Time to Get to Work!

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Coleman on October 11, 2009 at 10:33

My response is here: http://rsafellowshipcouncil.ning.com/group/fellowshipcouncilmembers...

Wouldn't it be a good idea to try to keep all of these follow-up discussions within one space?

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Permalink Reply by Tessy Britton on October 11, 2009 at 12:01

@Stephen Apologies for not seeing the discussion you mention - I will be sure to comment there too. I do think however that we need to reach some consensus about how open we are, the purpose of this particular post was to get some ideas from outside the committee to add to our own.

@David You raise some important questions that deserve discussion. Your idea of a simple Q and A, something which is regularly updated as things change and develop is a good one.

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Permalink Reply by Michaela Crimmin on October 11, 2009 at 13:15

As a staff member, I'm all for working with Fellows on existing projects - especially Arts & Ecology and Peterborough - and for coming to meetings on potential projects where the arts may have a role. It's all work in progress all round, so it's a question of tyring things out and seeing what resources allow. I hope Fellows realise how keen we are in the House to work with you more and better!

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Permalink Reply by Tessy Britton on October 11, 2009 at 14:34

Hi Michaela - thank you for your lovely comment.

I attended the Connected Communities session on the the day of the AGM and the sense of working together, and a desire to engage and include the Fellows in the thinking and understanding of the project work was very apparent... and I think much appreciated by everyone that attended.

There were some really interesting group discussions around the idea of the Community Gardens, which William Shaw introduced to the meeting.

My rather pushy/amusing/brilliant friend David Gauntlett writes on your blog:

"Can I join your team? I’m a paid-up RSA Fellow and it says here, on eight different bits of RSA propaganda I have upon my person, that you want to involve Fellows in things, right?!"

Turning all the willingness into everyday practice can be a bit of a challenge - but starts with open conversations like this I'm sure :)

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Permalink Reply by Amy Sample Ward on October 11, 2009 at 14:43

Tessy - Thanks so much for creating open/accessible conversations! As a new fellow, and someone who hasn't been "here" long, I feel like I'm, well, "out of the loop" for lack of better phrasing when it comes to my role as a fellow (both inward and outward facing to/from the RSA), my options as a fellow (both w/ support from RSA or in contribution to the RSA), and so on. The questions that David lists above are all ones I would love to hear the answers to in a one-stop-shop kind of fashion.

With the context of my newness already on the table, something that I think would be tremendously helpful as an on-going action/focus for the council would be to serve as the nucleus of the cool/great/notable work going on by fellows in that by creating avenues for fellows to report (at any time) things they are working on and opportunities for others to contribute/collaborate the council would serve, excuse the analogy, as the matchmaker - connecting other fellows directly, or pushing out calls for participation, or bringing fellows in to meet with RSA project teams or staff (who they may not know, or may not know have a similar interest, etc.). Obviously, if this falls outside the objectives or role of the council (and I could have interpreted some of your notes above as such), then just excuse it. But, it's my £.02 for now :)

Thanks for letting me be part of the conversation!

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Permalink Reply by Tessy Britton on October 11, 2009 at 16:07

What great news that you are a Fellow Amy - big welcome!

I love your idea of 'creating avenues for fellows to report (at any time) things they are working on and opportunities for others to contribute/collaborate'. Rosie Ferguson mentioned in the Council meeting the need to make the RSA and Council accessible and your idea of finding a way of all for us to keep up to date/inspired with RSA and Fellow projects would be a great way to do that .... and possibly even stimulate activity and a sense of community.

The two organisations I think who do this well are the Design 21 with the Share/Act sections on their website and Pop!Tech Hub where people offer resources directly .

Do you think that there might be Fellows who be willing to volunteer to develop your idea with consultation and help from the networks team? Is there an IT solution you can envisage working with the existing nings etc but which focuses more directly on the areas you propose?

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Cahill on October 11, 2009 at 16:35

Kevin Cahill here.

I have read through the correspondence above and want to make some short observations.

First the facts. I counted only 18 Fellows who were on the Council and who attended the meeting. I may have missed some Fellows who looked in and did not stay. But the bottom line is that about 50% of the Council did not attend the inaugural meeting. The majority of absentees were from the appointed Fellows. We should take as our text the observation that Mattew Taylor made at the meeting; that the great Exhibition, inaugurated and created by vthe RSA, succeeded after three failed attempts. All that can be said is that the meeting was not a failure, neither was it a success. We left without an agreed structure for the Council, without a clear idea about what the Council is supposed to be, or do, and without the Fellowship Charter accepted.

Could I offer the following thoughts for solving the problems lurking in the above facts ?

1. Appointed Fellows who fail to attend two meetings in succession should be asked to stand down. Replacements should come from a list generated by the Fellowship Council which should be submitted to the Trustees for consideration.

