Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: 4 simple approaches to improve collaboration/consensus

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 8/27/03 12:51 PM, "Dahako [at] aol.com" <Dahako [at] aol.com> wrote:

> The approach the team is taking revolves (in part) around the idea that
> consensus will not be formed in meetings so much as it will be explored and
> confirmed. The team is proposing a defined period of time after introduction
> of an issue or informal proposal (and during the development of a formal
> proposal) in which it is each member's responsibility to interact with the
> people drafting the proposal and to discuss issues and indicate areas of
> agreement and disagreement. Some of the discussion will happening formally in
> team and whole community business meetings, and some will be smaller
> discussions, in person or in our idea-sharing space on the Web.

I like this process for most things and think it works perfectly well. When
everything is done in a large meeting it is difficult to keep all the issues
clear -- exactly what are we discussing here? Listening to people means
listening to them! A good thing but not always conducive to decision making.
While I would like to have more listening opportunities, I would also like
to have more and faster decisions.

The only thing I miss with the "off stage" process is not being able to hear
what others think so I can develop my ideas/position/decision/etc in
relation to theirs. Consensus is not just about decision-making, it is also
about that process of education and development of the group as a whole.
When opportunity for that is provided in good summary papers or smaller
discussions in person or on email, then a large group discussion is most
often not necessary or even desirable.

Consensus gets subverted when a team says "respond to *** privately" and
then announces a decision that "everyone has agreed to". In one instance
where this happened in our community it was almost a year before those of us
who disagreed discovered each other, each thinking we had been the only one
so we hadn't spoken up when the "consensus" was announced. This is still a
sore spot since it involved a design decision that we are still (unhappily)
living with. Knowing this was not a consensus might have saved us a decision
that now even members of what must have been a majority regret.


Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org



_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L