Jackie Danicki

Agendas and objectives for meetings are for people who don’t want to be there. If you have things you want to talk about or share, care about a project or want to [connect] with others, you will have plenty to say. The crucial thing is to have the right people there - they are those who choose to be there. And we are back to autonomy…

In such gatherings a structure will emerge. There is no need to impose objectives or agendas that often represent a thinly disguised command & control attitude. The result may not be what you are used to, or imagined or would like others to conform to but something will happen alright. And most likely it will be a lot better than anything you could come up with.

When’s the last time you needed an agenda or objectives for, say, a party or get-together with friends?

Also, this is very relevant when I think of how AA works. There is no hierarchy, no one’s “in charge,” and people are there because they want to be. There is a format (open discussion, or reading and discussion of text, or someone telling their story) but no agenda other than wanting to connect with others. It works, and has done for decades. As tradition nine of AA reads:

[AA] does not conform to this pattern. Neither is General Service Conference, its Foundation Board, nor the humblest group committee can issue a single directive to an A.A. member and make it stick, let alone mete out any punishment. We’ve tried it lots of times, but utter failure is always the result. Groups have tried to expel members, but the banished have come back to sit in the meeting place, saying “This is life for us; you can’t keep us out.” Committees have instructed many an A.A. to stop working on a chronic backslider, only to be told: “How I do my Twelfth Step work is my business. Who are you to judge?” This doesn’t mean an A.A. won’t take advice or suggestions from more experienced members, but he surely won’t take orders. Who is more unpopular than the old-time A.A., full of wisdom, who moves to another area and tries to tell the group there how to run its business? He and all like him who “view with alarm for the good of A.A.” meet the most stubborn resistance or, worse still, laughter.

…[L]ong ago, trustees and staff members alike found they could do no more than make suggestions, and very mild ones at that.

…Great suffering and great love are A.A.’s disciplinarians; we need no others…If nobody does the group’s chores, if the area’s telephone rings unanswered, if we do not reply to our mail, then A.A. as we know it would stop. Our communications lines with those who need our help would be broken. A.A. has to function, but at the same time it must avoid those dangers of great wealth, prestige, and entrenched power which necessarily tempt other societies. Though Tradition Nine at first sight seems to deal with a purely practical matter, in its actual operation it discloses a society without organization, animated only by the spirit of service–a true fellowship.

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