Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Question: How Things Get Done

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

At Sharingwood teams  do things. They meet, figure out action plans, make
decisions, spend money. Our expectation about teams is that they announce
their meeting and agenda 3 days in advance, and send out meeting minutes
afterward. We expect people who have input to show up or tell somebody in
advance of the decision.  Occasionally teams get conflicted about something,
or need more input and they bring it to the general meeting. For example,
the greenbelt team of which I am a member takes care of the trails in the
community forest. They just do the work as needed. Another thing is that
they are working on a conservation easement for the forest. This comes up as
community work at a general meeting. They have done lots of outreach with
surveys and circles, and meetings. Usually at the general meeting, items
relating to the landtrust are consensed upon with a reasonable amount of
time and effort. Our process for decision making is two tries at consensus
then a majority vote can be held. (we have never actually held a vote in
this circumstance, but that fact that we can makes controllers become very
reasonable about compromising)

The commonhouse team makes decisions about the commonhouse. They just
removed a couple of lamps which were previously donated and are too tippy,
and they just bought some stuff they thought was needed.  Nobody questioned
their decisions (at least that I know of). We assume teams are following
their charter and doing the work of the community. Occasionally a decision
gets second guessed, but that is not all that common, maybe one team
decision out of a hundred? Since our track record with teams is good, people
in general trust them. People with control issues show up and participate or
shut up, as the question is usually asked of a complaint, tell how your
input was handled and what you did not like about it? If they gave no input
at the time the decision was made, we generally just say something like,
better pay closer attention next time. Occasionally we have re-opened a team
decision, but that is rare. (and almost always very conflicted)

Teams are often a reflection of the people on them. Many of the less talk,
more action people tend to be on teams like the landscape and maintenance.
The facilitators team is more of the talking types. It all seems to work out
pretty well most the time, but of course reality is somewhere between the
potential and the glitches.

Most the people who want things done a certain way end up driving a
particular teams decision, and mostly this works out fine, usually being
tempered by others input.


Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood Cohousing Community
South Snohomish County at the headwaters of Ricci Creek
Sky Valley Environments  <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous [at] msn.com


-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-bounces [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-bounces [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of Sharon Villines
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 10:57 AM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: [C-L]_ Question: How Things Get Done


In good corporate fashion our teams have started reporting at the annual
meeting about their accomplishments in the last year. As I sat down to think
what I have accomplished in the last year in cohousing, very little of it
had anything to do with the team I'm on. In fact, everything I've tried to
get the team to do or to do with me has NOT gotten done.

Which leads to the question -- Do things get done in your community because
one person does them or because a team does them?

Who formulates the plans? Does the leg work? Actually closes the deal?

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

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