I've been on the board of three community tech orgs (user group, hacker space and coop).
Each was pathologically mismanaged to the point of embezzlement (literally) using consensus rules. I managed to force Roberts rules to be adopted in two of them.
The end result was that the user group that didn't adopt them stagnated and no new members have stayed for longer than three months in the last 5 years. The other two grew to the point where they were self sustaining. The coop managed to negotiate a 50 year lease on a property from the city council at $1 a year, the hacker space ended up expelling the whole board for mismanagement and reduced the monthly fees to a quarter of what they were because we were drowning in cash.
Consensus is a way to run therapy groups, if you want to get anything done peoples feelings only get in the way.
Each was pathologically mismanaged to the point of embezzlement (literally) using consensus rules. I managed to force Roberts rules to be adopted in two of them.
The end result was that the user group that didn't adopt them stagnated and no new members have stayed for longer than three months in the last 5 years. The other two grew to the point where they were self sustaining. The coop managed to negotiate a 50 year lease on a property from the city council at $1 a year, the hacker space ended up expelling the whole board for mismanagement and reduced the monthly fees to a quarter of what they were because we were drowning in cash.
Consensus is a way to run therapy groups, if you want to get anything done peoples feelings only get in the way.