Decisions, decisions

Quite a few social enterprises are committed to a consensus-based approach to decision making. By “consensus” I mean that nearly everyone has input, or a say, or a vote in just about every decision. The idea is that unless people have the opportunity to shape each decision, they won’t support the implementation. You hear things like “we want your buy-in” or “every opinion matters.”

This approach is often a full pendulum-swing away from the old command & control model — top down decision making, my way or the highway.

Unfortunately both approaches leave a lot to be desired. I’ll spare you the rant on command & control (you could probably write that yourself). But what’s wrong with the consensus approach? Well, for one thing, not everyone is equally qualified to participate in every decision. And with too many cooks in the kitchen, consensus usually takes too long. Decisions tend to be watered down, weakened by compromise after compromise. When consensus can’t be reached, the process can stall out. Sound familiar?

Fortunately there are other options. Folks in the future-of-work movement have been experimenting with new decision processes for a while now, and they offer several useful models.

In my experience, most teams don’t take time to be truly intentional about their decision process. They don’t step back to ask themselves some fundamental questions, starting with: What kinds of decisions do we need to make? For each type of decision, who can/should decide? What is our process for each type of decision?

More intentional, effective decision-making often leads to greater agility and enhanced organization-wide learning.