Cohousing-L Mailing List: Decision processes

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

 Sharon Villines wrote:  But cohousing groups do use consensus none-the-less
and do get through it. But what happens in our community and other
communities (I believe) is that decisions are avoided and more and more made
by small groups or individuals with no discussion by the large group.
Everyone learns to look the other way and some people just withdraw from the
process. 
Decisions are less often announced so no one knows about it until it is
carried out. Things just happen.


This is not my general experience with many coho groups, although there is a
large difference between groups that are developing projects and groups that
live together.  At Sharingwood we don't avoid decisions, actually we can't,
we have a process of open agenda time where things are brought up, are
surveyed on the spot for community interest and support, then immediately
delegated to those who are interested and willing to work on them. Sometimes
the small groups resolve and make the decisions, other times, they bring
back well developed proposals for the whole group to work on. Sometimes the
small group will run out of gas, and the thing does not get done anytime
soon, because as they got into whatever it is, it turned out to be too much
work, or not that big of a deal. Somethings take quite a bit to simmer,
other things happen almost immediately.   It is rare for the whole group to
process small things, we save large group decisions for the large group and
let small groups make small group decisions. The facilitator team gatekeeps
our time this way, usually very successfully.  So for instance, what to
plant in the garden is a small group decision, changing time for community
dinner is a large group thing. 

All our decisions are announced in advance (it’s a requirement we put on
ourselves) so everybody knows what is being decided and when. Our meeting
minutes (another requirement) list what decision was made. Teams and task
forces also record their decisions. 

But things also just happen, as appropriate. Individuals take actions and do
things, most often without comment or need for process. On occaision,
somebody goes off and does something which doesn't work for somebody else
and we bring it up in the open agenda process, form a group, and work it
out.  This happens about twice a year or so. Last year we had an issue like
this drag on for 3 months. Such is life in community.

Most people who live here have filters about stuff they care about and don't
care much about. For example, there was a recent discussion and group
meeting about one of the kids play gear. I did not attend, and don't care at
all what they do, as long as it makes them happy and works out for the kids.
This is true of many decisions at our stage of community. You find that
people are generally reasonable, they think and work on things they care
about with enough diligence to be trustworthy, and so you don't usually need
to be in on everything.  With much of the decision making decentralized, you
have less problems with control freaks, since they would have to go to many
meetings to have control over everything. Around here if you show up with a
bunch of issues about how the ditch is supposed to be dug, we hand you the
shovel and bucket and say, go for it, make it how you want it. Occaisionally
this leads to funky ditches, most of the time is leads to wisdom and
restraint in demanding how things are done.

Rob Sandelin 
Sharingwood

-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.7.2 - Release Date: 3/11/2005