Many groups have a clear membership definition. It is useful to know who is a member and who is not a member of your group at any particular time. Groups with an unclear membership definition are open to manipulation by other organisations.
During lengthy conflict or disputes in a collective, it is frustrating to try to resolve who is a member of the collective. Working out a membership definition ahead of time, can save time and eliminate a possible issue of contention.
As part of Membership, a joining procedure acts as a training period for individuals joining a group. The existence of a clear joining procedure provides a space for clarification by the prospective member and the group of expectations and needs. It is a learning period for the person joining, and an acclimatisation period for the members of the group. At the end of a joining period, the use of a clearness meeting may resolve any problems the new member or existing members may have, before the new member has their membership fully accepted.
Learning the work of a small group or collective does not stop once a new member is accepted, but is a continuous process.
Shelley Rogers - in a paper circulated around a Sydney refuge, titled 'Collectives, the tyranny of Hidden Structure' - outlines 4 stages or levels of involvement by members of a collective. These are:
Shelley Rogers also points out that there is a vast disparity in skills and abilities which individuals bring to a group. These are often environmentally and socially determined by sexual identity, race, age, education, gender, or class background. These differences all need to be taken into account when a person joins a small group.
Defining a commitment level for individuals joining a collective makes clear how much is expected in terms of time, money, and energy. Defining the goals and the purpose of the group is equally important in clarifying what new members are committing themselves to.
Not everyone will be interested in participating in the groups activity, or will have the commitment demanded by the group for sharing power and responsibility of the project. Although unable to participate in the group, for whatever reason, these people may fulfil an important role as part of the friendship networks and supportive community around the project. They can provide vital informal links to other collectives and affinity groups.
Some of the friends of the collective may participate in the collective's work based upon a specific negotiated agreement between the person and the collective. The danger in allowing a person to take on collective responsibilities without being a member, is that they may not have all the information available as a member, and they cannot be held fully accountable to the group.
To alleviate this danger, agreements should specify the exact responsibilities, and be for a set period of time, and be specific to an individual. Obviously, a member who has recently left the collective may have an agreement with the collective involving more responsibility, than someone who occasionally comes to social events and wants to help out.
In two collectives I have been a member of, their has been negotiated agreements with non-members for their assistance with the project at hand. These arrangements have been effective for the project and for building trust and friendship between members and non-members.
The delegation of specific responsibility to individuals within the group builds individual confidence in the exercise of power on behalf of the group. Although each individual may exercise power for their specific tasks, they are responsible to the group which should have ultimate control. The collective may decide to set guidelines on some tasks to focus an activity.
Individuals can be congratulated on tasks which have been undertaken successfully, or criticised for poor decision making or work. Criticism should try to stress possible improvements and more effective methods of undertaking the tasks. Criticism should also take into account an individual's ability and skill level. No one likes just being criticised, so try to always offer encouragement and positve advise whenever criticism is warranted.
Abusing an individual for a poor job when they have not got sufficient skill or ability to undertake a task, alienates that person and achieves nothing. Perhaps the person needed more training, or perhaps the expectation of the group for that task is set to high. Affirmation for tasks and responsibility undertaken can be very important in building a person's confidence and ability.
When all members are given a task, responsibility for the group project is shared. This serves to increase individual confidence, and commitment and trust between group members.
To further ensure that power, information and skills are shared, all tasks should be rotated among the group. Rotating tasks at first glance seems inefficient, as each member has to learn every task.
However, job rotation provides many advantages: such as the ability for one member to quickly take over another member's job in case of illness, injury or other emergency. Also, each individual has a better understanding of all the work and can make more informed decisions as part of the collective decision making process. Rotation of tasks can also relieve boredom, and gives everybody a chance to enjoy the interesting jobs.
Tasks which are held too long by one person come to be seen as that person's property, and a mystique about the task can be established preventing others from challenging or controlling this person's power. If a task is held for too short a period, the satisfaction of learning and doing a job properly will be lost. A suitable rotation period could vary according to what feels right for the individuals and the group.
In the Jura Bookshop Collective, one person had spent a number of years doing the accounts and preparing the monthly budgets. This person effectively determined when new orders were to be placed. As no one else had recently been involved in any accounts or budget preparation, it was thought to be a difficult and involving job by most collective members. No one was prepared to ask that the job be rotated, seeing the job as belonging to a particular person. Although the collective had a policy of job rotation, in actual fact jobs usually only changed hands when a person left the collective, or a new person demanded a job (which was infrequent).
Black Rose Bookshop Collective had a rotation period of nine months. This length of time was long enough to allow members to learn their jobs and be creative in their tasks. Some jobs, such as overseas ordering, required 3 months just to see the results of an order. Job rotation resulted in sharing the skills around more people. When a more charismatic and skilled member resigned at one point, their was a loss to the collective, but not in terms of the skills available to the group.
Having social events as a collective can be an important activity. Not all groups choose this: worker cooperatives may decide to have very few or no social events. But most collectives will choose to celebrate socially at least a few important times: anniversaries of establishment, birthdays, events of importance to the members.
Regular social events build our feeling of trust and community with each other and the friendship networks we are each a part of. They also allow us to enjoy the fun side of working together and participating in each others lives.
Social events may be done entirely informally or might be structured slightly in various ways - as for example a regular social dinner, or celebrations at special times in the life of the group and the individuals. Sharing part of our social lives together can reinvigorate our energy for the group project.
One collective I was a member of celebrated its anniversary of establishment in two parts: a private dinner for collective members and close friends; and a public dinner or barbecue open to anybody.
My household chooses to celebrate the equinoxes and solstices with feasts, to which we invite our close friends. May Day and International Women's Day are also celebrated by my household by joining public picnics and demonstrations. Birthdays are celebrated both as household rituals, and sometimes with a party.
Enjoy the party. As the infamous feminist and anarchist, Emma Goldman, once said:
Rosters are a method of delegating responsibility for basic tasks to individuals. They can be used to ensure routine work is divided equally and fairly among all. When a person is avoiding a particular task, or taking responsibility for too many tasks, the roster should show this and the group can discuss the reasons why this may be so, and work out a solution agreed to by all. Rosters are particularly useful for examining our socially conditioned roles, such as those roles based on gender, class or age.
One collective I was in utilised a voluntary cleaning roster, in which members volunteered their names beside tasks. The cleaning mostly got done, but most of the work was done by the female members. In comparison, most of the ordering, inventory, and accounting tasks were done by the men in the collective. The issue of rosters later became a part of a conflict over organisational practice in this collective.
Obviously, a voluntary roster can be useful in ensuring the work gets done, but it can also indicate a bias, such as the gender role bias as exemplified above.
Rosters which all members participate in, can force members out of socially conditioned roles, and provide an opportunity to pick up new skills, and broaden our experience.
I have seen a number of male friends broaden their cooking skills through a roster for preparing a weekly public dinner. Similarly, women have been empowered by the opportunity to do jobs entailing initiative and responsibility like budgeting, ordering, or group publicity.
Evaluating a meeting is an important learning process for the individuals and the group. It allows us to reflect on our meeting process and interactions. We can then formulate methods for refining our meetings and make them more efficient.
If meetings tend to run over time, the evaluation should pick this up and provide a space for formulating a structure to keep more accurate timekeeping for following meetings. Similarly, the evaluation should also look at the roles of facilitating, minute keeping and vibes watching to refine these tasks.
Sometimes it is helpful for groups to have a general evaluation of aims, goals, processes and directions. These meetings are sometimes termed Clearness Meetings as they can assist in clearing problems and seeing clearly into the future.