Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Rules, norms, and compromise

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

Stuart Staniford-Chen   stated:
 We often create policy which solves some problem at a
meeting but doesn't really work, or is attempting to solve some
problem which doesn't actually exist, but people feared might exist.
Such policies often get ignored subsequently.


What I would add to this is that a regular (annual?) review of 
operations can often weed out dead stuff.  We are very overdue in this 
at Sharingwood. (We don't always practice what I preach - learn from 
our mistakes).  Also rules, policies, operations which everyone "agrees 
to" but subsequently get ignored can be a sign of false consensus where 
no one wanted to really speak against the idea so they just went along 
with it. People also  forget what they agree to (I do this all the time 
- Oh yeah, we're going to the opera tonight.....).  If you do a review 
these things come to light and you can deal with em, punt em to 
committee (at Sharingwood that usually means they die of neglect) or 
reanimate them.   At Sharingwood we hold an annual meeting for this 
kind of stuff where we also elect new board members, evaluate if we met 
any of the goals we set last year, set new goals to ignore, do other 
weird and funny rituals, and eat potluck sugar goodies.

At Sharingwood the things people really care about get reminded to 
those who might forget and commit a transgression against the state.  
Certain types of policification end up buried in meeting minutes and 
generally lost soon after creation.  This is not always a bad thing.  
One thing I do is to extract policies out of minutes into an agreements 
doc which I keep more or less up to date with "policy" sorts of 
decisions.  There are copies for handout around the community, posted 
on Bboards etc. and any prospective members who look like they might 
throw some money into our bank account get a copy.  This way the 
important stuff stays on top, the trivia sinks to the bottom.

Rob Sandelin
Saying few things with lots of words again
Sharingwood.