Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: mission statement question

[Martie Weatherly (martiew]

>From Martie Weatherly, Liberty Village, Libertytown, MD:

My ideas may be a little different from most people but I think it is
too early for you to write a mission statement. First of all, you will
probably lose about half your people when you select a site. Secondly,
you should not use someone else's from the archives. I believe a mission
statement should be generated from the group. Thirdly, it took us months
to write ours. Start with exploring what your common purpose is and work
toward a mission statement when your group is more solid. 

I differ from other people on the list in that I do not believe it is
helpful to filter people out by making early decisions on policies such
as pets, children, etc. and this is why: Our community is doing some
really great work on specifically how we get along through consensus on
issues with completely different points of view. And I believe THAT is
the most important value of consensus. Learning to be able to sit
together and hear each other respectfully when you think the other
person is completely wrong. Time and again we are learning to keep going
on such an issue and we DO find the group's wisdom and come to agreement
about our course of action! 

So why try to iron out all the differences and be "on the same page"
just to find completely different issues coming up later. Consensus does
not require that you all think alike -- in fact, if you think it does,
you are looking for a voting majority.  In my point of view, consensus
is just the opposite - it is coming to agreement after having differing
points of view. Now some communities, like ecovillages,  do have one or
two decisions from the start but the more restrictions you have, the
fewer people you will attract. Some issues we thought we would have,
like smoking, have not come up yet and we are almost half built. Others,
like pets, did come up and we resolved it to everyone's satisfaction. 

To answer your question, a mission statement should be something that
lasts regardless of the details.  Our vision statement is three
sentences and is the broadest statement of what we are up to. Our
mission statement then takes it a step further and gives 12 or so
sentences of more detail of what our community will be like. (We just
made up this whole idea.) Out of the mission statement come general
agreements about participation and then out of those come specific
operating agreements. We expect to change the agreements when needed but
we don't expect to change the vision and mission statements, although we
will keep an eye on them.

You are at the beginning of a thrilling, scary, exhilirating roller
coaster ride, and as a cohouser who just moved in, worth every bit of
it! 

 Martie Weatherly
Liberty Village
martiew [at] earthlink.net


Gyre& Gimble wrote:
> 
> We are a very new group forming in Los Angeles. Our second meeting is in a
> couple of weeks and we want to take the oft-given advice to create a mission
> statement early on by looking at some existing ones. I did a search in the
> [C-L] archives and found some good ones but I have a question about where a
> mission statement ends and a list of specific goals starts. For example: is
> it the place to describe the hoped for site (lots of trees, near mass
> transit...) or the types of common facilities desired (guest room,
> playground, gym...)?
> Since the statement will be used in part to filter out people that are not
> on the same page, and recruit those that are, shouldn't it be specific about
> the non-negotiable elements? Or does that make for trouble down the road?
> 
> Jennifer Murphy
> 
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