Report October 2008

Dear colleagues,

Since our last IFF Assembly, the International Structure Review Committee (SRC) has been working online and meeting monthly by teleconference, working toward our target of the end of October to provide a draft report for discussion and feedback in preparation for a final report to be distributed for review to the international community by February 2009. This final report to reflect the outcomes of our work based on the initial motion from the 2007 Assembly in Bordeaux and the two additional tasks agreed to in the 2008 Assembly in Soesterberg:

• Locating and consulting with suitable expert(s) to determine the options and implications of changing or reorganising our international structure and functions.

The SRC located a number of potential consultants and began an introductory process with two of those selected, providing resource documents with follow up telephone discussion to provide an overview of our current structure and processes and the issues that have brought the community toward action for change. Both consultants have provided initial response documents (summarised below) that identify the detailed and wide ranging scope of the work contributed to date and the need for a more in-depth reflective process under the guidance of an expert adviser to more clearly differentiate issues that could be directly addressed by a change in organisational structure and those that could be more efficiently addressed in other ways.

• Develop a proposal for how a Training Policy Development Board/Committee/Group be constituted and how the membership ideally would reflect geographic diversity while being based on appropriate expertise.

The intention of the Structure Review Committee, as discussed in the last Assembly, was to work with the TABs to develop a Terms of Reference for a potential Training Policy Development Board. This document would then serve in the consultation process. An initial draft has been developed and work continues with the intention of integrating this possibility into our consultation process.

Overview

In July 16(17), we sent an update on our progress to the IFF BOD, TABs and Governing Bodies of the TABs. This included a draft Purposes and Principles document based on community input to date, a copy of our Terms of Reference and an “initial report” with recommendations from our first consultant, Mr Griffiths, in Australia.

In brief, Mr Griffiths noted that the issues highlighted in the documents provided were “not exclusively related to Structure” but that other elements such as communication, decision making, resources and clarification of shared and non shared values required further delineation. He recommended a more detailed analysis based on shared values using a derivation of the McKinney 7-S model in order to develop clear, pragmatic proposals:

1. A succinct list of shared values be derived via the vehicle of the Purposes and Principles document
2. The Study Group consider using the model outlined in this paper and recast considerations in this light, so that a set pragmatic and straight forward proposals can be developed.
3. If the above approach is taken to consider the key questions outlined above along with any other core issues
4. The Study Group should focus on most likely acceptable outcomes in the short term, while noting that a more ideal result may be required in the long term.
5. It should be remembered that although very powerful, the Method should not be considered exclusively in areas beyond its core application. For example, in organisational management and imparting information

The SRC then used this as a resource document to explore the opinions of other consultants we had sourced in Switzerland, Italy and Germany.

Our recent work has been with Dr. Looss from Germany. In order to get a clearer picture on where we currently are in our process, Dr Looss asked for each member of our group to write a paper about our personal views on the Feldenkrais community’s future perspective. This turned out to be quite an interesting idea: when sharing our individual productions, we became aware that our four visions were very different, not only in terms of concrete outcome, but in our respective ways of thinking our group’s task. From Dr. Looss, we have now received “A Professional Commentary” which is attached to this report. This document provides a different perspective and approach, including a list of questions and ambivalences that he has identified from the documentation provided. Dr Looss then offers his recommendations in terms of Practical steps:

• Issue management: Create a “long list” of issues, conflicts, open questions
• Priorities: Create a “short list” of issues, conflicts, open questions: Must-Should-Nice to have
• Set up at least three to four two-day meetings for the SRC at a nice location
• Get yourself a facilitator for these meetings
• Learn everything about dialogue that you don’t know yet (David Bohm’s work)

• Begin to work:

  • Disclose your thoughts and feelings
  • Define your personal “water line” which separates debatable issues from sacrosanct issues
  • Disclose your intentions
  • Be ready to be confronted, confirmed, asked
  • Listen carefully
  • Discover
• Write down what you have achieved

Having again been advised that a change in structure is not considered to be the solution to our community’s current issues, we discussed the need to reconsider our own and our whole community’s expectations of our working group’s results, and change our current way of thinking about this whole topic.

What we understand so far from Dr Looss’ first response is that our idea of changing structures might not be the best way to address our problems. Rather than centering our efforts on creating new structures we could implement, he advises us to focus on the critical issues.

We as a working group have a feeling now that this consultant’s feedback gives our work a new platform on which we can start being creative in our reflective process. His proposal – that we like a lot and decided to accept – is that the four of us, starting from our current position, find ourselves challenged by a process to go through in order to clarify our minds on the above questions, and find a creative way to deal with our community’s difficulties. Our project is to work on that by two live meetings, under the guidance of Dr Looss.

Then we should carry this process to the IFF, in such a way that we will not bring back a ‘ready-to-use-proposal’ votable by a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ majority, but that the community goes through a process itself, just as our working group will have gone through, and build a valuable solution altogether. This means we all get engaged into the reflective process, the task of the SRC being to conduct the community through a process that we are at present ourselves engaged in. The consultant is ready to help with these different steps of the process.

We will then have to decide upon a Special General Assembly by which we might « re-fund » our community’s working rules. The consultant’s opinion on that is that such a meeting might be appropriate if not inevitable.

Yet it needs to be prepared carefully, and therefore our community needs to dare feeling challenged, and getting out of our habitual thinking patterns. We as the SRC are trustful that the consultant we found now is the right one to conduct us to the unknown land, and we do very much hope that this will lead us to find out how to organize ourselves in a more efficient way. Maybe this will not be by creating new structures, but by letting go some ‘useless efforts’ in our current system that turn out to be a waste of energy ?

The present report is meant to inform you about the ongoing process, and allowing for you to be familiarized with the development of our working group’s thinking. Please let us know your comments on that, and feel free to share with us your questions and concerns, such that we might include them in our process.

Structural Review Committee

Sabine Merz

Luz Stanton

Annette Orphal

Sonia Commentucci

(Lester Loops has been unable to participate as a member of this group)