【Consent-based Decision Making】A voting method emphasizing “no one objects,” where all participants in a meeting can put forward their views and take turns to speak
Titansoft learned that sociocracy and Consent-based Decision Making facilitates groups to make decisions and adopted this approach in daily operations. Have you heard about these decision-making methods?
"The boss decides": the boss makes the call, and others follow.
"The majority decides": the minority follows the majority's decision, and the majority respects the opinion of the minority. However, a discussion that goes wrong may lead to the "Tyranny of the majority."he "Tyranny of the majority."
"Consensus decides": the decision from the consensus of a group. Everyone must be satisfied before the conclusion can be made, but this often takes enormous communication time and cost, or it is difficult to reach the ideal common conclusion.
The Consent-based Decision Making voting method emphasizes a "no one objects," in which all meeting participants can make points and take turns to speak. They will then use the disagreements to modify the proposal and repeatedly assess if the proposal would seriously impact the goal.
The proposals will be discussed and modified until no objection is brought forward. The method allows the participants to discuss, communicate, and think on common ground to achieve the goals together. Consent-based Decision Making allows more people to be involved and provide ideas. It also allows the minority to object to the high-risk choices to avoid the blind spots of the group.
Since it only pursues "no one objects," the decision time can be shortened, and there are more options or improvement possibilities than "consensus decision."
At Titansoft, we use it on various decisions such as Out-Link elections, Double Link Circle resolutions, and Retro resolutions.
