Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Re: refining concerns in a timely way

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 8/4/03 10:55 AM, "Dahako [at] aol.com" <Dahako [at] aol.com> wrote:

> My inclination in dealing with a big group is to let things take the time they
> take.  Plan ahead and announce the plan (create expectations for how long
> things will take). Break decisions and processes in manageable bits/stages.
> Declare progress or success as each bit is done and have a party at the end.

After move-in, there will a ton of things that need to be decided or done
one way or the other. When you are actually living in a space, seemingly
little things can become very irritating and someone needs to make a
decision and do something. It helps a lot if the group can agree that the
board or whomever will make a lot of decisions that will be discussed and
remade later, if necessary, when there is time.

We lean so far over for consensus we end up in a quagmire. When you need
toilet paper in the bathrooms, you can't wait for a meeting to decide whose
job it is to put it there because otherwise the person whose unit is closest
ends up supplying because it is midnight and someone is knocking on their
door (you can tell whose unit is right across from our guest rooms!).

> Most of the time, I think resistance to coming to a decision means some people
> are still feeling unconnected - to the group and to a possible resolution
> point.  Just needs more time sometimes.

The seeming resistance can also just be general concern over making any
decision at all.

The most helpful thing for us was to realize that no decision is "forever".
We often needed to just try things to get some experience. After people have
experience, their concerns are much clearer and take far less time to
clarify.

I was very pleased in a meeting yesterday to hear a couple of people arguing
for actions I had advocated three years ago that these same people had
resisted very strongly. And I have changed my views on some major things
because the way I think things "should" work ideologically, just don¹t work
in practice. The ideas we would like to govern the world probably take
generations to implement, not years.

Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org

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