Various efforts have been made to make it easier for people to understand CoTech when they join.
This is a place to list and discuss these efforts.
@dansmallaxe Do you have the powerpoint deck that you made?
Please post any onboarding stuff here.
I was inspired to by the really good on-boarding the Digital Life Collective do. They send a series of emails (seemingly one per week) that help you understand what youâre supposed to do. You can read them all online here: https://diglife.com/member-orientation/ Hats off to @shaun @Graham and whoever else had a hand in creating them.
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Hereâs the slides for âCoTech Intro for new membersâ: CoTech Intro for new members - draft slides - Google Slides
Was a while ago now so definitely needs updating, but the idea was that whenever an organisation joins CoTech, one of the things we ask is they commit to making a presentation like this to their member employees. That way we can make sure that awareness and interaction with CoTech within member orgs is more widely spread than the 1/2 people who tend to be responsible at first.
If anyone wants to take on working to update/improve these slides would be happy to help
Dan
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Sadly I canât take any credit for the drip emails from Digital Life Collective, but I agree they are good method in support of on-boarding.
Like the slidedeck @dansmallaxe - not seen those before, and found it most interesting, especially the bit about growing the cooperative movement. Iâd be interested to understand more about the general view within CoTech about movement building activities as its not something Iâve seen discussed very much (and is something that Iâm very interested in).
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Really handy to whizz over this, thanks for sharing the link as I just joined up this morning (I am new to Coop movement but Wave Design obviously are not unfamiliar so am hoping to get more involved!) My areas of expertise are new business, marketing and PR - happy to input where required. Thanks, Sarah Morgan - 07789 956 966
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Hi, not sure I should be reviving this but canât find a discussion on it elsewhere.
We may be atypical - I already know CoTech and talk with Aaron and Chris and hence maybe didnât need any on-boarding - but things I noticed as a new memberâŚ
After the Loomio vote, there was no welcome email, which as well as being a nice thing to get could set out:
- brief history of CoTech
- how CoTech works (in terms of decisions, and how to get more involved)
- how to join the community boards
- how to add your coop profile
- where to get / how to use the a âMember of CoTechâ logo to add to the website
- a slide deck or even webpage link to share with coop members
- contacts of anyone prepared to hand hold new members
be happy to contribute to making this happen
Michael
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Iâd love for their to be a CoTech welcoming group who take care of onboarding new members (and handling their initial applications). All of the things you suggest sound amazing. At the moment I think new applications are handled in a very ad-hoc way (we receive an email to the address on the site, and somebody might pick it up). I think in recent times, probably related to how much folks work lives have changed, some things have slipped through the cracks.
Iâd be really happy to help you improve this, thank you for offering!
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Hi Chris - righto, weâd better get cracking then 
From memory it wasnât very clear to me how to apply, so perhaps we can look at that too.
Iâll put together a doc of what might go into a mail, I know thereâs stuff on the wiki etc that we can use. Some bits I have no idea about, may find the answers but otherwise will ask.
General questions from a position of general ignorance:
@calummackervoy How is the newsletter sent, is there a template?
Who should be involved in looking at how to handle new applications / members to systematise it?
M
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Hi Michael - for how the newsletter is compiled see the Git repo
Thereâs also this onboarding presentation that was last updated in September 2020, it will be a useful resource I think
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Shall we set up a call to chat about this and decide what the next steps are? Iâm happy to be involved!
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We talked about this at todayâs circle call and there were loud noises of positive enthusiasm 
@Michael_Wignall howâre you getting on with the document? Anything we all can do to support? 
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I found the on boarding slide show super useful yesterday. I learned a lot more about the structures and processes of cotech as well as where conversations are happening 
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Hi @3wordchant
thanks for the nudge, I am feeling increasingly guilty about it hanging around on my to-do list for ten weeks now, but honestly Iâm not sure when Iâll get round to it. Paid client work comes first and we have an avalanche of it at the moment. Maybe better for someone else to take it on.
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I would like to discuss onboarding from another point of view: imagine that your co-op has found a prospective new person to work with. They arenât against working in a co-op, but they have no relevant experience. How do you explain your culture and values to this person?
Or another example, several people have come to you. They are working as freelancers, say graphic designers. They have heard a thing or two about co-ops, then one of them has discovered your network and they have contacted you. They want to form a co-op and join the network, but you have to explain to them values, principles, and other culture-related topics.
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For what itâs worth, when WAO met up last month, we decided that new members had to:
- Bring work with them
- Have worked with every member
- Mesh with our values
In our situation, being a member = being a director of our limited company, and weâve been burned before. So perhaps weâre over-careful. But thereâs nothing wrong with the slow-burn approach of working with people for an extended period of time as a cooperator?
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Could you please elaborate on âbringing work with themâ?
And does the process of âmeshing with valuesâ include adapting to your values somehow?
As far as I know, values and cultures can be broken down into dispositions and beliefs. And they can be taught in different ways, for example, as described in the article by S. Rose: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2158244013480150
Iâm going to study this topic for some more time, then implement findings in my co-op.
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Well weâre being pretty pragmatic so I guess itâs more like âcultural fitâ. This is all very much looking to the future, though, as weâve been burned in the past by just letting in a couple of people as members without much process 
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Thanks Doug, âcultural fitâ feels important. As we are looking for at least two new cooperators now, it may help us to avoid long onboarding and adaptation processes. After we design an adaptation process, we can look for less âculturally fitâ people. ^^
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