Systemic Consensing

Respect for a person is shown in the way you treat their No

GeePaw Hill on Consensus

Consensus is what makes teams make deep change.

It’s important to understand, and be explicit about it, when we’re trying to build consensus, because it’s not well-understood:

Consensus is not unanimity.

We don’t have to all agree that choice X is right. We have to all agree that, if choice X is wrong, it won’t destroy our community.

Be explicit about this, and teach people about “standing aside”. We stand aside when we don’t agree that a particular decision is the best decision, but we also don’t think it’s a decision that will kill us.

Standing aside does not mean that we won’t follow the decision. It’s not an opting-out of the community. It’s actually an opting-in, a way to recognize and accept that the community is actually more important than most of the decisions it makes.

Deep Consensing

Cycle:

  1. Describe the problem
  2. Prepare
    • Ask the question of authority
    • Define boundaries
    • Describe passive solution
  3. Cycle
    1. Collect wishes
    2. Find proposals
      • good enough for now and safe enough try
      • more than one
      • status quo is included
    3. Decide
      • Vote on proposals
      • Rank the proposals by resistance voting
      • Clarify resistance
      • Check starting energy (Do people want to take responsibility?)
    4. Either execute or start the cycle again
  4. Execute
    • Celebrate
    • Reflect on the process
    • Execute
  5. Validate Impact

Resistance voting : Scale from 0 (no resistance) to 10 (highest resistance)

Quick Consent

One Proposal to vote on.

Possible type of votes are:

  1. I like the idea (No objections)
  2. Ok, for me (No objections)
  3. I have reasonable concern (Objection)
    • And here they are
    • And this is my idea how to integrate my needs into the proposal

Decision by one person or group

  1. Write down the “task”
    • why the decision needs to be made
    • boundaries a decider can move inside
    • the needed skills.
  2. Suggest candidates
  3. Use consent to decide, who will be the decider
  4. Decider talks to people to find out their needs and ideas.
  5. Decider decides
  6. Decider tells everybody how, and why he/her decided that way
  7. Decider asks for forgiveness.
    • People appreciate the hard decision, the decider had to make
    • People express their gratitude

Credits: Method developed by Erich Visotschnig and Siegfried Schrotta and presented by it-agile

Credits: https://www.geepawhill.org/