SCTRI Board of Directors: Report to Members
October 2024
The SCTRI Board of Directors convened in person for our October 2024 meeting in an historic building on Philadelphia’s Boathouse Row. Per our established norm, the first two days of the meeting was a process group with the task of reducing restraining forces to taking up our Board member roles. The following 1.5 days were focused on the tasks of organizational direction and policy. (Note: Due to a confirmed COVID test and associated group exposure, the final ½ day of the face-to-face meeting was canceled and held via Zoom one week later.) There was a decision in advance of the meeting that SCTRI vision work with consultant Ken Eisold will commence via Zoom later in October.
In this meeting we welcomed four new members: Doug Johnson, Jennifer Langdon, Beulah Trey, and Rosalind Wood, who bring rich resources from their SCT training and from their work in various fields as clinicians, educators, and organizational consultants. We said goodbye to and thanked Irene McHenry who is stepping off the board after seven years.
Process Work: Reducing Restraining Forces to Taking Up Board Member Roles
The October meeting was a first for the four new Board members: Ros Wood, Beulah Trey, Doug Johnson, and Jennifer Langdon. Working with this significant change in group composition, our early process work had several themes including: exploring the concept of “legacy,” asking and answering clarifying questions, exploring various subgroups of reactions to change/newness/continuity.
In the ongoing experiment of applying a theory of living human systems (TLHS), the group built on the continuing process work of identifying, exploring and weakening the inevitable role locks that emerge in any organization and are activated within the Board. Especially meaningful was recognizing this experimental aspect of our organization and using our theory and methods to contain and explore long-standing/historical role locks, and freeing resources for the group. We see this as work for the Board and also for the system-as-a-whole at all levels. Also, the group acknowledged that over the years members have sometimes left the organization in some turbulence. A subgroup of us was curious about the possibility of reconnecting with these members.
Task Work: Topics, Issues, Decisions
Organization Finances
For the fourth year in a row, our organization is running an operational deficit, which raises concerns. The Board is confident that anticipated shortfalls can be managed in the short-term with existing reserves. We will take up the issue of longer-term financial management as a part of the vision process.
Conference Venue 2026 & Beyond
Booking a cost-effective conference space typically requires 1.5-2 years of advance planning – before we even know the outcomes of our 2025 conference. We appreciated the work of the Co-Director/Admin system (Co-DAds) and the conference system with their planning well underway for our June 2025 conference to be held on campus at Swarthmore College. Given that both the June timing and the location are new means that we will gather data in June to inform future decisions. We authorized Jan Vadell to explore options for 2026 with Swarthmore College.
Online Training Event
The Board affirmed the intention to sponsor an online training event in Spring 2026 with a focus on clinical applications of SCT and TLHS. Next Steps include communicating with SCTRI membership to find people with energy to form an organizing system. The success of the January 2024 online OD Conference shows that such an event can generate energy and resources – both human and financial.
SCTRI Yvonne Agazarian Training and Resource Center
The Board applauded the evolution of the Yvonne Agazarian Center into the virtual realm with online offerings. We thanked Fran Carter as she transitioned from a formal Co-Director role and takes the lead in the Archives Project group coordinating the organization and access to the materials located in the Center’s physical space. We thanked Annie MacIver as she continues in the Director role for the Center overseeing both the physical Center itself and the online offerings. We acknowledged the need to find ways to support the Center financially, as it currently operates at a loss in our budget. We committed to discussing future plans for the Center in the May 2025 Board meeting.
Research Director System
The Board appreciated the work of the Research Director, Rowena Davis, and the Associate Research Director (a new role), Johan Bertlett. We expressed enthusiastic support for the goal of building an SCTRI research Community of Practice, which continues to develop apace with many research projects underway.
Decision-Making Authority
We discussed and clarified the plenipotentiary power of the various work groups and leadership roles in the system and addressed criteria for authorizing plenipotentiary power and decision-making authority for the Board and work groups. The Steering Group gives plenipotentiary power “when we decide that the group has the resources to do the work and to make work-based decisions.” We noticed that all of the work groups within the system, except the Conference Core Training Group, have a containment system as a resource. We discussed data gathering as a way to organize what we know about how the organization operates through decision-making roles and work groups. We have not yet worked this as an agenda item.
Leadership
We discussed succession planning that supports member development in the organization over time, guided by our theory and values. This agenda item will be taken up by the Steering Group. We worked with the value of separating the person from the role as we looked at the responsibilities for various leadership roles. We clarified which training groups are inside or outside, or both inside/outside, of the SCTRI organization.
Vision for the Organization
Susan Gantt (Chair) and Mike Maher (Director) contracted with consultant Ken Eisold to facilitate six 2-hour vision sessions with a subset of the Board running from October 2024 - April 2025. During the October Board meeting, we generated topics and questions for that process.
Steering Group
We approved Steering Group members for the year ahead: Claudia Byram, Fran Carter, Dorothy Gibbons, Mike Maher, and Norma Safransky.
Board of DirectorsClaudia Byram, Fran Carter, Rowena Davis, Susan Gantt, Dorothy Gibbons, Doug Johnson, Nina Klebanoff, Jennifer Langdon, Annie MacIver, Mike Maher, Jon McCormick, Irene McHenry, Jim Peightel, Norma Safransky, Beulah Trey, Heather Twomey, Rosalind Wood, Alida Zweidler-McKay