How we make decisions

Distributing decision making across our whole membership

The philosophy for our decision-making at MICO is: 'Good enough for now, safe enough to try'. This removes tension created by pressure to find the perfect solutions, promotes innovation and allows responsiveness to
changing conditions.

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We distribute all the work it takes to plan and build a cohousing development across a number of 'Working Groups' (as shown in the diagram below) but  meet regularly as a full Membership  - particularly when we need to make important decisions that affect all members. 

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To make decisions, MICO uses a combination of 'consensus' and 'consent' methods for non-hierarchical decision making, depending on what decision is being made. Traditional majority voting processes can leave some people feeling unheard, frustrated and overruled.

In contrast, consensus is a way of making decisions that helps ensure everyone’s voice is heard and valued and that everyone can support the decision. The eventual decisions tend to have more buy-in from everyone involved. 

Consent is a form of consensus, but the focus is on 'no-one objecting' rather than 'everyone agreeing' so there is scope for decisions to be made more quickly and action to happen.

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You can find out more about these more consensual ways of making decisions at Seeds For Change. 

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You can find our full documentation on how we make decisions here.