2. We are not children and further, we have clear duties as Fellows under the By Laws that create the Council. The agenda for the next meeting should be generated entirely by the members of the Council, and given to the CEO 14 days before the next meeting on 15th Dec. It should not come from outside the Council. (Some ideas are given at the end of this note)

3. Attendance by the executive at Council meetings should be limited to just one person, or two at most, who should be invited by the Council to address it, and not have the situation we had at the inaugural session where the executive monopolised between 60% and 70% of the spoken dialogue during the meeting. We, the Fellows, have a duty to deliver a working Fellowship Council, not the executive. A number of Fellows told me afterwards that they did not speak at the meeting beacuse they felt that the executive was far too dominant. It was. There were 6 or 7 members of staff and just 18 or so of us, and we are the ones with the 'legal' duty to make the Council work, not the executive.

4. My 740 Fellows in the West sent in 20 comments about the Fellowship Charter, which should have been discussed. They raised the issue of where the Charter had come from, what was its relationship with the Royal Charter (see more on this below) and upon what consultation with Fellows it had been created. None of those questions were answered and as a result we are left with an inconclusive sitution. One Council Member told me afterwards that he saw 'red' at the attempt to treat the Fellowship Charter as an agreed document, with only the content up for discussion. I didnt see 'red' but I was deeply perturbed, to put it mildly.

5.One of the issues or items that occurred was this idea that we, the RSA, are there to 'change society'. If that is what you want to do there are two basic things you have to do. You must specify or describe the society you want to change, and you must say what are the changes you want to make. Sociology 101. The RSA however had a Member ( before Fellowship) who did change world society on an extraordinary scale and he did it by describing the society he found around him, and by then setting out the changes he wanted to make. He was called Karl Marx. And there is another problem ( though it may have been solved by our new chair). There is nothing in our Royal Charter that endorses or legitimises the (Marxian) mission to change society. Instead we are commanded to encourage the arts, manufacture and commerce. We are not given the wider role that is being touted. Our country remains one that is steeped in the arts, that still manufactures things and is heavily engaged in commerce. Our Chair, Luke Johnson focused on two of these items in his inaugural speech. He said we needed more, better and better funded inventors, (manufacture) and we needed to support and encourage entrepreneurs (commerce) Matthew Taylor was cool enough to publicly admit in response to Luke Johnsons speech "that there were differences between him and Luke" and indeed there are, like Grand Canyon sized differences.

I firmly believe that the Fellowship Council can work. But it needs an enormous amount of work by the Council members, first in defining the council structure, then in defining its function relative to the Trustees and the executive, and finally in working out how the Council is to operate on a regular basis . The Council can, for instance, help to fill the leadership vacum that exists at the RSA, which in turn will answer a lot of the questions posede earlier in this discussion.

At the session I introduced an analysis of the Fellowship. If we are to function as a Council we should start by working out who the Fellows are, by title, function, job, education etc. Once that is done we can have a focused discussion on what our relationship with the Fellowship might be, the Fellowship we are tasked with representing according to the by laws. In the West our analysis has enabled us to plan correspondence, plan meetings and plan a future programme that is relevant to the actual Fellowship we have.

A suggested agenda for the next meeting on 15th Dec.

i. Elect a temporary chair from within the Council to run the meeting on the day.
2. Elect a temporary secretary to take the minutes.

The temporary chair calls all the meeting to order.

1st Business. Council attendance. Note the names of those who missed both this meeting and the inaugural meeting. Originate letter to each missing Council member inviting them to step down. Send list to Trustees with suggested replacements arising from a discussion at this point.

2nd Business. Council organisation. Decide on our permanent structure from sumissions made by Council members between now and 15th dec. Suggest. 1 Chair, and define his/her functions. 2 Deputy chairs with specific functions. Treasurer, Secretary and specific person to liaise formally with the Trustees and the exec. Perhaps suggest an executive committee to carry out day to day tasks or whatever.

3rd Business. To discuss and examine what the Fellowship Council is meant to be by noting the By Laws that created the Council and by looking at what they might mean in practice and on a practical basis. I would suggest that the key issue is our relationship with the TRustees and then with the Fellows we are supposedc to represent.
This discussion will be ongoing and may last well into next year at other Council meetings. What the Fellowship Council is really going to be will not, in my humble estimate, emerge for quite a while. This si an organisation that is over 250 years old.

4th Business. 1st discussion on what the RSA itself actually is. In the West our recent AGM asked that we beging a series of debates about what the RSA is and is supposed to do, completely open ended. This was as opposed to meetings at which bankers woulld be put before firing squads. Our sister society, the Royal Dublin Society, whose charter we borrowed to set up the RSA, is currently engaged in such a sequence of discussions which I have been invited to attend and contribute to.

AOB.

1. The Fellowship Charter. Report from Belinda Lester bringing us up to date on this and answering the various queries that have been raised.

2. The Networks. Report from Michael Devlin on how these are working. How many networks are there and most important, how many Fellows are using them regularly.

3. The Regions. Matthew Taylor to report on how the Regional support system is working, in terms of vists made, projects formally assisted etc.

4. Changes in Fellowship numbers and recruitment iverall and by region. Member of staff to report.

Any other suggestions. ?

