[matilda] The myth of consensus

[atw]

OK, bit long this but seeing as tonights meeting will be only 45 mins
long I thought it best to post start the debate here first.

steve



THE MYTH OF CONSENSUS
=====================

One of the myths of Matilda is that decisions in Monday meetings are
made by consensus. However 'consensus' literally means 'agreement' and
clearly many decisions made do not have the agreement of everyone or
sometimes even the majority.

Leaving aside the fact that many Matilda people don't even go to the
Monday meetings, for those that do attend decisions are made by either
the majority, a minority, or everyone. Only a minority is needed to
oppose a proposal so sometimes you get minority rule. Even on issues
where everyone agrees and you cannot call this a consensus process
since it's not a prerequisite of the system.

The reason we don't use consensus stems from several things.


1. Overuse of the default position
----------------------------------

Firstly there is a default position that nothing is allowed unless
agreed by the Supreme Council of the Monday Meetings. If this was the
position of a government it would be an extremely Draconian one since
it's citizens would have no rights at all. Having this position means
we don't need to reach consensus to carry on in the meeting. Items can
be skipped over and happily left.


2. Lack of time
---------------

A second problem is time. Most Monday meetings are only an hour and
half long. To attempt to reach consensus on all the issues that the 15
or so people can bring to a meeting is optimistic to put it mildly. In
fact most of the time it can't be done. This particular topic
(decision making problems) has been on the agenda since November and
only got about a 2 minute slot at the last meeting.

If decisions can't be made and the default position is that nothing
can go ahead until everyone is agreed then it is inevitable that ideas
and creative energy gets choked by the inadequate decision making
process. The situation is probably even worse than it appears. If
someone suspects their idea will meet with opposition they may loose
inspiration before they've even started. They may not want to face the
debate in a Monday meeting only to find there is insufficent time to
decide whether or not it can go ahead.

To impose a time limit on how long it takes for everyone to agree on
something is absurd. It takes as long as it takes. Rushed and hurried
decisions are often likely to be bad decisions.


3. No shared vision or aims
---------------------------

Consensus decision making works best when when the group has an agreed
target or aim. The more specific this is the easier it will be to
reach consensus. For instance if the goal of a group was, "to make the
world a better place," then clearly there'd be a million different
ways to go about that. However if the goal was to say, "shut down that
fur shop on Ecclesall Road" then reaching consensus would be much
easier because the range of options would be much narrower.

Consensus decision making process at Matilda came out of a very clear
goal: to protest against the G8 summit. Since then there has been no
clear aims or shared goals of people using Matilda. A symptom of this
has been the impossibility of getting an agreed statement of what
Matilda is about. It was something that was brought up months ago and
yet we're still no nearer to now. Sub groups have gone away to try to
come up with something but without success. This has had the effect
that we've not been able to produce a flyer about the place at all and
there is only the tersest of descriptions about Matilda on our
website.


4. Attempts to control people
-----------------------------

A fourth problem I see is the fact that control of the space has been
tranlated into control of users of the space. In some cases this has
been well motivated and agreed by everyone, for example no violence
(although in reality this hasn't worked). However in other cases the
motivation has been an attempt to foist one's personal beliefs on to
others. An example is the refusal of the art shop on the grounds that
no one should make private profit in Matilda. Whether or not this is a
worthy principle is besides the point. The fact is that it has never
been agreed by any of the Matilda meetings. It is simply some people
attempting to get others to act according to their personal beliefs.
In meetings and because of the lack of a shared vision, the
consequence has been an unresovable issue where it is impossible to
agree or, in other words, achieve consensus.


What can be done?
-----------------

Since we have no shared aims it would be good if people could be aware
of their own ideological biases and respecting the fact that other
people using the space don't share them or want to be governed by
them.

Setting realistic time limits on meetings and planning extra meetings
to resolve issues where needed. It would also help if issues were
discussed at length beforehand so that people coming to a meeting have
a good idea of the different ideas around an issue. This list or the
website forum are good for these along with informal chats and
collective meetings.

An alternative would be some kind of system of voting - it would
certainly be less time consuming.

The new collectives system should go a long way in helping this by
lessening the amount of decisions made in the Monday meetings.
Collectives are "to be trusted to organise their own events". Great.
However it's worth noting that 3 of the 4 amendents to the new
collectives proposal were aimed at reducing the autonomy of the
collectives. None aimed to increase it. The Supreme Council will not
give up its power easily it seems.

Perhaps the best improvement of all would be if people just learned
respect each other a bit more, worked cooperatively and trusted others
to get on with their projects as they see fit.





Independent grassroots news: www.sheffield.indymedia.org.uk



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