Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Borda Count

[Craig Ragland (craigragland]

Songaia Cohousing has never sat down and argued about who signs checks
(currently 3 different signatories) or files the state forms (currently the
President of the board) for hours. It has never been hard to come to
consensus about who "gets to do" our unpaid community administrative work.
For us, this is really about who is willing to fill those needs.. for now.
Perhaps we have more trust and respect for each other than other groups? I
doubt it. Perhaps it hais just never been an issue because only our more
trusted/respected people have offered to do the work? more likely.

I doubt if too many established cohousing communities, that actually managed
to pull off multi-million dollar real estate development projects on their
own, ever do this. I'm also clear that cohousing is inclusive of a very
diverse group of folks, including many who "bought in" at the end of a
project or even just bought a unit after a community has been established.
These folks didn't weather the challenges of consensus-based decision making
for huge, risky projects. They didn't enjoy the rock tumbler of group
process that smooths so many rough edges.

As much as some of us might like it to be, Cohousing is not ALL loving
agreement and wonderful, gentle, kind folks that are always respectful of
each others' needs, etc. I have no doubt that there have been many
challenges and struggles around token and "official" roles. What excites me
personally is we have the chance to participate in co-creating our
neighborhood through collaboration. I see this as pushing at least some of
the conventional views about leadership and follower-ship aside. For those
who enter cohousing while still hung up on titles and other outmoded
perceptions about power, there are wonderful opportunities ahead as they
learn about true leadership... ideas of leading through serving, of sharing
thought leadership, of influence, rather than power, etc.

I am not currently "the president" of Songaia HOA or "even" an officer of
our HOA board. I do have tremendous appreciation for those of us who are
currently serving our community in that way. Right now, Doug Larsen, who
reads Coho-L, is our president. Doug and the other Songaia HOA officers
(Tom, Karly, Kathleen, Stan, and Patrick) have been doing an incredible job
for our community over the last year.

I am one of about 10 retired presidents of Songaia HOA. I, personally, don't
look forward at all to serving in that role anytime soon. Doing a good job
at this is time and energy consuming - and I have plenty to do already.

On Feb 13, 2008 1:27 PM, Tim Mensch <tim-coho-l [at] bitgems.com> wrote:

> Craig Ragland wrote:
> > The whole idea of Borda seems more tied to supporting groups where there
> is
> > some sense of competition about who's providing leadership - not
> co-creative
> > approaches where leadership is more explicitly shared or collaborative.
> >
> Someone still has to be chosen by the group as the person the group
> trusts to, e.g., write checks from the group account (treasurer), or to
> fill the largely-but-not-entirely token role of President of the Board
> to satisfy your legal requirements as a corporation. Yes you can select
> those people by some kind of consensus meeting (or via sociocratic
> elections), but at the end of the day you are legally required to fill
> those rolls--and if nothing else, Borda count gives you the ability to
> choose the person who has the most approval from the most people, which
> is as close to consensus as you can get without sitting down and arguing
> about the details for hours.
>
> Tim
>
> --
> Tim Mensch
>
> Currently at Wild Sage (Boulder, CO): http://www.wildsagecohousing.org
>
> Founding member of Tumblerock, a Boulder, CO area community in its forming
> stages: http://tumblerock.org
>
>


-- 
Craig Ragland
Coho/US Exec. Dir.
www.cohousing.org