A peek inside our team meetings

Hello again

A day off from the bookshop for me yesterday. All the team work part-time so we all have some time off in the week which is great.

This week at the shop is our Team Meeting week which we held in person at the shop on Tuesday evening. This is the time all the operational team get together to catch up and replaces a weekly meeting we have had since I started at the shop in 2016. It is taking some adjusting, only having the meeting once a month, but doing this allows more time for conversations during the rest of the month and focuses the meeting on decision making rather than discussion. The process we are using to make decisions at the meeting is an evolving one and we are introducing the decision making tool of ‘good enough for now and safe enough to try’ (a principle of consent decision making). This helps us not to get stuck in endless debate and helps things to flow a bit more rather than expecting everyone to agree on everything . 

This weeks meeting was a rather poignant one in that it will be Jamie’s last team meeting with us as he leaves on the 25th August. We also welcomed our new team member, Liz Bradley, who has recently accepted the role of Membership management, governance and Secretary. Liz, who is already a member, brings some exceptional skills and expertise to the team and we are really excited to welcome her to the team. I’ll ask Liz to write a blog soon so you can find out a bit more about her.

We started the meeting, as we aim to start every meeting for the next few months, with a review of our vision which is:

‘To create a better now and ignite a passion for a better future 

in our local community, our High Street and beyond 

through Storytelling, Social change, Learning and Inclusion’

We all shared what this vision means to each of us…. Community, a sense of place, a hub for system change, a place where people connect, inclusive for younger people , honouring our history and much more. We will be asking our members the same question at our next Members Meeting on Thursday 7th September. 

We then talked about governance, staff changes, finance and reported back from our various working groups; fundraising, general and community space promotions and others. We ended the meeting sharing what we are going to miss with Jamie leaving, when some heartfelt words of thanks were spoken. 

This is a time of huge change for October Books, change which is happening on the inside and is not as noticeable as the move to new premises 5 years ago. We hope to maintain most of our existing activities  and to grow some new ones, so please do watch this space over the coming weeks and months and do please continue your support in helping us to thrive  

More next week. Clare