Consent based decision making

When teams don’t have a standard decision-making process, every decision can be chaotic. Everyone wants to be involved in every decision, work slows down, you end up with too many meetings and communication overload, and the team often ends up with a risk-averse attitude.

So instead of trying to get everyone to agree on every decision, adopt a consent based decision making process as your default. Consent implies “the absence of objections”.

The flowchart below describes how an asynchronous, consent-based decision-making process could work.

1. A team member writes up a proposal in a shared document for the decision they want to make. They also write a time by which they expect to hear from everyone else. There shouldn’t be a false urgency to this timeline.

2. If a decision seems irreversible, then the team or the team member proposing, should attempt to make it reversible.

3. People have the chance to respond to the proposal. They do so through inline comments or questions. This is also the time to raise objections if any.

4. The proposer can then incorporate suggestions and amend the proposal if necessary. 

5. If there are no major objections after this, the decision goes through, otherwise, people can get onto a meeting and sort things out.

6. The team should default to a meeting if, despite their efforts, a decision seems irreversible. 

A consent based decision making process

With a writing focussed, asynchronous, consent-based decision-making process, you can avoid wanting to be perfect all the time and settle for “good enough”. You get to slow down everyone’s thought process, so the proposer is deliberate about what they’re suggesting. Everyone else just needs to think about whether they have any objections or just suggestions. On balance you’ll make more decisions than if you were to take a consensus-based approach.