Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Project Coordination

[Kay Argyle (argyle]

> Our group has grown very fast, and
> expectations seem to be shifting constantly. People who don't know what's
> going on seem to have lots of opinions about how it all should be done.

This is a reason why keeping good records (minutes, proposals, decision
logs, etc.), and making them easily accessible to new members, is of such
great importance.  You can't bring new people up to speed by word of mouth.
We found that if we asked three different people about something we got
three different answers, frequently mutually contradictory.

I learned a lot about why some things were as they were from reading the
book of old proposals when I joined Wasatch Cohousing.  Because I knew the
history of certain things, I wasn't upsetting the group by fighting them.
On the other hand, I was driven crazy by the total lack of some other
information -- for instance, the plans shown prospective members didn't
reflect what was actually going to be built, because they predated the
"value engineering" phase (translation:  "We're having trouble getting a
construction loan, what can we cut?") which occurred just before we joined,
and for which there were no minutes.  So the cuts were all nasty surprises
to us during the construction phase; we were unhappy, we felt repeatedly
blindsided, and we weren't quiet about it.  After the first couple, we
started asking, "What else got cut?  Please, what other things got cut?" and
nobody could tell us.

Have someone take minutes, ideally on a laptop, at all meetings, including
committees.  If a laptop is unavailable, get someone to type the minutes
after the meeting (much easier to read later!).  Keep a log summarizing all
decisions.  Write a brief summary of the discussion in the minutes, so later
people know *why* that decision was made (we'd dearly like to know this
about some old decisions!).  Keep copies of all proposals, with brief notes
about the discussion, caveats, amendments, stand-asides, and decision.

Give the job of recordkeeping to someone that you can trust to do it
hell-or-highwater, someone organized and a bit obsessive.  They don't need
to be the minute-taker, just the person who says, "Wait a minute, who's
taking minutes? We need someone to take minutes," and collects them after
the meeting.

Keep all this in notebooks if you don't have a website, but posting them on
a website is best (we're trying to get a page set up for this stuff).  That
way anyone who wants to read them can, without having to track down the
one-and-only Book of Proposals and persuade the Keeper of the Book to let
them borrow it (leaving their first-born as surety against its return).
That way when somebody needs a copy of a particular old proposal, they don't
have to remove it from the proposal book, meaning the next time someone
needs to look at that proposal it isn't there.

When someone says, "Didn't we settle this last year?  Why are we discussing
it again?" it's such a relief to be able to actually point to the line in
the minutes, instead of having the usual frustrating "Well, I thought we
decided ..." discussion where everyone remembers differently.

Kay Argyle
argyle [at] mines.utah.edu
Wasatch Commons
Salt Lake City
*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*


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