Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Changes in Decision Making Processes

[Patty & Pat Nowlin/Guyn (pattypat]

another response

Mac & Sandy Thomson wrote:

> Patty Nowlin wrote:
> >   Have other groups found that their decision making processes changed
> > during the construction phase?  What have groups found to be the most
> > efficient  way to make decisions during the construction phase?
>
> Our decision making is primarily consensus although we can go to an
> alternative super-majority vote (75%) in case of urgency or other
> reasons.  That didn't change during construction, but we did tend to use
> the alternative super-majority vote more often because we had more
> urgent decisions.  (For more info, go to the agreements section of our
> website below.)
>
> But the thing that best allowed us to get through the construction phase
> was delegation.  We decided by consensus to delegate the vast majority
> of design decisions to our Design Review Team (DRT) and delegate many of
> the county approval, bank financing, and construction decisions to our
> Project Manager (me).  Any was welcome to be on the DRT.  It was a lot
> of work to research all those design issues so basically the folks that
> did the work got to make decisions.
>
> I think overall it served the community very well to carefully delegate
> certain authorities and thereby avoid inordinate amount of meeting time
> and allow folks most interested in certain issues to make the decisions.
>
> We still employ that strategy now that we live in community.  Our
> 'Teams' agreement specifically details the responsibilities and
> authorities of each team.  Some authorities are delegated fully to the
> teams and in other cases they only have authority to bring proposals to
> the communtiy for a community decision.  The folks that are most
> interested in certain areas serve on those teams.  It's our attempt to
> balance fully participative governance with not spending our lives in
> meetings.  We're a young community (living here since the turn of the
> millenium) so we're still learning how it all works.
>
> Good luck to you!
>
> - Mac
> --
>            Mac & Sandy Thomson           Heartwood Cohousing
>            ganesh [at] rmi.net                Durango, Colorado
>         Web Site:   http://www.heartwoodcohousing.com
>
> "When we remember that we're all mad, the mysteries disolve and life
> stands explained."
>             - Mark Twain
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