Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Consensus decision making

[Craig Ragland (craigragland]

My opinions - not "official Coho/US doctrine" - not much of which actually
exists.

Groups that do decide to delegate will learn what effective means to them -
probably through trial-and-error as they live with delegation across
(hopefully) a great many years. I suspect it is mostly about whether the
small group decisions work for most of the people most of the time - and not
speed of decisions, although speed is sometimes highly valued too. Working
for most of the people most of the time is, I think, a "lower" standard than
expecting each decision to be embraced by the whole community. Communities
can decide to empower sub-groups and not require overall group consensus on
some/all of the smaller group's decisions. The whole community can choose to
embrace that smaller groups do make lots of decisions - serving the
community as best they can.

A great many decisions are made at Songaia without attempts to reach overall
consensus of the community - and sometimes these smaller group decisions are
questioned by others, and then require more work prior to implementation.
For example, a small group, the Fabulous Food Folks decides on waht specific
food items are in our common pantry... and lots of people living here simply
don't like (or want) some of our food items for their personal use.

I do not currently eat cereals or granola. If I was asked to agree to buy
each type of cereal - and decided to put my personal needs/wants about "my
food" above the community - I'd simply say "No." If everybody did that, our
food pantry would be much smaller, some type of lowest common denominator -
and our overall program would be impoverished rather than abundant. To seek
consensus on each individual food item we stock would just be silly. As a
result, we usually empower the Fabulous Food Folk to do their best to
balance our various individual preferences, needs, and values... so we do
buy four cereal foods.

I'd urge folks to question the sacred cow of:

"consensus all the time = good"

When the cow doesn't respond with a "moo," you might focus more on what
works and what feels good for most of the people most of the time.

In community, Craig

On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 7:29 AM, Racheli Gai <racheli [at] 
sonoracohousing.com>wrote:

>
> It seems to me to be important to define what is meant by the term
> "effective":
> Is an effective community one which makes decision fast? Is it one where
> decisions, once reached, are embraced by the whole community and
> therefore
> are carried out effectively, or? ...
>
> I think that a high level of trust is a precondition for high level of
> delegation
> (so that decision are seen as supporting the whole community, not this
> or that
> faction).  If this is missing, delegating becomes very problematic.
>
> Racheli (Sonora Cohousing, Tucson).
>
>
>
> On Aug 4, 2008, at 7:18 PM, Craig Ragland wrote:
>
> >
> > Here Here Joani!
> >
> > My opinion is that more effective cohousing groups using consensus do
> > delegate LOTS of decision-making - especially ones requiring detailed
> > study
> > and understanding. I believe a common misunderstanding about consensus
> > is
> > that ALL decisions MUST involve EVERYBODY in decision-making process.
> >
> > When individuals and sub-groups are appropriately empowered, they
> > increase
> > their effectiveness as they create plans that are both (1) consistent
> > with
> > their mandate and (2) that truly serve the broader group - including
> > those
> > with minority views.
> >
> > Craig
> >
> > On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 6:49 PM, Joani Blank <joani [at] swansway.com> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Friends,
> >>
> >> Here's part of an email exchange I had with Tim Mensch about his
> >> recent post on this subject:
> >>
> >> A good agenda or steering committee will only put on the table/agenda
> >> for general community meetings, items of some significance that
> >> really need community buy-in to be effective.  In the example you
> >> gave (leaky roof damaging some of the common property), a committee
> >> (Maintenance, perhaps) can have blanket authorization in advance to
> >> arrange a repair in such an emergency.
> >>
> >> Here at Swan's Market Cohousing (Oakland, CA), individuals and
> >> committees are authorized (by consensus) to make decisions about all
> >> manner of things after there has been an opportunity in the general
> >> community meeting for a variety of views on the proposal to be
> >> presented, and sometimes a straw vote to get the "sense of the
> >> meeting."  This seems to work fine, giving everyone who has an
> >> opinion, a chance to have their say on the matter (and to be
> >> respectfully heard), and not tying the whole community up on matters
> >> where it really doesn't matter if one or two people object, even
> >> strongly object, to what will probably be the decision made by the
> >> individual or committee that's been authorized to make that decision.
> >>
> >> Joani
> >>
> >> Joani Blank
> >> land line : 510-834-7399 (preferred)
> >> cell: 510-387-1315
> >> Swan's Market Cohousing.
> >>
> >> P Save Trees ...please don't print this e-mail unless you really need
> >> to.
> >>
> >> _________________________________________________________________
> >> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> >> http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Craig Ragland
> >
> > Coho/US executive director
> > http://www.cohousing.org
> > craig [at] cohousing.org
> >
> > Please try email first, include your phone number (w/time zone) - or
> > give me
> > a call: 425-487-3550 (Pacific)... communicate!
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> > http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/
> >
> >
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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> http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/
>
>
>


-- 
Craig Ragland

Coho/US executive director
http://www.cohousing.org
craig [at] cohousing.org

Please try email first, include your phone number (w/time zone) - or give me
a call: 425-487-3550 (Pacific)... communicate!