The discussion on indaba brings to mind experience in group work involving
American Indians, so-called "native Americans". Their way of making
decisions, historically, is to involve a "management" group, sitting in a
circle, passing the pipe. I am unaware if there were any "programmed"
silence. However the discussion continued for however long it took until
consensus was reached.
Possibly because the federal government didn't understand what was going
on, they thought the Indians were stupid and couldn't make a decision; so
they needed to make the decisions for them.
A possible message here is that if you're going to have silence in
meetings, or use consensus-based management, do it on a tight schedule.
-- JOHN WARFIELD Johnwfield@aol.com