Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Quorums/Reopening decisions

[Becky Weaver (beckyweaver]

Hi Nikki,
   
  As I mentioned before, my community (Kaleidoscope Village in Austin, Texas) 
has control of land but is pre-move-in, so we are in a similar phase to y'all, 
although we've been in existence a lot longer. 
   
  Everything below is predicated on using formal consensus as our 
decision-making model. 
   
  Quorum: after much discussion, we decided that a quorum is whoever shows up 
at a properly announced or regularly scheduled meeting. 
   
  If we genuinely don't have time to properly announce a meeting, we follow an 
emergency decision-making process: 
http://wikihost.org/wikis/cac/wiki/emerdecisionmaking
   
  While making quorum "whoever shows up" may sound insane, practically 
speaking, it works for several reasons. 
   
  One is that we try very hard not to approve proposals that we know someone 
not present will object to. If we're really worried about a person's reaction 
to something under discussion, and they're not there, we try calling them on 
the phone, tabling the decision until they can be present, making a decision 
contingent upon consulting them, or otherwise bringing them into the dialogue. 
   
  And *that* works because we have a rule that a person objecting to a proposal 
*must* participate in coming up with a better one. If they are unwilling or 
unable to help improve the proposal, we have to go ahead with the best job 
those who *are* involved can do. 
   
  Big decisions are usually a long time in coming. They get discussed formally 
and informally. You can feel a consensus start to emerge before the meeting 
where a decision "officially" gets made. If you don't feel consensus starting 
to emerge, you aren't ready to make the decision yet. Keep working on it in 
committee and informally, and use meeting time to either take everybody's 
temperature on the issue, brainstorm, or work on something else. 
   
  We felt that requiring a physical quorum of people present would not help us 
be sure we were really reaching consensus anyway. It seems to be only a 
negative. Requiring a quorum could stop or slow things down, but it does not 
necessarily improve the quality of a decision. Having quorum rules could 
theoretically also be used to "game" a decision - wait until someone with an 
objection isn't there, check for quorum, then quickly pass a proposal. This 
strategy would be a big mistake for Avogadro's number of reasons, and has no 
place in a consensus process. 
   
  Revisiting decisions: we rely heavily on our committee structure for this. 
Once a decision is made, a person wanting to reopen the decision takes it to 
the relevant committee. If they can convince the committee that it's time to 
reopen a decision, it gets reopened. If the committee isn't buying it, the 
decision stands. 
   
  In practice, people often want to reopen a decision because it was made 
before they joined the community, and thus they don't know about all the 
factors surrounding it. Sometimes once the committee members explain everything 
that went into a decision, the person with a concern about it, can live with it 
after all. Or, they have helpful suggestions about how a decision can be 
tweaked or re-written to more closely follow the spirit in which it was 
intended. Or, they have a good point that we didn't consider at the time, and 
we agree it needs to be re-opened. 
   
  It can be very tiring to have people questioning "water under the bridge;" 
ask people to limit it to things that are super-important. But giving new 
members real ownership within the community may not happen any other way.  
   
  We do require new members to formally agree to all previously-made decisions. 
We definitely do not have to go back & revisit a decision every time a new 
member doesn't like it. Realistically, though, we can't afford to blow off 
somebody's genuine concern. 
   
  As others have noted, we make use of sunset clauses and make plans to revisit 
decisions after we see how they're working. Some decisions can't be reopened 
for practical reasons; once we approve a contract, we probably can't go back 
and renegotiate it 6 months later. But policy-type decisions and procedural 
rules can and should be revisited as your organization evolves. 
   
  If a person wants to re-open a decision and they were present when it was 
made, either you didn't actually have consensus in the first place, or things 
have changed such that it really is time to revisit the decision. If you didn't 
actually have consensus in the first place, *pay attention* to that - get more 
training, work on your process, learn more facilitation skills. Even if you 
feel you don't have time to work on group-process skills right then, if your 
process is having problems, it is the most urgent issue for your community. 
Snafus resulting from bad process can take years to clean up. 
   
  Good luck! It sounds like you are working very hard right now, but it is 
worth it.  
   
  Becky Weaver
  Kaleidoscope Village, Austin, Texas
  

Nikki Sachs <nikkisachs [at] gmail.com> wrote:
  Hello,
We are in the process of deciding.what the quorum for our general meetings
should be, the minimum number of members who have to be present to
officially conduct business and consense on binding decisions. We are also
discussing the same thing in relation to reopening a previously consensed
decision to new terms? How many "votes" have to be in favor of this to do
it? What have other communities done? Thanks.
Nikki Sachs for the process team
North Oakland Cohousing, a fledgling urban infill cohousing community
in the Temescal area of Oakland CA.


___________________________________
A man becomes his attentions. His observations and curiosity, they make and 
remake him.
--William Least Heat Moon