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Geoff
Ball & Associates Enabling people to work Together BETTER Geoff Ball & Associates, 164 Main Street, Room 210 Los Altos, CA 94022, Phone 650-941-1497, ghball@aol.com |
City
Councils, Government Committees and Task Forces
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| Priority setting | Process counts when setting priorities in a Council or a Board for large numbers of projects. Our work with the Pleasanton City Council created an efficient and powerful process based on: prior assessment by each member of each of the projects, computer management of the details, projection of the evolving list from the computer up onto the screen, high quality discussion on the relative importance of each project, and three out of five votes as a clear decision standard. By starting each priority setting effort with team building we created an interpersonal environment that supported listening and clear articulation of member's interests. (See City Council Priority Setting.) |
| Team Building | Working together workshops provide an opportunity for council members to construct understandings and build collegial relationships. Whereas council meetings with an audience and the pressures of immediate decisions don’t allow dialog on HOW we work together, these workshops can focus on elements needed for members of city councils to work together effectively. (See City Council Team Building paper) |
| Public processes and consensus building | With sufficient intent by the parties and a high quality process to enable collaborative work even really difficult complexes of issues can be worked thru to resolution. Not every conflict can be resolved AND, in our experience, many can be. For example, we worked with the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency as facilitator of their Consensus Building Workshop in 1986. Under the mediative leadership of Bill Morgan, then Executive Director, and with an inspired staff and with parties committed to making the process successful we reached many agreements and in some ways established a pattern for working through development and conservation conflicts that lasted a number of years. (See Making Consensus Decisions.) |
