WEBVTT - How to Organize a Meeting (And Stay Sane), Pt. 1 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:06.720 All media welcome. It could happen here. 0:00:06.760 --> 0:00:09.520 A podcast that is in many cases about organizing. I 0:00:09.560 --> 0:00:12.239 AnGR host Mel Wong and with me is one of 0:00:12.280 --> 0:00:14.520 the most experienced organizers I know, Margaret Kiljoy. 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:20.400 Oh no, hi, I'm a little out of practice, but 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:21.360 I have done it a lot. 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:24.959 You know, Margaret says this and also has been doing 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:28.120 shit for like one bazillion years, and this is, this 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:30.880 is and I will say this. The sign of you 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:33.159 that you are running into a good organizer is when 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:35.440 you talk to them about their organizing and they immediately 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:36.440 start downplaying it. 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:39.720 That's when you know that you haven't catched a good organizer. 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:42.600 If they started immediately going I'm the best fucking organizer 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:45.720 in the world, run like hell, this is an asshole 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:49.280 who sucks someone who's like, ah, like I did this 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:50.640 a million years ago, I'm not good at it and 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:52.920 it didn't matter and blah blah blah blah. 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:56.120 Very good organizer, thank you. Yeah. I remember once I 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:57.840 went to a thing wait that was put on and 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:00.240 there was this, uh they were kind of turfy people 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:02.560 who are coming through and we didn't totally know that 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:05.560 right away, and their pitch about why they were such 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:07.760 a good experienced organizers, as one of them was like, 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:11.560 and this person has been organizing for more than three years, 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:17.960 and it was just like, Okay, every person you are 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:20.680 giving this talk to has done this for at least 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:24.800 three times as long as that. And don't get me wrong, 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:27.000 if you're listening and you've been organizing for three years, 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:28.720 you've learned a lot. I'm not trying to tell you 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:31.040 you're bad organizer. You might be a better organizer and 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:33.399 someone's been doing it longer, but don't use that as 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:36.360 your selling point anyway. That's very funny. 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:40.760 Yeah, So okay, this episode, we were asking you a 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:44.240 very very important question. Okay, you want to change something 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:46.120 about the world. I don't know what that thing is 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:48.520 that is up that is for you to determine. The 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:50.760 question that you need to be asking is are you 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:52.920 organizing because you want to feel cool? Or are you 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.720 organizing because you want whatever you're doing to fucking work? 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:58.680 And if you want you're organizing to work, literally, no 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:01.240 matter what it is. You actually need to listen to 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:03.760 this episode and you need to have some rudimental knowledge 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:05.360 of the thing we are about to talk about, because 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:09.680 if you do not, your organizing will fail. If you 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:11.480 cannot do this, the thing we're going to talk about 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:13.839 in this episode, If you cannot do this, everything else 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:15.639 you know, all of your experience, all of your knowledge, 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:18.560 all of your passion, all of it is fucking useless 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:23.760 because the actual work of organizing is incredibly unglamorous. It 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:26.960 is un sexy, a lot of it is very time consuming, 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:29.760 a lot of it is not cool. It is you 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:33.880 sitting there and talking to a bunch of people. Yeah, 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:36.480 and if you want your movement to succeed, you have 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:38.799 to be able to do this kind of like groundwork, 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:42.520 logistical work, because if you don't, it won't work. So 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:44.440 what we are going to teach you the very very 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.240 very very basics of in this episode is a social 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.240 technology that has been developed over the course of literal 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:52.360 centuries of movements. 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:53.160 Right. 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:56.680 This is something that has been passed down and refined, 0:02:57.400 --> 0:03:00.079 like through generations and generations of organizers. I mean, I 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:02.560 could do a genealogy of this. A lot of the 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:05.000 modern stuff sort of came through the Quakers, moved through 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:07.560 the civil rights movements, moved through the anti war movements, 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:09.720 moved through like in Vietnam, moved to a whole bunch 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:12.760 of other movements like to be passed down to you today. 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:16.520 This is a complicated social technology. It does not sound complicated. 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:19.919 If you do not know how to do this, it 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:23.320 is impossible to try to replicate on the fly. And 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:25.000 that is we are going to explain to you the 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:26.639 very basis of how to run a meeting. 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:30.480 Yeah, I really like this way of phrasing it that 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:33.480 it's it's a technology, Like it's a way of applying 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:36.720 ideas to get something to happen. Even if a lot 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:39.360 of it is instinctive, there is an art to it, 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:43.160 but like, yeah, no, there's stuff you can like learn 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:46.080 and apply and it's Yeah, technology is a good way 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:46.600 of framing it. 