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Permalink Reply by Amy Sample Ward on October 11, 2009 at 17:12

Thanks, Tessy! :)

I think that with a group of people, the fellows, who don't even all have email, adding one more tool to the mix would be too much to handle. That makes me wonder if there was a process using existing rsa fellow online spaces to do the self reporting/sharing, then great. Maybe a simple web form on the RSA site + a dedicated form or other space on one of the nings, etc. Not sure though: honestly don't even personally know all the spaces yet or current "operating procedures" for this network of folks to feel like I properly understand the audience to pinpoint best approaches or tools.

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Permalink Reply by Tessy Britton on October 11, 2009 at 17:20

Thank you very much Kevin for taking so much time and thought to reply to the post. Too many points to respond to everything, but I will comment on some of your points here, from my own perspective only.

All the points for business (1st, 2nd etc) seem very important points to raise at the next meeting and I am sure that once we have had an opportunity to discuss it more fully, that a framework or working structure, should be one of our first priorities. I also agree that the Council needs to determine its own agenda, co-created between council members with suggestions from as wide a perspective as possible - I believe that this is the intention moving forward.

I am not at all sure how we could do things differently, but I feel strongly that because we have been re-constituted, so to speak, that we have some responsibility to explore alternative structures to standard committees - perhaps one which will stimulate more participation from all members of the council, rather than relying on a smaller group, who in my experience tend to do too much of the work.

I hope that we can be as open and flexible as possible, rather than trying to restrict access to our meetings, agendas and discussions - it will be interesting to get a full range of views on this when we get the opportunity to discuss it.

I 'think' that the existing terms of the council state that no more that two meetings can be missed... but the attendance on Wednesday I believe may have been higher than you estimate (five tables with 5/7 members on each?). It was difficult to estimate with the room laid out as it was so I may be wrong - the minutes due out next week will likely confirm the numbers.

Agree completely with you that attendance and commitment is vital if we are to do the enormous amount of work needed, as you suggest!

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Cahill on October 11, 2009 at 19:49

Tessy,

Your enthusiasm is wonderful and you are the kind of person who will make this Council work. However, trust me on something.

I am 65 and belong to 6 different Royal Societies. I have a lifetimes experience of how to get nothing done. I work in Parliament where getting nothing practical done is a way of life, a mission even.The Council gives us a chance to look both ways, at the Fellowship and at the Trustees and the Executive. The sooner we start doing that the sooner we start out on the road to accomplishment. But we will achieve nothing, nothing at all, if we spend our time blogging with every person who comes along - at this point. Later, when we have a structure and an organisation, then we can consider the wider world and its interaction with us. But our first task is to organise ourselves to be effective.
A brief anecdote. Years ago I worked for the board of Canon Corp, the Japanese camera company. Now that company got amazing things done. But it was rigidly hierarchical in a very hierarchical society and yet it was able to tap the talents of almost all its engineers individually and stay ahead of the competition. Here's how Canon did it. At what might be called product invention D Day, almost every senior engineer was allowed to chose what work they would do to creat or modify a product. After a specified time all the engineers met and displayed their products to each other and management. A short list of products was chosen, the teams reassigned. In the end one or two products were selected and all the engineers were reassigned to startups, or to the teams creating the chosen products. That way Canon has stayed on top of the game for over 60 years.

Upon analysis what was involved was order, democracy, decision and then production, with everyone on board having agreed the process and knowing that not every idea was going through. We need something like that. We cant operate as an amorphous entity. But we can employ total democracy, if we create a structure that delivers results. Democracy is not everyone having their say all the time. Its about deciding what is to be done in a way that involves everyone, but then getting everyone on board to carry out the agreed action. That is effective democracy.

And maybe we should think of ourselves as the RSA Parliament and debating chamber, treating the Trustees and Executive as the Government and, as with Parliament, holding them to account ? Despite its inefficiencies the UK Parliament functions after a fashion. Being smaller we ought to be able to avoid the problems Parliament has. Just a thought.

But nothing alters the need to know who and what the Fellowship actually is. We cant represent them if we dont.

Kevin

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Permalink Reply by Tessy Britton on October 11, 2009 at 20:09

Thanks Kevin - I respect very much what you have achieved in the South West, and our off-ning exchanges have shown me exactly how much you have listened to and understood the Fellows in your region.

My own experiences have demonstrated that there are many different ways of achieving results, and I hope that open conversations like this, and our forthcoming discussions within the Council will help to devise a strategy which everyone can support. There are plenty of successful examples of less rigid approaches than the one you describe.

Your last point is very important - but I would suggest that we need to know the Fellows ideas and opinions as well as who they are, and that's potentially where this type of exchange might be invaluable.

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Permalink Reply by Sybil Crouch on October 12, 2009 at 12:01

Thanks to David & Stephen for asking some very good questions - the answers to which will certainly help me in understanding how we can be effective.

One of the key things for me would be the need for a 2 way conversation between the Trustees/the executive & the fellowship Council. I feel the need for us to understand the genesis & progress of RSA intitives/priorities so that this can inform the work of the regions and nations - and vice-versa.

and yes please - one space for these conversations....

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