decision-making models follow-up

December 8, 2004 at 9:42 pm | In Uncategorized |

Monday night I wrote about the new Hub Housing Cooperative and our decision-making model deliberation. Two people responded to that post:

By email (excerpt):

Our management of concensus always allowed each person time to discuss their views on a matter. It was stressed that if a person or persons disagreed with something they must have the opportunity to express their views. Nevertheless my experience was that even if a person stood firm in disagreement they never invoked the right to stop the action.

In a comment (excerpt):

I’ve found in my experience that there will be times in the life of any group of more than two people when absolute agreement among all the members is just not possible. I think you need to have a process built in by which members can agree to disagree and still be able to come to a group decision.

Tonight we met again. We handled other issues first and then the remaining bylaws that were not in dispute. We had time remaining so decided to give Article V another try. After a few back and forth comments, especially asking the one hold-out what concerns remained (an example was: we’re all bike fanatics and we want to buy some expensive piece of equipment but we have one new member that’s not a cyclist and that person doesn’t want to spend the money so they block us from doing what we want), we asked for proposed solutions to this person’s concerns.

This person suggested and we adopted adding a sunset provision to the paragraph about the consensus model so that on April 30, 2006, this paragraph expires and we are forced to adopt a decision-making model fresh before our corporate renewal papers are due at the end of May. Everyone is happy and we have bylaws! Amazing!

categories: co-op housing

4 Comments

  1. Congratulations on coming to an agreement. I guess by April 2006 (2006? Really?) you’ll have a better idea of whether you want to stick with the absolute consensus idea or whether your group would benefit from being able to settle intractable disagreements by vote.

    On the other hand, even a year and a half might not be enough time to truly judge. The group in which I experienced these issues was together for six years, operating by unanimous consensus for that entire time, before the unresolvable issue came up. None of us could believe that one issue could break the bond we had formed over those years as a group of sincere spiritual seekers, but in the end, one issue (money, of course) was all it took. That’s why from now on I will always advocate democracy over consensus. Unanimous consensus requires either perfect people, infinite patience, or both - and how likely are you to find your group filled with either of those?

    Comment by Lori — December 11, 2004 #

  2. We settled on April 2006 because we will be closing on the building in early January and then moving in sometime in the spring or summer, depending on how the move-outs of current tenants and the contstruction all works out, plus, we have to send our annual report to the State every year in May so it seemed an obvious time (the person that thought of the idea wanted us to review the decision in a year, but 16 months seems fine because that’ll still be less than a year). Based on what you’re saying here, perhaps it’ll be best for us to leave the sunset in every year and just stick with it on a temporary basis for some time.

    …

    Comment by Ted — December 12, 2004 #

  3. It’s interesting what you say about perfection. I never would’ve come up with this sunset provision idea on my own, nor did anyone in the group propose it until we reached an impasse. If we’d been working under a majority-rules situation, we simply would’ve voted and that’d have been it. And this one person would’ve been unhappy. As it stands, everyone is happy.

    I definitely see the pragmatic side of majority, but somehow I have to believe that there is something higher that we can attain, all contrary examples notwithstanding.

    By the way, if consensus breaks down for any reason, the bylaws we adopted call for bringing in an outside mediator and if that doesn’t work, an outside arbitrator so we shouldn’t ever reach a point where we cannot more forward.

    Lori (and all), I’ll definitely be inviting you to our housewarming/open house so you can meet everyone and then keep up on our progress! :-)

    peace,

    Comment by ted — December 12, 2004 #

  4. Sounds like your group is thinking things through with beautiful care. If my group had had the mediation/arbitration provision in place, we probably would have been able to come to some resolution. Good luck with your undertaking!

    Comment by Lori — December 12, 2004 #

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