Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Formal Consensus vs Sociocracy

[Casey Morrigan (cjmorr]

It hasn't been my experience that the sword of voting hangs over our
community's head, though we do have a backup voting process and we used it
once. I'm sure we are highly imperfect in our communications, but we do put
lots of good faith effort into paying attention to one another.  It also
seems to me like very few of us contrarians ever have a problem expressing
an opinion or an objection. On the other hand, many of us have gotten
exhausted trying to bring projects to completion because there is only so
much processing that one can do when one has additional priorities, such as
raising families, working, trying to enjoy the community's company unpressed
by decisions, cooking great community meals, and so forth. My own personal
goal in community decisionmaking is to bring joy and energy to the group,
rather than wearing them down in the decisionmaking process.

C. Morrigan
Two Acre Wood
Sebastopol, CA 

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Bartholomew [mailto:bb [at] stat.ufl.edu] 
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 1:47 PM
To: Cohousing-L
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Formal Consensus vs Sociocracy

Way back on 28 Mar 2002, Rob Sandelin wrote*:

> There is also a very important function of having a backup. It makes 
> people more cooperative. If I know that I can't stop the group just by 
> blocking consensus, and that they will outvote me at a future meeting, 
> then even the most uncooperative person is likely to make some moves 
> towards compromise, because they know they will simply get outvoted a 
> couple meetings down the road.

Tree repeated a shorter statement of the same idea in a Feb 2007 Cohousing
magazine article on inappropriate blocks.

To me, this sounds like 'majority rule with brainstorming'.  The sword of
voting is hanging over everyone's heads all of the time.  How many
objections are unvoiced, which consent is not gained, because minorities
figure it's not even worth a try?  Abilene paradox?

I will make a wild and crazy prediction: Remove the possibility of voting as
far as you can; try to make it impossible to initiate from inside.  Perhaps
you'll do it only if a bank or a court requires it.
Otherwise, blocks stand until somebody changes their mind.  Perhaps after an
initial burst, there are no ongoing rounds of meetings to wear people down.
Then allow any decision to be revisited.  I predict there will be
substantial, surprising changes in your group decisions.

Are you still sure you haven't voted?

                                                        Brian


* http://lists.cohousing.org/archives/cohousing-l/msg15352.html
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