Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Consensus, Majority vote, blocks

[R Philip Dowds (rpdowds]

The Delphi Method was invented and adopted by the Pentagon, as a means for 
developing military strategy.

OK, I know I've now lost much of my audience, but I will trudge forward anyway.

The Method works like this:
An issue or challenge or problem is posed.  It needs a group response.
The group is defined to include "experts" on the matter.  Obviously, in 
cohousing we are all equal experts on our own lives together, so in the 
cohousing context, the group includes all members of community (willing to 
participate).
Each member of the group writes up (or down) his/her own opinion or 
recommendation, and submits it to the body of the whole.
The body of the whole convenes, has a discussion of all the submissions, and 
then dis-convenes.
Each member then writes up (or down) a revised opinion or recommendation.
The process re-iterates as needed.

What the Pentagon found was:  In some cases, opinions would converge to 
consensus.  But in other cases, opinions would diverge to distinct bi-partate 
polarities.  Maybe consensus was hard to accomplish, but at least the 
divergence of opinion was clearly and explicitly defined.  It could be explored 
further.  (Betcha didn't think the Pentagon was interested in, not just 
command-and-control, but also consensus ...)

And so OK, what does this have to do with cohousing?

In some communities, maybe it's normal for all members to feel free to 
blue-sky, extemporize, and challenge the conventional wisdom in an open 
exchange during a meeting of the body of the whole — which is, in our case, 
called GM or General Meeting.

But at Cornerstone, our GMs are sometimes (often?) fraught with repressed 
controversy, hidden agendas, and humiliating rejection (damning with faint 
praise, the iron fist in the velvet glove, the subtle joys of repudiating an 
enemy, etc).  People with ideas that are not yet completely formed, or are 
clearly contrary to the majority view, may feel at risk, or prematurely 
dismissed.  Accordingly, sometimes our members are hugely cautious about what 
they will say in public; in the worst case, people just don't come to GM at 
all.  Either way, GM never gets the full value of what people think, really.  
So what we have is pseudo-dialog, and pseudo-consensus.  Sometimes, anyway.

The foundational question is, Why don't people feel safe in GMs, and what can 
we do about this? I'll skip this one for now.

But as a group dynamics tactic, I will suggest that rounds are improved by a 
variant of the Delphi Method, which would be that of (1) think privately for a 
minute; (2) write on an index card the words or phrases that best express what 
you think; and (3) when your turn in the round comes around, present those 
words and phrases, and elaborate.

I think this approach is more likely to expose the full range of the group's 
thinking and feeling than does the customary result of rounds, where those at 
the end feel under enormous pressure to align themselves with those at the 
front.  I also think that structured iterations — rather than just speak your 
piece, now we move on to something else — would help in either consolidating 
consensus, or clarify conflicts.

R Philip Dowds AIA
Cornerstone Cohousing
175 Harvey Street, Unit 5
Cambridge, MA 02140
617.354.6094


On Sep 28, 2011, at 5:12 PM, Kay Argyle wrote:

> Explanation of "Delphi Method" please? And how would it be applied in a
> cohousing setting?