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:49.280 Yeah, And it's one of these things where you know, 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.480 you can kind of if you don't know how to 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:54.640 do this and you have people, you can kind of 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:58.040 sort of maybe approximate something that is a little bit 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:01.000 functional and the moment it runs into a stress point, 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:04.160 it will collapse completely. And this is a thing that 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:07.440 like you know, I have talked to I have done 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:08.920 a lot of these. I have talked to a lot 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:10.840 of people who've done this. I have like I have 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:12.560 been in rooms of people knew how to run meetings. 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:14.200 I've been in rooms people didn't know how to run meetings. 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:15.840 I have talked to a bunch of people who have 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:17.440 been in rooms who don't know how to run meetings, 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:21.360 and like there are rooms of people with collectively hundreds 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:23.839 of PhDs and because nobody in the room knew how 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:26.760 to fucking run a meeting, complete disaster they're organizing didn't work. 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:30.760 Yeah, right, you have to be able to do this. 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:33.159 And it doesn't really matter, you know, we're not going 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:36.960 to get that much into like what mechanism are using 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:39.800 to make decisions because this is this is like even 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:42.400 like a layer below that, and so this is not 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:44.120 that you can use it, you know, regardless of whether 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:46.640 you're doing consensus and like, you know, like and I 0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:48.159 think that like, if you're trying to make a decision 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:50.360 as a group, right and you're trying to get everyone 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:51.880 to want to do the thing and do it, I 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:54.520 think that some version of consensus is a good idea. 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:56.520 But this can be for a sort of just like 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:58.600 a you know, like a majority of world democratic process, 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.480 whatever process you were using to decide things. You need 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:06.880 some kind of structure thing there otherwise it's just not 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:08.680 going to function like none of it will. 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:10.640 What's wild to me is that it's almost like the 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.560 important thing is that there is a structure. There's so 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.400 many different structures you can use. Like when we come 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.120 at this, I don't actually know I'm the podcast idiot 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:20.919 on this episode and me is going to explain something, 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:23.840 but like there's a lot of different ways to do this, 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:26.039 and the important way, the important thing is is that 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:28.680 you do one of them. Like there are ways that 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:31.400 I think are better or worse, right, but you do 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:34.760 actually need to create a structure and move forward with 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:36.840 that structure in order to get anything done, which is 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:40.200 the whole secret of organizing. Like that is what organizing is. 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:42.159 Is you actually have to say, not only do I 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:44.520 want something to get done, but I'm going to figure 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:46.600 out the steps by which to get that done. And 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:48.080 it also applies to metians. 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:51.200 Yeah, yeah, and like that kind of undergirting thing of 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:53.960 figuring out how how you're going to do it, right, 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:57.240 Like that that's the part of organizing that as you're saying, 0:05:57.240 --> 0:05:59.800 it's like nothing works without it, because it is like 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:02.679 of what organizing is, and otherwise you were just saying 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:05.880 things into the wind. And admittedly my job is to 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:07.760 say things into the wind. So I hope you do 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:09.839 it so like, you know, I have a little bit 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:12.480 of respect to that. But also you need to have 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:14.600 some way of getting other people to do things. 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:17.320 Yeah, it's like a when you sit around with your 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:19.920 friends and like, oh, someone should do this. No one's 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:22.760 actually named someone. Yeah you know, I mean somewhere, there's 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:25.920 a non binary person somewhere. But shout out to someone. 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:26.280 Yeah. 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.599 Yeah, if you're listening to someone, congratulations, you're a master 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:33.520 level troll. But like my friend, don't ask their name was, 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:39.240 don't ask. It's great anyway, whatever, but someone needs to 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:41.600 get something done. And if you leave a thing being like, 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:44.320 oh someone should do this, you didn't organize, you have 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:48.279 to say, yeah, this is what following people are doing. Yep. 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:50.680 Also shout out also to everyone who has been in 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:54.960 meetings with me and are like Smark, I'm insufferable in meetings. 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:58.480 I try really hard, but anyway, whatever. 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:03.839 Oh god, okay, okay. So this largely is going to 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:04.840 be like how to run a meeting? 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:05.520 What a one. 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:08.880 We're going to start at like zero zero zero, which 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:11.560 is you need a place to meet, and that place 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:14.640 to meet has to be accessible to everyone who's trying 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:16.680 to go to the meeting. This is a thing that 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:19.200 people screw up a lot. It is not that hard 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:21.040 to find the place as accessible for everyone to go. 