Re: balance
From: Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah (welcomeolympus.net)
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:00:15 -0800 (PST)

The balance I'm referring to is where do you compromise....
and it could go either way.  Do you just flip a coin or take a straw
poll?  Do you try it one way for 6 months and the other way for 6
months?  What do you do if there is no clear direction evolving?  This
is especially hard if there is a clear minority/majority position.

Over time, lots of different strategies emerge. Send it back to committee. Create a task force that includes the various positions and see if they can work something out. We've never done "one way" then "the other", as a tactic. More often there is a proposed action or policy, and some concerns that doing it would not work well. So quite often we use a "sunset clause", and this satisfies those who are uncertain.

A sunset clause specifies a trial period. And VERY IMPORTANT, specify the default! In other words, we'll do X and at the end of a year we'll (a) need consensus to continue it OR (b) need consensus to discontinue it. Otherwise, if the evaluation is mixed, or you never get around to re-evaluating it for some reason, you don't know what that means you should do then.

And sometimes, a proposal simply gets dropped because we haven't found a way to get consent. It might come back some day, or we might just live without a policy, or without purchasing something.

One does the best one can.
Consensus is still far far better than majority rule!

Maraiah Lynn at RoseWind, Port Townsend WA (about 20 years in)




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