Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: How many community meetings to make a decision?

[Stuart Pettygrove (gspettygrove]

Martie,
Thanks, this is as clear and concise (and brief) a statement as any I've
seen.
Stu Pettygrove
Washington Commons Cohousing
washington-commons.org

On Thu, Sep 2, 2021 at 7:18 PM Martie Weatherly <mhweatherly [at] earthlink.net>
wrote:

> Our community which has been here for 20 years has meetings once a month.
> Our pathway to consensus requires the proposal to be brought up at two
> consecutive meetings to give time for people not at the first meeting to
> have input and for the team to make any tweaks that the community wanted.
>
> Our bylaws do have a procedure for an emergency meeting for an urgent
> matter. Very rarely used.
>
> I am finding that the key to keeping plenary meetings from being too long
> and too tiring is to be clear how we delegate to our teams. If we take an
> issue and clearly delegate how much money they can spend and what decisions
> they can make on their own, and then leave them alone, we keep a lot of
> minutiae out of our plenary meetings.
>
> This takes constant training of the community and creative thinking for
> what works best for your community. Consensus is not unanimity or making
> all decisions together. Understanding this will take a lot of the tension
> out of your decision making.
>
> Martie Weatherly
> Liberty Village, Maryland
>
> Health and Wellness Coach
> Consensus Coach
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Sent: Jul 14, 2021 1:09 PM
> To: Cohousing-L Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Subject: Re: [C-L]_ How many community meetings to make a decision?
>
> On Tue, Jul 13, 2021 at 10:26 PM Muriel Kranowski wrote:
>
> > It depends on the issue you're trying to decide about -- it might be very
> > important but simple enough to agree about in one meeting, or it may be
> > complicated or it may have some big emotions associated with it that have
> > to be worked through in the course of two, three, or more meetings. And
> it
> > depends on your community's style and method of making decisions.
> >
>
> I'm asking about your community, so that's what I'd like to hear about.
> Whatever style and method your community uses, it sounds like you are able
> to make a decision in one meeting, which is different from the way many
> cohousing communities who use consensus work. How would your community
> decide to make a decision in one meeting? How often does that happen?
>
>
> > As for "how many meetings" -- if you mean plenary meetings, our standard
> > schedule is one a month but if there are multiple requests for plenary
> > agenda time for the current month, we might have a 2nd one.
>
>
> Thanks! How would your community go ahead with planning a second plenary in
> a month? How quick is that turnaround (finding a facilitator, deciding on a
> date, etc.)?
>
> But in the early years we met once a week. (Ouch.)
> >
>
> For most of the last twenty years, we met twice a month, but recently have
> gone to once a month, and it's definitely impacting the speed of our
> decision-making.
>
> Maggi Rohde
> Touchstone Cohousing
> Ann Arbor, MI
>
> >
> >
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