing by then, so that they implement it effectively when planning their strategy.

TLDR: plan the snowflake in the context of our campaigns, not abstractly.

[Milan]

Do you have a source that describes this 'snowflake' model in more detail?

I think the key to being more productive may be moving beyond vague 'teams' where people lack specific task responsibilities and reporting relationships, and more into a situation where person A is performing task X for person B, and person B is reporting on overall progress at campaign and planning meetings.