Veronica:
At 01:32 AM 6/19/96, you wrote:
>Repying to Consensus Decision-making..
>
>When teaching facilitating skills, we suggest a definition which is "Consensus
>means that each group is willing to support it." Then we spend time bringing
>clarity to what support looks like in terms of behaviours.
May we offer our own working definition of Consensus which we require all
workshop/session participants to adhere:
"For our purposes, Consensus means [that] You will support it [the idea] in
the workshop, and You will not subvert it when you leave. Silence is
assent, not evasion. [If it's] Anything else and you must speak up
immediately so that we can get your needs on the table. Do I have you
individual commitment [to this definition]?"
This definition is usually preceded by our statement that, "We want three
groups to be successful in this workshop: each individual at the table, the
[vendor], and [the OEM/buyer]. [Note: this example is from an automotive
OEM for which we do work, but the goal is to acknowledge each person and
each company at the table.] To be successful, we must be careful to define
Consensus."
Many are surprised at this definition and there is some obvious discomfort
seen from time to time as a participant realizes that our session will
demand exposure of an issue(s) and the implication of a solution rather than
"meeting as a comfortable place to rest." And of course, we have relapse
behavior that we must identify and draw out throughout the workshop, but
this Consensus definition has worked for us by putting the teams on notice
that a higher standard of accountability will be required of them.
Our empirical experience would heartily agree with Tom Kayzer's research
that the definition of consensus decision making as "We can live with it"
lets people off the hook and tends to a lower, if not lowest, common
denominator.
Best regards, Gordon Housworth
Intellectual Capital Group
ghidra@modulor.com
Tel: 810-626-1310
--Gordon Housworth <ghidra@modulor.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>