Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Getting Buy-In on Decisions

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

There are several questions about consensus process when many people choose
not to participate. Does it work when 30% or more are not involved in a
decision? Do those who do not participate honor the decision?  How can you
structure decisions to accommodate people who don't participate? The big
question to start with is WHY?  There is a reason why every single person
chooses not to participate. Are there patterns in these reasons? You can't
know until you ask. A paper survey can be a good way to get info about
satisfacation with meetings, especially if you put some thought into the
questions you ask.  A survey like this can show you patterns which then you
can perhaps reorganize your meetings around. 

I used to do process coaching and training work in various communities and
some common reasons people do not come to meetings:

1. Meetings don't meet my expectations.
2. I find there are too many difficult and unreasonable people glumming up
the process and it takes forever to get anything decided
2 a. Just when it seems we are about to decide something, somebody who was
not there shows up and we have to have the WHOLE conversation over again.
3. I find most things on the agenda I really don't care about.
4. There is too much tension.
5. I have so many other needs on my time.
6. When I leave a meeting I have a stomach ache cause of how things were
dealt with


There are solutions for all of these, and the many other reasons people
avoid meetings.  The question is: Do you have people who are willing to put
energy into investegating and crafting meetings that work better?  I have
found having a facilitators team is a great way to organize process
improvements. I have also found that decentralizing decision making by
creating teams to make decisions about particular areas also helps.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood Community 
Florifeorus [at] msn.com

-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.21/96 - Release Date: 9/10/2005