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:22.520 You can do this. 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:24.800 There are lots of places you can have meetings, depending 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:27.840 on how sensitive the meeting is, you know, how formal 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:31.560 and formal it is. I've done meetings and restaurants and 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:34.840 meetings and bars of them in libraries, people use churches sometimes, 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:37.760 like queer centers, union halls, parks. 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:40.240 I want to shit talk bars really quickly. Yeah, I 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:42.760 don't think bars is a great idea, but I don't 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:44.840 think it's accessible to people who are under twenty one, 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:46.520 and I don't think it's accessible to people who have 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:50.640 problems being around drinking. That said, they happen there, and 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:52.400 I'm not trying to say you're bad for having had 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:55.040 meetings there, but I just want to say that, yeah, 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:57.320 Bars is one that like people go to a lot. 0:07:57.200 --> 0:07:59.400 And like, yeah, there's definitely issues with it, right, But 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:01.920 I don't know, like you can have them people's houses. 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:07.600 Sometimes you can like go into like a mesa or 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:10.240 whatever and you can go have am meeting there. You 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:12.240 can get people to just like go out somewhere and 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:12.600 do it. 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:14.120 You know, I don't know like you. 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:16.520 You are capable of thinking of lots of places where 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:18.080 you can have meetings, but you actually do need to 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:20.640 have a location. And this is actually again I've talked 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:22.160 about this before, but it's like one of the organizing 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:24.840 things that is actually really important is like knowing how 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:27.560 to get a room for a meeting or get it 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:29.000 room for something to happen. You have to be able 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:32.640 to do this. This is like zero o zero, like okay, 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:35.480 you know, okay, so you've now achieved this, and congratulations, 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.520 you clowns have now achieved a location. I am going 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:42.800 to stick a provisional thing in here, which is this 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:44.680 is this has jumping the gun a little bit, but 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:46.800 I need to put in here. Do not use Robert 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:51.200 rules of order. One of the things you will be told, 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:54.679 and if you have been in organizations before, a lot 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:56.600 of them use the thing called Robert rules of Orders, 0:08:56.640 --> 0:09:01.640 which is this old, like incredibly allaborate set of parliamentary procedures. 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:03.439 Do not use them. They suck. 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:07.160 And this gets into before we can even talk about 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:09.280 what a meeting is right and how you do it. 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:12.480 You really really do not want your meetings to get 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:16.319 bogged down in everyone having to learn one million lines 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:20.960 of parliamentary procedure. And this is a problem for any 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:24.320 meeting technology that you use, because they all do involve 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:27.240 a little bit of technical stuff because you have to 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:29.760 get people to be able to do things okay, But 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:31.840 one thing with Robert Tools of Order is that like, 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:36.240 it's like hundreds of pages, right, and in those hundreds 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:40.360 of pages are the recipe for one asshole to derail 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:43.600 your entire meeting by doing a whole bunch of unhinged 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:47.040 parliamentary shit. I have seen this happen. It sucks. This 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:50.440 is something that you can technically do in any meeting structure. 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.520 But the more pique the rules of the meeting are, 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:56.880 the easier the shit is to do and the harder 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:58.559 it is to be Like please stop. 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:00.600 Yeah, you have to have a a certain amount of 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:05.000 flexibility in the way that you do things because every system, 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:07.560 it's the problem with law as a concept, right, is 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:11.800 every system can you can find loopholes. And anyone who's 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.839 been in a lot of meetings has seen people learn 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:18.600 how to abuse the process in order to get their 0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:21.440 position to win by making everyone else too tired to 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:24.040 continue or to use up all of the space in 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:27.960 the room, or you know whatever. But I think that, yeah, 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:31.600 this idea that the rules that are used in your meeting, 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:34.800 I think that a very a good facilitator, which is 0:10:34.840 --> 0:10:38.440 something that I tend to believe in for meetings, is 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:43.240 capable of explaining the process in such a way that 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:45.600 even when a lot of people come who are not 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:50.200 familiar with the process, they will leave familiar with the process. Yeah. 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:52.959 Yeah, like to that sort of end, if you need 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:57.360 a like, okay, we need a written procedure thing, the 0:10:57.360 --> 0:10:59.640 thing I would recommend is called Rusty's Rules of Order, 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:04.560 which is an unbelievably paired down version of Robert Rools 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:06.840 of Order that was like specifically developed to be used 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:11.040 not in like union circles, in activist circles. And it's 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:14.320 like the total PDF of it is twenty five pages. 