I came across this document today and thought it might be a useful way of structuring our decision-making. It’s a long read but is interesting if you are interested in group dynamics. It could provide a clear structure for what we are more or less doing already in the way we make decisions.
I’m wary of Consensus. It tends towards some social behaviour patterns that aren’t very healthy. My friend Jake (@conomara might know him from Sanford?) wrote a good piece on it, having been a part of several groups who used Consensus as a decision-making tool:
It is too unwieldy to take decisions effectively, allows egotistical people and meeting-lovers to dominate, and ultimately it can make us lie to ourselves and to each other.
That’s interesting. I’ve never seen it used in real life.
One weakness of consensus decision-making is already known by those who use it: certain people who are confident, good at speaking, used to speaking, often dominate.
< ducks >
I enjoy voicing a strong opinion. It’s quite a primal thing. I also fear railroading my opinions on others, but that’s more reflexive, after the fact. So in practice I try to stand up for something, but be happy to acknowledge others and accepting if the decision goes another way. What attracts me particularly in the dissensus piece is how this modelled. See this section, emphasis added –
Good consensus working recognises that if we are to work together, we are going to have to learn to put aside our own opinions sometimes – perhaps only temporarily, perhaps for a long time – in order to agree on actions. But I think it’s important that when we do so, we are able to express our dissent, and that it be clear that agreement is partial and contingent – because that’s what real, messy collectives involve.
I think there’s value to dissent, in the same way there’s value in mistakes – I only really learn when things break my mental model of how things are or should have been. So noting the contingencies to agreement (or plain disagreement) along with the decision is a good way of framing how the consequences of that decision should learnt from as time goes on.
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What I liked about the consensus model was the difference between standing aside and blocking - but I suspect for it to work well in practice you would need a smallish group and a powerful shared goal, with no great power imbalances within the group.
I don’t know where this fits in (perhaps nowhere) but I was on a board of diverse people and we used the ‘norms of collaboration’. I found it very useful because it always made me pause and try to understand where the other person was coming from, and basically to shut up & listen more. There are a few different variations but the key points were: to assume others’ positive intentions; to be aware of the impact of your own behaviour; to try to understand what the other person is saying by paraphrasing it; to reason using data; to ask questions in an effort to understand, rather than simply rejecting something. We had an extra one, which was: go to the source of the disagreement.