Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Consensus and time pressure

[Dave & Diane (coho]

Hi Becky and everyone in coho-land,
I think the last paragraph of this sentence really indicates the nut of 
the problem--you're trying to use a consensus decision making process 
without allocating enough time to either define, work on, or solve the 
problem. This will always come back to bite you in the butt.

One of the issues that needs to be discussed is: why are you under this 
time pressure? Is this a development-related time pressure (which you 
can do little about) or self-imposed time pressure (which there is lots 
you can do about.) Consensus as a decision-making process does have a 
few flaws, one of which is that the process doesn't work well if people 
are not all up-to-speed on a topic. So if you skip that first step, 
people are not getting the education they need from other viewpoints, 
and the entire proposal process gets off track.

We haven't solved this problem in our group either, so I don't consider 
myself the font of all knowledge and wisdom on this topic. I do think 
that Rob's suggestion of trying out a solution for awhile by using a 
sunset clause is a good one. Best wishes to you and your group and let 
us know how you do.

--Diane Simpson(:^]
JP COHOUSING  617-524-6614
P.O. BOX 420 BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS
HTTP://WWW.JPCOHOUSING.ORG
"The people who surround you define the quality of your life."
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On Sunday, March 7, 2004, at 06:16 AM, Becky Schaller wrote:

> Part of the way I understand consensus is that the group tries to 
> create a
> proposal that addresses the concerns and needs of all involved when
> making the final decision.  There are ways of doing this which maximize
> the chance of this happening.  We've adopted a 3 step process where you
> start by hearing the concerns and needs of people before creating a
> proposal.  Theoretically, this sounds great but for various reasons, we
> often overlook this step...

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