Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Work Sharing

[Mac & Sandy Thomson (ganesh]

On 08/22/03 Sonja Eriksson wrote:

> Our cohousing project, Oak Creek Commons, in Paso Robles, California, will
> be ready for move-in at the end 2003.  How have other groups set up their
> work teams?  We are very interested in hearing how other groups are handling
> the work, and whether your method has been successful.

We created teams for each of the major areas of work responsibility with one
oversight team.  The responsibility and authority for each team is clearly
spelled out.  We've tried to delegate the vast majority of decision making
to the teams, but we allow anyone to participate on any team at any time so
anyone that wants to be involved in a team decision can be by going to the
team meetings that address that issue.

I think the system works pretty well because the responsibilities and
authorities and team budgets are well defined.  Occasionally a team will
drift off to sleep so their work may not get done.  Then our Steering team
nudges them back into action or recruits new team members.

I'm not sure that our team meetings all run as well as they could and that's
an energy drain.  I think the solution is to learn how to run better
meetings and to get as much work done outside of meetings as possible
(email, delegation to individual team members, etc).

For the complete details of our teams, go to our Teams agreement in our
website (link given in my signature below).

- Mac

-- 
Mac Thomson

Heartwood Cohousing
Southwest Colorado
http://www.heartwoodcohousing.com


"This above all:  to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the
night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."
       - William Shakespeare
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