Concept 03

(short) To insure effective leadership, we should endow each element of A.A. - the Conference, the General Service Board and its service corporations, staffs, committees, and executives - with a traditional “Right of Decision.”
(long) As a traditional means of creating and maintaining a clearly defined working relation between the groups, the Conference, the A.A. General Service Board and its several service corporations, staffs, committees and executives, and of thus insuring their effective leadership, it is here suggested that we endow each of these elements of world service with a traditional “Right of Decision”.

1. Primary principle(s): trust, leadership, right of decision, restraint, responsibility matching  authority
2. Other principles: acceptance, consideration, faith, forgiveness, generosity, good nature, helpfulness, kindness, open-mindedness, optimism, patience, positive thinking, self-control, selflessness, service, spirituality, tolerance, understanding, unity, rotation, right of appeal, democracy

Readings:

• Twelve Concepts for World Service - pp. 13-16
  
• Twelve Concepts Illustrated -
• “Does Your Group Use the Concepts?” - January 1993 AA Grapevine
• “A Labor of Love” - September  1991 AA Grapevine
• “The Incredible Tapestry” - February 1993 AA Grapevine

The “Right of Decision,” the “Right of Participation,” and the “Right of Appeal”  (concepts III-V) are part and parcel of explaining what’s unique and (perhaps) the “spiritual” essence of our organization.  They are the principles which distinguish our organization from a republic or what we normally think of as representative democracy (where one person is fully represented by a vote throughout the “government”).  You truly can’t have one these rights without the others and still have the foundation we’ve enjoyed since 1951 when this grand experiment (of the General Service Conference) was begun.

In the 23+ years I’ve spent in AA service, I must say that the interpretation of and the application of these 3 principles on any one issue has certainly consumed as much or more time, discussion, passion and considered thought as any of our other principles I can think of.  As Bill so wisely pointed out, on any particular item of business do we allow “…charity for occasional mistakes…” or do we insist our voice is heard above all and that the participation of the minority has a fighting chance to over-rule the majority?

Many of these discussions over the years have been around work I’ve done on Conventions and Conferences.  It can be a real mind-numbing hassle to take the most minor of issues (e.g. coffee prices or workshop programs) and decide:

1. who, in fact, we’re being of service too? (e.g. the whole fellowship?  conference attendees? newcomers? only those who participate?)
2. what we should decide on our own and what should be sent back to the groups or fellowship? (e.g. admission price? scholarship or free registration policy? program?)

A recent committee that I was a participant in decided that they wanted to accept credit cards for registrations and also that they wanted to open up a web site to allow registration on the internet.  Not thinking we wanted to exercise “Right of Decision” on these matters because they seemed important and affected other parts of the fellowship, the committee unanimously decided the fellowship (Area Assembly) might want to offer us some direction on (this convention is sponsored by an AA Area).

We consulted with the Area Chair, Area Treasurer, Area Web Site Chair and a couple of past delegates and, somewhat to my surprise, we were told that it was “no big deal” for us to take credit cards if we wanted to and that, if the Area Convention Guidelines and Area Website Guidelines were updated, that online registration might be possible as well.

As a part of the process of updating the guidelines, I came clearly in touch with all the major issues around all 3 of these principles.  In our Area, we have an unofficial principle (at least I”ve not found it written anywhere) that we we want “any AA member to be able to do any Area service job”.  Implied directly in this is that there are no “special skills” that we require of our trusted servants to fill an AA service position.

This has resulted in problems in the past (chairs that are ineffective at leading committee meetings, treasurers who have not kept good track of our finances, coffee chairs who have not managed their coffee budgets adequately, etc.) but we are a generous fellowship and we always do the right thing in the end  (people show up and deal with long registration lines, we cover our expenses whether we understand what happened or not, we either do without coffee or we find other ways to get our needs met).  I saw the potential for messing up the web site or credit cards as something without precedence and that we needed to really toughen up our qualifications for Treasurer and also create a web chair directly accountable to the convention committee, again, with high qualifications.

Per our direction from the other trusted servants, we set up and account to take credit cards and set about to “tighten up” the 2 sets of guidelines.  In investigating the qualifications for the convention treasurer, it seemed we needed few guideline revisions. We did our best to accommodate my own reservations about limiting and controlling what a convention committee could do with a web site and accepted input from the Convention Committee and most anyone else who had an opinion.  Of course, not all opinions could be integrated directly and still have meaningful documentation but we tried, over the course of ~4 months to be open and transparent (2-3 drafts, circulation of drafts to the whole Area Committee, etc.).

I was and remain astonished at the depth and direction of the criticism we ran into.  We were accused of (among many other things):

• deliberately and recklessly putting the Area at significant financial risk
• selling out the Area from the convention by making reckless decisions
• lying or at the least, not telling the truth
• setting a precedent for future conventions that would be impossible to follow
• deliberately and maliciously attempting to wrest the convention away from the Area
• creating harmful affiliations between Area AA and others
• rushing through decisions that the Area was not ready for

Now, weeks later, I still tremble at the feelings of betrayal, not from the criticism ( my skin used to be pretty thin but my other service work has helped assuage some of that), but by the opinions that were ascribed our decisions, motives and tactics.  After the most recent discussion of this, I took a drive and realized that, in the worst case, I (we) might, in fact, be wrong - but that, in my heart, I knew that I’d done the best that I could to contribute to an imperfect process with the best data I could find.  That, if we made a mistake, I was willing and able to admit that and lead the charge in rectifying action.  That the personal attacks that I’d perceived were coming from folks who probably also wanted the best for AA and this convention and, at the end of the day, they loved AA as much or more than I did.

All that aside, however, it is still a Concept III sort of thing:  While obviously some folks I’d wanted to did not trust us (some me personally, some the committee as a whole, others with specific personality issues other committee members), they had not, in fact given us a blank check with the acceptance of the Convention Committee Chair.  We were still accountable to them and some thought we had gone too far with the decisions we’d been entrusted.

Now, also, it will mean that future committees and Area AA folks (including me) will have to trust future trusted servants to follow the guidelines we’ve established or change them to meet their changing needs.  It remains, for me, a huge trust issue in that, as stated before, we’ve never in the past closely followed these guidelines - what’s to say that future committees will?

Better that we put our ultimate trust in God such that, whenever the inevitable mistakes are made, God will provide us the resources and leadership which will prevail - for so long as He/She has a purpose for this activity in AA.

A local member added another perspective to this that I’d not thought of - that a major principle that makes the “right of decision” work is that of “restraint”.  Many of us presume that, when offered a license, we should take it to the limits of what we can get by with at the very least.  Evidence: my problem with managing to stay reasonably close to the speed limit on the highway…

Bill’s intention was that there will always be tension between the exercise of the principles expressed in the Concepts.  Whether we like those tensions or not, it’s an important part of the over-all process.  We may not need more rules.  We may not need anything more written down.  What we need is a spirit of prudence and prayerful consideration in all that we do - when we elect those who are to serve us at any level and when we bring our best efforts to that service.

The 12 Concepts Checklist (a service piece from the General Service Office), asks these questions about Concept 3:

• Do we understand what is meant by the “Right of Decision”? Do we grant it at all levels of service or do we “instruct”?
  • Principles:
• Do we trust our trusted servants — G.S.R., D.C.M., area delegate, the Conference itself?
  • Principles: