How to make progress with difficult decisions.

Empowering Decision Making: Consent vs Consensus

The Consent Decision-Making process:

A consent decision-making approach minimises frustration by following these steps to reach a decision:

1. Be clear on who is the accountable decision-maker.
2. The accountable decision-maker listens to everyone’s collective wisdom and knowledge and shares their final decision.
3. Ask the following question: “Will this decision outcome cause harm?”
4. If the answer is yes, then we collaborate around what the objector is seeing or sensing.
5. The accountable decision-maker makes the final decision once all of the objections have been heard and processed.

originally published in www.ekipa.sg

What’s essential to support consent-based decision making:

1. Clear accountabilities on who is responsible for the decision outcome
2. Acknowledgement and the ability to adapt and course-correct if the decision was wrong

Note: Consent based decision-making still requires collaboration and curiosity — to understand the enterprise system view to make an informed, accountable decision.

Bonus — Disagree & Commit:

One tool that the Amazon leadership team uses when they find themselves in disagreement with the final decision is to say, “I disagree and commit.”

Disagreeing and committing creates a foundation of team trust — that you do have team commitment even though you do not have perfect agreement.

originally published at www.ekipa.sg on April 4, 2022