vision2020@moscow.com: Consensus 2

Consensus 2

Jo Williams (tajs@potlatch.com)
Sun, 29 Mar 1998 09:39:33 -0800

Visionaries,
One of the drawbacks of email is that intonations of speech and word
emphasis are difficult to convey and compensate for in written form. In
follow-up email after the initial consensus proposal I shared my thoughts
on the proposed process; problems of
l)approach; as the PBS speaker pointed out, we often get so caught up in
defending a position that seeing or admitting other good points becomes
impossible.
2)procedure; given that the Moscow City Council has already voted and
money has been put down on a specific piece of property, is it too late
to gather a larger/better consensus?
3) is it possible to create a setting with a strong moderator (as others
have suggested) that will defuse the "immovable object vs irresistible
force' and change it into a circular or moving/shifting scenario with
positive input.
4)drawbacks of being the 'idea' person ; my picture of this process WAS
vague; how do you do it? Can we do it? I want to believe we can.
As an earlier posting of mine (concerning campus computer problems) will
show, I don't believe that ignoring problems makes them go away. If my
concerns about the process of building a new consensus were taken as
defeatist, I meant to convey a tone of seriousness- this process will
have REAL problems, as Robert Probasco and B.J. Swanson point out.
A new suggestion that the Moscow Council members join this new process
helped to relieve my procedural concerns; the possibility that Vision
2020 will organize this exercise has helped relieve my problems about
setting and moderator. The recent posting offering yet another pool
configuration of leisure and separate lap pool may hook up well with the
endowment suggestion.
Am I a group person? No. Am I an organizer? No. Am I a moderator?
Definitely not.
I DO have doubts that this can work. But I also believe it CAN work if
everyone brings their own particular expertise to bear- one more time.
This is so close, so do-able- so incredibly possible --and so darned
difficult. Jo Williams tajs@potlatch.com

This archive courtesy of:
First Step Internet