“If you can stand with me in the year 2020 and celebrate how well we are living with all living things, can you look back and tell me the baby steps it took to get here?”

~RuthAnn

On the other hand, when it’s time to hire a contractor, any one of us could block the decision, according to our bylaws, yet the ones that didn’t make any phone calls to set up appointments to get bids are the same ones that aren’t living in the units with no kitchens, they don’t feel that it would be right to exercise that option even though the bids seem too high.

And on the third hand, when it’s time to adjust some of the definitions we use in our formulas to calculate monthly payments and ultimate determine a sales price for a share when someone leaves, and one person is uncomfortable approving for reasons unclear to us all, probably even him, if it’s not an emergency, we simply don’t waste time with it. We let him sit with it. If he read it, perhaps he could fix it. And when it’s really, really needed, he’ll either figure out what’s wrong and help us help him, or he’ll simply approve along with the rest of us.

So I guess my sense of all of this is, voting is not needed (as if anyone was suggesting it was, ha!), and consensus is only needed when it’s really needed. Do the work you can. Ask others for help. When you need group resources, make an invitation that respects the whole group. Consensus just happens.

it was quickly and easily agreed to come to the next meeting and bring one thing you loved. we went around and told our stories, one at a time. then we naturally began noticing the common theme(s). marvelling really.

so the next month we “checked in” about what seemed important. and then marvelled again at the variations we were living on common theme(s). we went on like that for 2+ years. nobody ever missed a single monthly meeting. and then we had a last meeting, rather unannounced, unplanned, but obvious, as well. and it was done.

it was in that time that i learned to recognize what seemed like local, personal movements, shifts, challenges, etc as common, simultaneous, universal. we several times considered taking up some “action” and also considered expanding the group, doing something with what we’d discovered, but always successfully avoided any of that. to the good, i think.

we all remember that group, which did nothing that any of us can point to, as one of the more remarkable groups any of us have ever been part of. in some ways all we ever did was propose and notice consensus, and then go out and apply it in our individual work/lives.

which reminds me… it’s not consensus from many, e pluribus unum, that is the hard part… it’s achieving that state in a meeting that then results in everyone leaving still an individual, and knowing what to do when they get back out in the world by themselves. action is individual. even when it’s “group action” it takes individual actions and commitments for the group to appear at the appointed time.

and that is how i think consensus wastes time. it says to everyone: “don’t DO anything, until we all agree.” it hold individuality and action captive to the one, true, yet to be decided, ever elusive, way. stops the breathing. consensus: how a group holds it’s breath as ransom, while demanding a future that can’t be achieved without (aerobic) activity.

Finding consensus is necessary to move forward. Building consensus keeps you in one place and is counter to what you probably want to accomplish.

There is a great idea born every minute. The difference is the idea that becomes action. In a room of fifteen people, there will be many great ideas, but what idea will move forward, grow and flourish. Action is what is required. I firmly believe that it doesn’t matter as much “what we do, but that we do”.

i’m going to sympathize with the original title here. building consensus does waste time. finding consensus, on the other hand, accelerates everything.

the logo example might be a good one, but it doesn’t matter if the committee or the sub-committee or the hired graphic artist go do the work of generating options. the ideas can be generated in any one or more of those meetings/settings.

once the ideas are generated, “building concensus” has always seemed to me a benign, even benevolent, way of deciding what to do. and it’s always seemed to waste a lot of time, because in its interest in keeping everyone together on the decision, it always seems to rely on keeping all the bits of the decision together as well. so many requirements, imposed. “finding concensus” or just “noticing” concensus would do the opposite: tease the decisions apart.

deciding together is tough. deciding on the decision criteria often even messier. i always advise folks not to talk about open space as a process, talk about purpose. talking about the process, ost or decision criteria, is like sending a bill to the rules committee… where it can be tied up indefinitely.

finding consensus is about asking *if* everyone can agree to the whole proposal, but *what* about any proposal or situation or question can the whole group agree on. if we can’t agree on action, how about structures, rules, decision criteria, etc.? and if not on that, then what about vision, strategy, dream, direction? and if not that, then what about purpose? and if we are not agreed on purpose, then maybe we’re not one group at all…. or maybe we have to click back (in this medicine wheel sort of view) to action… maybe we just don’t agree on what’s actually happening, the action that already is.

no matter at what level we find agreement, action (next), structure, vision, purpose, action (past), structure (causes?)… the only question that seems to move things forward is “what do we agree on?” rather than any rule that says “we must all now agree on…” before we can go forward.

so the logo decision, throw out a bunch of ideas, in committee, subcommittee, working session, wherever… and then notice what most people like best. look for the broad agreements. then, even if the work isn’t done, those become the building blocks for the next round of ideas.

seems a bit like the nature of order, christopher alexander, stuff. where does life come from? can’t be made. can only be unfolded out of other life. where does consensus come from? can’t be made either. can only be unfolded out of other consensus.

what if we never talked about decisions, or decision criteria, or visions, or even purposes, explicitly. never raised them as essential parts of the process? what if we only asked over and over again, “so, what is it that we all agree on right now?” and then we did only those things?

Can picture the garage, good feelings. And, for some reason thought of front porch. Who is on the front porch, does it matter and what role do/might they play?

Also a thought about an earlier posting by George, I sometimes find that when shadow conversations develop, ex: group bogged down about agreement on logo, that the options offered really aren’t a good fit for situation or group anyway and when the “right” option appears agreement will occur. Sometimes the smallest-possible-action-forward is simply to agree that maybe there are still other options out there that might be a more successful fit and/or to review the processes that led to the current options. Breakdown probably occurred much earlier, often lack of agreement based on something that happened before or during development process