Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: No Quorum

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Jun 18, 2019, at 3:10 PM, Jerry Koch-Gonzalez <jerry [at] 
> sociocracyforall.org> wrote:
> 
> We let go of quorum many years ago with no negative effects.

Very glad to hear it. We have a lot of new people so I might try it again. 
Ironically, the new people are very engaged and responsible in terms of work 
and decision-making. But they are also professionals with lots of meetings at 
work and young with babies. And not driven the way were during the long 
building the community phase — surviving floods, keeping the elevator pit dry 
so we didn’t rust out the undergirding, dealing with errant teens, trying to 
get a meal program started. They’ve moved into a place that works and looks 
great. No financial problems (knock on wood).

> Now with sociocratic governance, it is even less relevant since almost all 
> decisions are made in the work circles.

How have your elections gone? We have people that I would trust with 
decision-making but not all. One team tends to make decisions not to do 
something and doesn’t announce it. We are waiting for a decision and they don’t 
think it will work so they don’t try. But they don’t view negative decisions as 
decisions. Deciding not to do something they and often other teams regard as 
non-action.

Other teams I trust and they have projects they move forward with without 
prompting.

I wonder if teams would take feedback better if it wasn’t linked to decisions. 
I also like to hear feedback from others. It’s how you get to know each other 
as well as getting a more comprehensive view of the issue.

But we tried the election process once and it went badly. We elected people 
that we thought were good and it was a good balance of people with a broad 
range of expertise, but they couldn’t work together. Convincing people to do it 
again would be iffy. 

Our FT team over the years, not just the current team, will decide that things 
are not aesthetic decisions when I think they are. If it’s visible it should be 
interesting  or at least not look like something drug in from a used car lot 
and welded together.

> We still have monthly meetings but those are not for decision making. They 
> are for giving feedback to circles about decisions they are going to make, 
> they are about doing community education like about governance or nonviolent 
> communication or EMFs or anything relevant, and they are about community 
> building like doing heart circles/sharing circles/life stories, etc. 

Our best meetings are those in which we don’t have to make decisions. Just 
discuss.




Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org