Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: MEMBER APPLYING TO BE PROJECT MANAGER

[David Heimann (heimann]

Hello,

	Early in our development phase we decided that no one who was a 
member of JP Cohousing could accept paid employment on a project being 
done for JP Cohousing.  Also, a JPC member working for a company doing 
work for us, but wasn't working on the project itself, nonetheless had to 
notify us of that fact and recuse themselves from any decision involving 
that company.

	We may have lost some chances to use our members' professional 
services (on other than a volunteer basis), but we never ran into these 
conflict-of-interest problems.  On the whole, I'm glad we made that 
decision!

Regards,
David Heimann
Jamaica Plain Cohousing


Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:22:47 -0700
From: Racheli Gai <racheli [at] sonoracohousing.com>
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ MEMBER APPLYING TO BE PROJECT MANAGER
To: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Message-ID: <73c26b008d73599a24d8fcb39db25608 [at] sonoracohousing.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

I agree.
We had a member who was our project manager, and it was extremely
problematic.
On the level of process - it creates hierarchy, where the manager is
someone with
a lot more power than other members of the community; I also think it
can often
create conflict of interest.
I also absolutely agree that working diligently on process/conflict
resolution skills
etc. from the get go is so very essential.  We didn't do nearly enough
of it, and
once we moved in we descended into a very difficult period, along the
lines
mentioned by Ananda.
Years after move-in we still didn't have a common understanding what
consensus
means!  A little over a year ago we hired CT Butler to come and work
with us
on consensus.  Now, using Formal Consensus, we're (hopefully) gradually
digging our way
out.  If we started by making our common understanding clearer, I'm
sure we'd have
saved ourselves a lot of heartache, and perhaps would have avoided
damage that's
hard to repair later on.


Best,
Racheli.