Malaysia DEAL community meet-up (Past)

On January 20th, ten of us met on Zoom for a first conversation where we explored our personal and professional expectations from this group. We landed and 3 potential impact areas: 

  - Increase general awareness and in-depth knowledge about the model and its applications

  - Create and nurture a space for robust and honest dialogue in Malaysia

  - Catalyse action around parts or whole of the model

A more detailed summary of our conversations in captured in a Miro board.  We agreed to continue the conversation.

In this second meet-up, we will keep exploring the different roles that this group could play and maybe start narrowing our focus on a limited number of leverage points.

The session will be facilitated to ensure we can all contribute and have meaningful conversations. You are welcome to join in even if you missed the first session. As a reminder, this is a not a networking event. We aim to have focused conversations that lead to tangible initiatives and impact in Malaysia.

Please sign-up for the session using the above link so we know who is coming and design accordingly.

------------- SUMMARY OF MEETING ---------------

We started the call by going around to share updates that could be relevant to the group. We then moved on to an exploratory conversation to test and iterate the three tentative purposes that we had identified for the community during the first session. We asked ourselves individually why those purposes mattered and what it could look like to act on them. That triggered a conversation on whether the current was 'good enough' and we agreed it was. We ended the call by talking about next steps.

By asking ourselves 2 questions for each proposed purpose (Why it's important to me? and  What initiative / action could yield to best return to achieve it?), we triggered a conversation on the 3 proposed purpose for the group. Here are the highlights.

 - Each of us may aspire to contribute / benefit from this community in a different way and the three current purposes create enough space for all of our aspirations. Some may take a sequential approach (A, then B, then C) when others might focus on one or two of the items.

 - The growth of the community should be qualitative rather than quantitative. We want to be inclusive and we want to attract people that are engaged and can sustain the effort of time. We should make it easy to join and set expectations for people who intend to remain part of it.

 - There is a potential tension in the first item between "general awareness" and "in depth knowledge". Our goal is to allow everyone to increase their level of knowledge/mastery regardless of where they start from and it applies both to the members of the group and to the general public. This item doesn't necessarily require growing the group size.

- After two conversations about the group and its purpose, it' would be healthy to move into "doing". The coming sessions will focus on knowledge sharing.

Synthesis of outcomes

• The 3 purposes as currently formulated are good enough to proceed with. The purpose statement for our group is now :

1.  Increase general awareness and in-depth knowledge about the model and its applications
2.  Create and nurture a space for robust and honest dialogue in Malaysia
3.  Catalyse action around parts or whole of the model

• The group is open to anyone who wants to join. We will not actively seek to grow it for the sake of growing but everyone can invite targeted individuals that they think could contribute/benefit from joining. Eventually, we might create Terms of Reference to clarify engagement principles and ensure that everyone remains active and contributing.

•  Anyone can organise activities in line with the the purpose statement. Two have already been identified.