How Consent Decision Making is better than consensus or majority vote and why you should start using it in your meetings.

What's wrong with consensus or a majority vote? In short:

👉🏼 Consensus - reaching consensus often pushes towards mediocre solutions as people need to strip their ideas of the juiciest parts.

👉🏼 Majority vote - hard, unpopular decisions won't be chosen even if they are great.

🌄Consent Decision Making is based on three answers which expand the range of tolerance from black and white to an invitation to discuss.

You can use them to quickly check the sentiment for an idea and know what needs to be discussed to make a good decision. These are:

I AGREE 👍 - simply agreeing.

I have a CONCERN 🫳 - I may not agree 100% but I don't see major risks going forward. I can share my concerns but I don't have to.

I have an OBJECTION 🫴 - I have important information that we cannot ignore and should discuss.

Notice that the gesture for objection is an open palm that symbolises passing a gift. Objections are seen with the intention of helping everyone make a better decision.

Try it with your team, see how it influences your discussions and share in the comments how it went!

The concept of Consent Decision Making is taken from Sociocracy3.0.

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