Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: 2nd level decision making

[Martin Schafer (schafer]

> 
> The Tucson Cohousing group is looking for information about
> 2nd level decision making processes. (Majority vote, or concensus minus one) 
> for use when concensus can not be reached.
> 
> Have other grouos developed a fall back process?
> 

We discussed having one, but never felt we had to have one. 
A key part of this is that all of us understood "standing aside"
to be an important part of the concensus process.  It only
came up a few times, but if some member is blocking the group
coming to consensus, the group needs to discuss and deal with
their objections.  However, the individual blocking has a 
responsibility to judge whether their disagreement is in the
interest of the group as a whole.  After their objections have
been heard and considered and the rest of the group reaches
a concensus, they need to decide if it is better for a decision
they disagree with to be made, or for no decision to be made.

As I say, the very few times that happened in TRG the objector
decided that reaching a decision was more important, and stood
aside.