Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Consensus (was Affordability?)

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Mar 16, 2007, at 8:50 PM, Brian Bartholomew wrote:

> Consent is declared good, while majority vote is declared bad.

One of the beauties of sociocratic governance is that it does not 
declare any decision-making method "bad." Instead it says that consent 
is the most effective method of making policy decisions and assigning 
functions and tasks to produce and maintain harmony in a group. But the 
group needs to share a common aim and have a defined membership. A 
group or circle must reflect together and to know with whom they are 
reflecting if they want to reach consensus on a decision.

If there is no common aim or the group is changing or undefined, then 
other methods must be used like majority vote or delegating to a 
decision making body like a board or other governing body. For some 
decisions, like when to hold a holiday celebration, majority vote might 
work best. In emergencies, a designated leader needs to make the 
decision, often without even consultation. What is important is to know 
what decisions are to be made by whom and how.

Consent is used for policy decisions and the election of people to 
functions and tasks, usually not during task execution. Cohousing 
groups tend to mix up task execution decisions with policy decisions. 
This creates a real muddle because it also short circuits leadership.

For example, a sociocratic group would decide we want a community 
garden that will produce vegetables for two CH meals a week plus 
flowers for the CH for the summer --as many months as possible. For 
this we allocate $$$$ amount of dollars for plantings and $$$$ for shed 
for tools and equipment and xx amount of land. And we elect Susan to 
lead this operation. They would also decide whether Susan should be an 
autocratic leader and make further decisions herself bringing some back 
to the large group for further approvals or whether she should convene 
a small circle that would make further decisions about the garden by 
consensus.

If they were using a "play or pay" system, they would also allocate 
xxxx amount of hours of time to this project. People could volunteer 
more hours but this amount would count toward fulfillment of 
contributed time obligations.

Then Susan would be in charge of assembling the circle (if necessary) 
and actually completing the garden. The circle would decide which 
decisions need to be made by consensus and which by other methods and 
how day to day decisions of work allocation would be determined. 
Typically, Susan would take charge of daily tasks with circle meetings 
called when necessary to correct or change or review policy decisions 
about the circle and about Susan's leadership.

Circles are formed to make decisions. If a person or two people are 
delegated to complete a task but not to make independent decisions, a 
circle is not needed. Decisions go back to the full group.

Circle members also complete tasks but they function differently when 
completing tasks than they do when sitting around making consent 
decisions. When making consent decisions, everyone functions as a peer. 
"On the job" most circles would decide it would be most efficient for 
Susan to assign tasks and make daily decisions.

Roger would not be able to show up for work on Saturday morning and 
insist on changing the carrots to peas because he doesn't like carrots. 
Susan would be able to say NO immediately. She doesn't have to call a 
meeting to get consensus.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
http://www.sociocracy.info