# Block C: "Worth Your Time / How We Work" — Discussion Synthesis

**TNN 2026 Cohort Retreat — From Map to Orientation**
**Block C — "How do we work together, and what would help?" (open discussion)**

> Source: verbal plenary discussion following the group report-backs. Summary to be reconciled against post-it / sticky text once collected.

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## The headline

The discussion sharpened into one real design tension. Almost everything the room values comes from this specific community that has formed, and growth is the thing that threatens it. They kept circling pace and structure as the way through.

## Worth your time (what people would actually show up for)

Roughly in order of heat:

- **Solidarity.** People who get it because they do the same work somewhere else and can see your situation from outside (Sp1, Sp3). "These are my people."
- **Joy and laughter,** named as an actual need, not a perk. The body's need for laughter this weekend was real (Sp3, Sp4).
- **The hot seat.** Specific, on-the-ground help with a live problem. Brenna's "what's the problem you're having and how can we help" this morning was the model (Sp4, Sp7).
- **Collaboration integrated into daily work,** not adjacent to it. People show up when they're building something together (Sp4).
- **Someone to call** in a challenge or a celebration (Sp4).
- **Funding as capacity,** especially when slammed. A yes to long-term support of your own context (Sp5).

## The central tension: depth versus growth

- Nearly everything above comes from this particular group. New members won't arrive with it. "These aren't their people yet" (Sp6).
- So growth risks diluting the exact thing that makes it worth the time. Sp7 leans against growing. Alternatives floated: connect with other groups in a different formation, or let sub-groups peel off (Sp6, Sp7).
- Counterweight: don't become an exclusive space, and tend to the people who couldn't make it here (Sp7).
- Where it landed: pace. "How do we pace this" was Sp6's takeaway.

## Protect the sticky part (the structure answer)

- The rare, precious time together keeps getting eaten by business: writing the charter, then the grant, then implementing it (Sp6).
- The proposal: move the administrative work into smaller groups or separate calls, and protect community time as community time. That is a direct answer to the slide's "a small core team to carry pieces so not everyone has to."

## Concrete format inputs that surfaced

- **Cadence is open:** monthly calls versus whatever actually works, working groups, defined deliverables (Sp5).
- **A structured hot seat:** someone brings a live challenge, the group uses a light protocol to help them find their own way (Sp7).
- **Intentional celebration:** decide what you'll celebrate, since wins are rare and slow and otherwise get skipped. The conservation-universe prompt landed on a real gap here.
- **A break-glass brain trust:** a way to convene around 25 people with lived experience quickly in a crisis.

## On the deliverable itself

You told the room you won't read a big document someone emails you, and asked what each person needs from the seat they hold. Treat that as a spec for the recommendations package. It should be small and role-specific, built around the seats people hold, not one synthesis report.

## Structural note

The value right now is cluster cohesion, high trust because everyone knows everyone. Growth dilutes that. Peeling off into different formations is really a proposal for several linked clusters instead of one growing one, and "protect the sticky part" is about not letting administrative ties crowd out the relational ones that hold the cluster together.