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:16.400 That makes it sound way longer than it actually is. 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:19.199 Like several of those pages are like a glossary, and 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:21.679 like the cover, it's very easy to read. It's easy 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:24.920 to understand if you have to use a like this 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:28.440 is a formalized procedure. Do Rusties, don't do Roberts, This 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:30.199 is just a I need to do this before we 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:31.800 say anything else, because a bunch of people are going 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:34.480 to push you to use this and it sucks. So 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:36.360 having gotten that out of the way, we can now 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:39.360 get into okay things from meetings. 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:41.480 I was supposed to make a joke about at the 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:43.920 top of all this. I'm sorry everyone. Everyone has been 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.360 waiting for me to make this joke. I'm certain, but mio, 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:48.200 which one of us is going to keep stack during 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:50.800 this meeting so that we know who can talk products 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:52.680 and services support this podcast? 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:54.760 Are gonna keep stack and we're gonna go to the 0:11:54.840 --> 0:11:55.920 right the foot Now. 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:10.880 We are back, and I really just want to say, 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:13.680 as timekeeper, I'm a little bit upset about how much 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:17.360 time that those ads used during the meeting and if 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:18.880 we can not fucking damn it. 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:23.960 Okay, we will explain what a stack is and what 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:29.040 time is in a second. However, comm so things you 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:31.000 need to do at the very start of a meeting. 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:33.160 You need to take like two minutes to do this, 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:36.160 but you need to explain how the meeting fucking works, 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:39.040 and you need to assign everyone roles, and you can't 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:41.200 assume that everyone who is going to be in this 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:45.160 meeting understands how the rules work, like you cannot. And 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:47.040 there's something I've run into is like you can't assume 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:50.000 that everyone understands what your hand signals are, or even 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:52.160 just basic like everyone has been in a thing before 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:54.600 and understands what a stack is, right, you can't assume 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:58.400 that unless you know everyone in the room. And more 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:00.520 than that, like unless you know everyone's love experience in 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:02.560 the room and you've been in meetings with them before, Like, 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:05.000 you can't assume the level of knowledge that everyone has. 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:08.200 And I have watched these processes not work because people 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:10.599 just did that and then a bunch of people in 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:12.000 the room were like, what the fuck is going on? 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:14.200 So you need to at the start of the meeting 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:16.040 explain how the meeting is going to work, like at 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:18.920 least a little bit. It doesn't have to be super formal. 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:20.880 This can be like fucking two minutes of like we're 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:22.640 gonna have a stack blah blah blah blah blah. 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:24.160 And for anyone just say, you know what we're saying 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:26.280 right now, we'll explain stack. More. That is the order 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:28.120 in which people talk. It is a way of like 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:30.400 keeping track of the line of who's gonna talk when. 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:33.480 Yeah, I'm realizing this explanation is jumping around a little bit. 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:36.320 But you need to make sure that everyone understands how 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:39.560 the meeting is supposed to work, and you know, usually 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:41.960 that's really quick. Sometimes someone will just not know something 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:43.760 and then okay, you explain it to them and that's 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:46.679 like fine and chill, and like, I don't know. I 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:48.920 remember being a little tiny baby anarchist and like not 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:51.240 knowing anything and going to my first meeting and like 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:55.280 people were talking about restorative justice and I was like, Hi, 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:58.720 what's your storative justice. I'm like a little tiny child, 0:13:58.760 --> 0:14:01.120 I don't know anything. And they explained it and it 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:02.640 was like chilling, good and you can just do this 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:05.160 and it helps people feel included and yeah. 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:06.280 Totally okay. 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:10.960 So general meeting facilitation things you need. You need one 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.640 an agenda. An agenda is what the fuck are you doing? 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:19.240 And generally speaking, secondarily, you want to try to have 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:20.840 time planned out because one of the one of the 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:22.600 failure modes of a meeting is the meeting goes for 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:25.960 fucking thirty hours and everyone's miserable. So you generally want 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:27.600 to have an agenda that has what you're going to 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:31.640 talk about and then kind of guidelines roughly for how 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:33.240 long you think it'll take to talk about the thing. 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:33.840 Mm hmm. 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:37.200 We'll get more into that in a second. Sometimes people 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:40.360 create the agenda beforehand. Sometimes you start you set the 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:41.920 agenda at the beginning of the meeting, but like you 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:44.360 do want an agenda so people know what you're doing, and. 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:47.400 It should be similar that everyone can see a whiteboard 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:50.760 or like I guess in a zoom meeting notes or 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:52.760 a dock that everyone has open. Yeah. 