Decision-making 101: How to get consensus right

Next up: Figure out which alternatives are both best and most likely to be accepted by most of the group. Schedule a second round of one-on-one conversations, whose purpose is to nudge everyone toward the most likely alternative — the one most likely to be sufficiently agreeable to everyone involved.

Yes, this is a lot of work. Consensus decision-making is, as noted, expensive and time-consuming, which is one reason it should be saved for when maximal buy-in is more important than any other aspect of choosing a direction.

Consensus playbook, part 2: The meeting

Now is the time for a meeting — a consensus check, consensus check because everyone involved is close enough to the same preferences that the meeting’s energy is best expended getting everyone to commit, in public, that this is what they agree to. Again, that’s agree to not agree with. And a significant part of the meeting is documenting, for the record, for each member of the group, how it is, if they don’t agree with the chosen alternative but do agree to it, why they are okay with it even if it isn’t, from their perspective, perfect.