Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: What Is Process?

[R Philip Dowds (rpdowds]

I certainly agree that there is a difference between process and content.  And 
that the process you choose can influence or even pre-determine the outcome.

But ...

Do you try to tailor your process to the issue at hand, inventing and adopting 
new methods for each new controversy?

RPD

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 15, 2013, at 2:40 PM, "Coleen O'Connell" <oconnellcoleen [at] gmail.com> 
wrote:

> 
> At Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage, we need to make a decision about taking
> down a tree.  We all love the tree, and we intended to keep it, but our
> site plan didn't plan well for it and it ended up in the construction zone,
> has been compromised, and now a house is about to be built within its
> dripline.  But still some want to save it.   We met last weekend to come up
> with the Process for making the decision.  We spent half an hour hammering
> out the process, so that we can actually make the decision from following
> that process.  So yes, I think there is a distinction between process and
> decision making.  The process used in a meeting has many outcomes:
> information sharing, polling, reporting, decision making.  The same
> process can bring you to all of these or different processes might be used
> depending on the outcome.  We determined what felt like a fair process to
> use to come to the decision.
> 
> There is a difference between process and decision making.  The latter is
> just one outcome of a process.