For weeks (if not months), I’ve been meaning to go back to a post I read on emergence. Today I started the journey, leaping from one stepping stone to another and now have two streams of thought competing for attention – one around strategy and the other around groups and consensus. I’ll stick with this […]
It’s common for people who value consensus to want to make the meetings they have as part of their everyday lives more consensual. So the question of how to use consensus in more traditional, often hierarchical, settings comes up regularly. Saturday’s Transition Leicester group was no exception and it’s spurred me to share a few […]
On Saturday I had the rare experience of having to walk just a few hundred yards from home to deliver a 1 day workshop on consensus decision making to the good folk of Transition Leicester. We met in the Friends Meeting House (well-priced, good access, well equipped kitchen, lovely garden). The group was wide-ranging in […]
13 participants and 4 facilitators, including myself, gathered in Oxford this weekend for Consensus: in at the deep end a full weekend workshop to explore consensus decision-making in more depth than consensus training usually allows. Of course consensus is a widely used word. You hear it everywhere – the Blairs, Browns and Camerons of this […]
Upcoming workshop: 8th-10th October 2010 Plunge into a deeper exploration of consensus and facilitation in activist movements – whether in small or large groups, networks, open or closed groups. This weekend is for people with experience of facilitating consensus who want to deepen their skills and understanding, to share problems and look for solutions. It […]
Peter Chowla from the Bretton Woods Project shares some insights on strategy for small NGOs, taken from the BWP’s current round of strategic planning. You can hear his thoughts in this 10 minute interview: pchowla_interview We’ve also transcribed a few nuggets below: Why do strategy? Seven Years on [from our last strategic review], after a […]
I’ve just read Cooperative Streets – Neighbours in the UK, a recent Co-operativesUK report. It charts the decline in neighbourliness in the UK over the last 28 years. Amongst other things, the average number of neighbours we each know by name has declined from 13 to 7. That’s perhaps unsurprising when you read that only […]
York’s a lovely city any day of the year, but on Friday it was in full sunshine. Perhaps not ideal when you know you’re going to be indoors all day. The World Carfree Network was holding its annual conference: Towards Carfree Cities IX . Friday, day 5 of a 7 day programme, was the day […]
Sunday afternoon was spent at the rather magnificent Seale Hayne, an old country estate and ex- agricultural college near Newton Abbot in Devon. I was working with a small group of Transition Towns folk from as far afield as Paris and Forres at their annual conference. We were looking at ‘structuring and facilitating efficient meetings’. […]
Just a hasty post to point you at Lynn Walsh’s post on emergence. I’ve only skimmed it and already I’m thinking of its applications to groups working by consensus decision-making. There’s a useful language here and some useful imagery that a lot of the autonomous, non-hierarchical groups we work with may find exciting and intriguing. […]