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:55.560 Yeah, you want to make sure everyone has it, okay, 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:57.160 And this is the point where we need to talk 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:00.720 about roles. So part of the technology this right and 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:02.720 the stack is a big piece of technology to keep 0:15:02.720 --> 0:15:05.560 track of who's talking. But a big part of what 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:09.720 the technology of this is is a bunch of roles 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:13.240 that you assign people and that ideally everyone rotates through 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:15.280 so you learn how to do all of them, and 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:17.760 so to prevent people from sort of concentrating power by 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:21.880 like monopolizing one role. So the first role we need 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:24.360 to talk about, and this is I don't know if 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:26.160 the big one is the right one, but this is 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:28.800 the one that I think people know kind of. I 0:15:28.840 --> 0:15:31.480 don't know if intuitively understand is the right word, but 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:34.000 like this is the one that there are usually versions 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:36.040 of in a meeting, and a lot of those versions 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:36.480 are bad. 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:37.640 Is a facilitator? 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:41.400 Yeah, so okay my explanation of what a facilitator is, 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:43.160 and Margaret, I'm going to ask you for yours too, 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:47.160 because I don't know. So, as a facilitator, your job 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:49.680 is to like point to the agenda and go, okay, 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:52.400 we're talking about this. Your job is to move people 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:54.440 through discussions. Your job is to try to get people 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:57.760 to a consensus on what you're doing. And your job 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:01.320 is to stop people from giving speeches. And this is 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:03.400 I'm gonna take a little digression here, which is, Okay, 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:07.280 we've been talking about way's meetings fail, right. Number One, 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:10.840 no one can go to it. That's way meeting fails. Two, 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.720 you don't have an agenda and everyone it just goes 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:16.240 off the rails and no one has any idea what 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:18.200 you're supposed to be meeting about. Three, and this is 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.160 a huge one, is that one of the biggest ways 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:23.240 of meetings fail and I have seen this in every 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:26.320 single context I have ever worked in, is that someone 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:29.880 and it is usually a dude it's almost always a dude. 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:31.880 It cannot be a dude, but it's usually a dude 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:35.320 just keeps talking and keeps talking and keeps talking and 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:37.400 will not shut the fuck up, and nothing gets done 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:39.360 because the entire meeting is one hour of this guy 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:39.960 just yabbering. 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:40.280 Yep. 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:45.000 And one of your most important jobs as the facilitator, 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:49.120 and this is genuinely a huge part for social technology 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:50.960 of the structure of meetings is to make sure that 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:53.880 your meeting is not one person talking. Yeah, this is 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:54.880 why this exists. 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:57.240 Yeah. 0:16:57.320 --> 0:16:58.520 And you know, if you want to get into the 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:02.400 sort of dire this right, if you do not stop 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:05.680 all of your meetings from being one annoying guy talking, 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:07.359 your projects will fail. 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:08.640 You must do this. 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:10.479 This is the one thing here that is like, you 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:14.680 absolutely positively must get this guy to stop talking. 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:17.280 I think that the important thing to think about a 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:21.440 facilitator is that most people come from a background of 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:26.879 assumed authoritarian politics, assumed politics where someone is in charge. 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:30.919 Even our democracies are built around this idea that you 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:34.280 elect someone to tell you what to do. When we 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:37.560 talk about meetings, we are talking about building bottom up structures. 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:39.680 Even when we later I think will end up talking 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:42.600 maybe a different episode or something about larger structures you 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:44.680 can build up out of these sort of local assemblies 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:48.719 and meetings. The idea is that everyone is empowered, and 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:52.320 so because we're really used to this competitive decision making 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:55.920 around who is in charge, we struggle a little bit 0:17:56.240 --> 0:18:01.199 adapting to egalitarian meetings and also to consensus isn't the 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:03.680 only way to make decisions, but people struggle with consensus 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:06.520 because they'll think of that at meaning one hundred percent 0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:08.880 vote where everyone votes for the same thing, and that's 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:13.520 a mistake. And so we think of the facilitator accidentally 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:16.159 as the leader, and they are a leader in the 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:18.520 sense of a whatever. You could use the word leader 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:19.760 in a lot of ways, and some of them are 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:22.520 positive and not authoritarian, and so in that context they 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:26.000 are leading people through the meeting. But they are absolutely 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:29.679 not only not the decision maker, they are less the 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:33.040 decision maker than everyone else. Choosing to be a facilitator 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:36.280 of a meeting is choosing to go in and say 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:39.680