Cohousing-L Mailing List: Collective Memory in Cohousing Groups

[catalyst (catalyst]

>Often these sorts of discussions happen between a few people, without 
>everyone having the benefit of inclusion and so often the issue ends up 
>being repeated.  In the example David wrote about with the signs I 
>would wonder what record of the "decision" got made if any?  This may 
>seem over kill, but two years from now, the same thing may very well 
>occur with a different person and several people will wander around and 
>say: "didn't we figure out something about this a couple years ago?"  
>The person who placed the original sign may then have cause to feel 
>some angst that his sign had to be removed, and this second one didn't, 
>if that is how it turns out.
>
>So as you bump into these things,  get somebody to write them down so 
>you can remember what you decided, when.  At Sharingwood we have a 
>document we keep with this sort of thing, although it only reflects 
>issues which the whole group have actually decided upon at a meeting.

This is a real issue in *lots* of groups--and I'm afraid that "get somebody
to write them down" is often an unreliable system at best.

In our last home I became the Secretary for the Association and was aghast
at the kinds of things that Rob talks about--we kept deciding the same
issues over
and over again, usually in contradictory ways!  Decisions, once made, were
soon lost
to view; sometimes persons unhappy with the decision seemed to know that if they
just waited long enough, they would be forgotten--leaving them a chance to
run at
it again.  It was a mess and cost us a *lot* of time in almost every case,
and money
in some cases, sometimes fairly big money.

Maxim:  Pay as much attention to ensuring that the results of your meetings
are documented in a useful way as you do to making the decisions.

It *is* worth your time to pay attention to this issue--especially if you
are a group in formation, where all you *do* is discuss and decide.  Most
groups recognize the need for skilled facilitators at various stages; I
suggest that a skilled note-taker is every bit as valuable (if not more).
You invest a lot of energy into making good decisions--don't throw it away
by letting them be lost or confused.

So find somebody who *knows* how to create usable meeting records and get them
to teach you (plural--several or, ideally, all of you so that it doesn't
become a form of latrine duty for the same person all the time).

Since the universal cohousing motto seems to be "Meetings R Us" (at least in
the formative stages) it is guaranteed to be worthwhile to treat the results
of those meetings as valuable and worth preserving in an easily accessible way.

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        DANGER--Potentially Misinterpretable Note Below--DANGER
        Stop reading now if you get most of your exercise leaping to    
                conclusions about other peoples' motives.
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I responded to Rob's note because I teach a full-day class on "Writing
Minutes and Meeting Notes."  So yes, it's a real subject that requires real
skills to solve.

This is not intended as a plug.  I'm *not* interested in plugging my course
here and I apologize if anyone interprets it as such.  I *HATE* ads on the
net (except Web pages and groups and lists explicitly for them).

The reason I mentioned it was to help convince people that this is a
recognized field of expertise and that groups *should* pay attention to
this--and that there is probably a nearby resource for you that you can tap
to help you learn to do it effectively and efficiently, without somebody
always struggling to keep up and not being able to participate effectively
because they are wrestling with notes.

Please send any flames on this directly to me and don't make the whole list
suffer through them.  Thank you.