A Useful Tool for Decision-Making Teams
Teams that always agree are weak. Teams that can’t make decisions are cars without wheels.
Some teams advise. Other teams make decisions together. If you’re on a team that makes decisions together, this post is for you.
Ineffective teams are lousy at decision-making.
7 dangers of team decision-making:
- Circling the black hole. Too much talk, not enough deciding.
- Listening to dominant players and ignoring quiet members.
- One negative person holds the team hostage. People who play nice lose when one person feels powerful being negative.
- Small people who have personal agendas can’t see beyond themselves.
- Decisions that address every possible objection are useless.
- Lack of accountability. Who owns the decision once it’s made?
- Turbulence requires responsiveness.
When consensus matters most:
- Whole organizations are impacted.
- Authority is low. Distrust is high.
- Radical disruption will occur.
- Financial exposure runs high.
- Ownership of the entire group is necessary.
7 necessities for team decision-making:
“Thinking isn’t to agree or disagree. That’s voting.” Robert Frost
- Diversity.
- Shared information.
- Transparency.
- Trust.
- Accountability.
- Responsibility.
- Flexibility.
4 tips for team decision-making:
- After reasonable discussion, ask, “Is there anything preventing us from making a decision right now?
- Send participants into each other’s areas before discussions.
- Assign homework and research.
- Ask participants to defend each other’s suggestions.
Click here to download the team decision-making tool.
How much agreement is enough:
- Don’t beat dead horses. Agree that perfect decisions are rare.
- Determine how much consensus is enough. (Download the tool.)
- Shoot for informed consent. Perfect consensus is a tragic myth for unthinking teams.
What makes team decision-making work?
Wow — the tool is a very nice way to articulate degrees of agreement with a choice or decision. I can see lots of use for this tool on volunteer boards and community groups where there often isn’t a strong organization hierarchy, and where often everyone is a Type A that thinks their opinion has high moral ground.
Great application, Gerry. Thanks for adding to the conversation today.
As always you start my morning with a new way of thinking! This tool is going to come in handy! Thank you for sharing!
Thanks, SB. Enjoy. And if you learn anything, please let me know.
Very interesting tool.
I can see using your divisions almost as voting buttons., I was thinking what if everyone involved input where they stand in the AgreeDisagree continuum, then results are looked at and next steps decided from there.
Maybe it’s move forward, don’t move at all, or more research/discussion to see where middle grounders will move towards.
Then I started to think should certain people or positions have more weight to their votes?
Pro – if they are accountable for the results and are putting their reputation or position on the line, then I kind of think their vote counts a bit or a lot more.
Con – putting different weights takes away from true democracy.
I see a need for the voters to be stakeholders and may or may not include the task-doers. Although we need task-doer buy in as well.
On it’s own, the tool is great even for discussions on a team. I have this feeling it could be used for more than this as well.
As I mentioned, very interesting!
Thank you for sharing and firing up my brain to think about this.
Wow, thanks for your reflection on this Nik. Very useful. Should you try some ways to use and adapt this tool, I would love to learn what you learn. Cheers… feed free to email me at dan@leadershipfreak.com
What I like about this tool is that it gives the team a way to frame the discussion. Start by asking everyone: What would it take to move you up one level? And then go from there.
Jennifer,
I was trying to hit the thumbs up button but my fat little finger hit the thumbs down bottom. I tried to correct it and hit the thumb’s down button again.
Sorry about that. I liked your comment.
Thanks, Jennifer. “What would it take to move you up one level?” = Brilliant approach.
Quakers operate their business meetings on consensus, a high bar to reach. They have a practice of standing aside which means they don’t support the decision, but they won’t block it either. They also use silence when at an impasse, which can be a powerful tool as well.
Thanks for adding this interesting angle, Bonnie. The quaker way of not blocking the decision seems useful. I wonder if it includes supporting others? Don’t block the decision. Don’t complain after the meeting. When it comes time to take action, get in the boat and row with.