Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: A consensus question.

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

> In my opinion, many groups that are using consensus, should not be. They
> lack the committment, communication and group mission that consensus
> requires.  You can have a very cooperative process, where all ideas are
> equally and fairly considered on their honest merits, an honest
> evaluation given by all, and then a vote held to make the final choice. 

I find this a little hard to believe.  Do you have experience of  
communities that need to make major decisions together, have close  
community, and operate well by majority vote?  In my experience of  
majority vote situations, they lead to an attitude of "How can I put  
enough votes together to get what I want" and not "What can I do so that  
I get what I need, and everyone else gets what they need."  In a  
situation in which members can up and leave the group at any time, I  
don't think a group can afford to repeatedly marginalize some people's  
opinion - votes allow that.

Is there a cohousing group out there that has gotten far into the  
process using majority vote?

I do believe that groups should put significant effort into making their  
consensus process work well.  It is very much a skill that the group as  
a whole needs to learn.  Good outside training might very well pay for  
itself many times over in expedited decisions.  Probably an ongoing  
attitude of being willing to spend a certain amount of time on the  
process, evaluating how things went and trying to consciously reflect and  
learn together is more important still.

> My advise if you have members not delibrately not honoring agreements
> then get an experienced mediator, hold a meeting and talk about it.  If
> you ignore it, it can turn into cancer that can eat your community from
> the inside.

I think it depends on the scale of the problem.  There is a difference  
between openly flouting a major decision, and people over time forgetting  
and getting lazy about something they agreed to.

Stuart.

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Stuart Staniford-Chen           |        N St Cohousing, Davis, CA
stanifor [at] cohousing.org             |       Cohousing Network Webweaver