Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Participation Agreement

[Dave and Diane (daveanddee]

Hi all you folks in coho-land,

On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 08:48:44 -0400, Sharon Villines wrote:
> The people who say "we can't do this because there is no  law that
> says we can" stayed home. Since there was no agenda, in their view,
> nothing could be done. That meant they weren't in the room to dampen
> discussion.


On the face of it, this might seem like an excellent way to be  
efficient and
"get things done," but it essentially short-circuits the process of  
acheiving
group buy-in and does not produce agreements that the community will  
respect.

We had a somewhat similar situation happen about a year ago related  
to holiday
decorations. There may have been a quorum at the meeting and there  
may not have
been--I wasn't there. I do recall that what was billed as a  
"discussion" meeting
ended up making a decision to permanently keep up some holiday lights  
that
had been hastily thrown up for a party.

One day, three of us who had not attended the meeting were sitting  
around looking
at the lights and one of us remarked about how sloppy they looked. On  
an impulse, we
grabbed a ladder and took them down in about 20 minutes.

So, yes, you can make decisions pretty quickly in a meeting if you  
don't send
out an agenda and you only have the predisposed people there. But be  
prepared
to have your decisions just as quickly undone when people with  
another perspective
come on the scene.

I'd like to put in another plug for what I think was the Rob Sandelin  
"decision
board" method of making the community aware of upcoming decisions.  
Rob, if
you could send us a re-run of that e-mail I would greatly appreciate it.
--Diane(:^]

outreach facilitator
jp cohousing  617-522-2209
Box 300420 boston ma
http://www.jpcohousing.org
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"The people who surround you define the quality of your life."