Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Refining concerns / needs in a timely way

[Kristin Becker (kjbecker]

I am not in cohousing, but have been on a number of committees, etc.
One thing that may help is a preplanned agenda that is agreed to be
followed.  If people have needs/concerns, they must be brought to the
meeting's leader - whoever that is - by a certain time or day before the
meeting.  If the 'leader' feels that it is not defined well enough or is not
effectively prepared, they have to ability to turn it away until it is
'fixed'.  Then a time is assigned to each issue.  You can either have the
leader decide with recommendation from proposer how much time it takes or
can agree on one time for all proposers.  Then someone at the meeting keeps
track of time.  When times up, it's up.  If you want to build in a way
people can vote whether or not to continue discussion, you can do that - but
I would suggest if you do it has to be a high majority.  If only a few
people are still interested, they can get together and discuss it at a later
time between them and leave the rest out of this.
If the agenda is posted before the meeting - give at least a couple hours if
not a day or two before, then people can look at it, decide if they are
interested in topics, etc. and may only attend for the time when the topics
they are interested in is discussed, but you should see more participation
this way.
Hope this helps!

Kristin

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rob Sandelin" <floriferous [at] msn.com>
To: <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 12:09 PM
Subject: RE: [C-L]_Refining concerns / needs in a timely way


>
> Becky asked about clarifying what I was interested in around identifying
> needs and concerns in a timely way. I am looking for techniques groups
use.
> I have seen this go quickly (not many needs or concerns) and I have seen
> this take 3 meetings (Lots of needs and concerns, each one processed in
> turn). What I was asked for is how groups do this, what methods they use,
> etc. I am especially interested in techniques with large groups, over 25
> people, with lots of needs and concerns. One thing I have observed is that
> there is a balance of willingness to invest personal time in dealing with
> peoples stuff in meetings. There are some people who are willing to spend
> lots of time on this sort of thing, there are others who are not very
> tolerant of it, and want meetings to be short and to the point. It is also
> my observation that folks from the later point tend to drop out of
meetings
> that take too long processing peoples stuff. I have also observed that
> sometimes this amounts to half or more of a group not partipating because
> meetings are too much tied into processing peoples stuff (needs and
> concerns). Often these folks who drop out complain loudly about endless
> processing, etc.
>
> So I am also wondering, how do you keep these people happy when processing
> needs and concerns, or do you just ignore the fact that they drop out?
>
> Rob Sandelin
> South Snohomish County at the headwaters of Ricci Creek
> Sky Valley Environments  <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
> Field skills training for student naturalists
> Floriferous [at] msn.com
>
>
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.332 / Virus Database: 186 - Release Date: 3/6/02
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list
> Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
> http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L

_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L