Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: We ditched consensus

[Sean Davey (sean]

just a minor correction, our new system uses super majority voting, 2/3 yes 
votes are required to pass.
We use the same process that we used before for working on a decision:
1) answer clarifying questions, 2) collect concerns, 3) group concerns, 4) 
attempt to resolve concerns.
We've also automated agenda building online: proposals can be submitted by 
anyone, once 12 people
agree to discuss an issue it is moved to a list of agenda items, everyone can 
prioritize agenda items
and for each meeting the agenda is automatically generated based on everyone's 
priority ranking.

if you asked each person in our community why consensus wasn't working, you'd 
get a different answer
from each person. (not everyone thought it wasn't working, a small number 
wanted to stay with it)
for me, a lot of what we were experiencing is covered in Diana Leafe 
Christian's article:
http://communities.ic.org/articles/1565/Busting_the_Myth_that_Consensus_with_Unanimity_Is_Good_for_Communities

sean, sonora cohousing

> Hi all,
> 
> In case my previous message wasn't understood:  Majority rule is now the 
> method of decision making  at our general meetings, instead of consensus 
> (with a majority rule back-up), which is how we'd operated before.
> 
> I will send in the near future something with more details, since I know that 
> many communities are struggling, and our experience might be of use.
> 
> Best,
> Racheli, Sonora Cohousing, 
> Tucson, Arizona.