Effective Decision Making
Joe
Public
Seen by 394
It's tough enough for us to make our own individual decisions in our lives. Try to do this as a group of two and it's 10X harder. Add a 3rd person and it's even harder. It becomes harder and harder as a group grows its participant size.
The AiD and muxive solution can and should be extended into the decision-making realm, but not necessarily to make the actual decisions. Instead to prioritize those past and present decisions made.
Think about this group making decisions as a group. Imagine we have made 5 decisions thus far. These can and should be prioritized. Often all decisions are connected. The first decision impacts the second. Those two impact the next one. But along the way often a later decision is found to be more important than earlier decisions. Often a later decision makes it necessary to change an earlier decision.
When all decisions are placed within a priority list framework and every member has an opportunity to reorder decision positioning, and everyone has equal power, and a single resultant rank-ordered listing is automatically generated in real time - then the group has one voice with which to reference to move forward with more harmony.
I would suggest to the group that we start making decisions - even if very small ones and then put them within the priority list framework. Give everyone a chance to rank-order all these decisions over a period of time and see what rises to the top and how the ordering then brings about new decisions and changes with old decisions.
Make sense?
No one is the group leader. No one has more power than anyone else. But yet the group finds its unique voice and its priorities. Anyone can come and anyone can go at any time and yet the group always remains in tact and never loses its voice, its values, its mission, etc.
IMHO - this is what is missing from tools like Loomio and what is necessary to keep like-minded activists on a ever-progressing path forward with far more harmony within each active participants mind, heart and gut. We can all disagree about specifics but we all accept what we are as one entity (with its one voice.) If you cannot accept this one entities' voice in the world then you are free to go find a better matching community or spin off and create a new one with like-minded others.
We can demo this for this d@w group. Just start putting forth decision proposal statements. When we get the specific decision language crafted to an acceptable place then we can add to the list of decision items.
Loomio can be used to always discuss better specific 'languaging' of each decision statement. You will see that nearly everything requires constant revisiting and change as time marches forward. The groups decision priority list will also change. New decisions will rise to the top often forcing required change to those less important decisions below.
Gotta experiment with new solutions to see what the reality is with each. Reality often is not what we imagine it's in our minds prior to implementation.
Poll Created Fri 28 Oct 2016 2:58PM
d@w will implement "prioritized decision making." Closed Mon 31 Oct 2016 2:01PM
This is an example group decision statement to get us all started testing this approach I discussed in this thread. Accept it, reject it, or suggest better languaging for it. We need to work out the rules of when a decision can be added to "the d@w voice" listing. Will it be after a set period of time with a simple majority vote result? How much time? What % vote?
If we can come up with 3 or more decision statements then I'll build the tool for us to each prioritize these all with and find our one voice.
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Agree | 71.4% | 5 |
|
| Abstain | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Disagree | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Block | 28.6% | 2 |
|
|
| Undecided | 0% | 80 |
|
7 of 87 people have participated (8%)
Joel Gingery
Fri 28 Oct 2016 3:25PM
This reminds me of the agile (scrum) software development "user stories." https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories
and seems like a great way to start. :thumbsup:
Joe
Fri 28 Oct 2016 7:45PM
Let's see how many present participants we can get to engage.
John Rhoads
Fri 28 Oct 2016 10:59PM
I like priority.
Nikhil Kulkarni
Sat 29 Oct 2016 12:31AM
Make decisions here and then put it up on the list ? Ok. Lets try.
David Brinovec
Sun 30 Oct 2016 2:22PM
I find all this highly concerning and intentionally disruptive for self serving means. Considering the low participation (5/44) on a decision of this magnitude I move to block.
William Beard
Mon 31 Oct 2016 2:17AM
After reading the entire discussion I think this needs to be clarified and may or may not need to be put up for a vote again.
Please see my comment below for further context.
John Rhoads Fri 28 Oct 2016 10:45PM
@joe21 I'm trying to figure out how it was determined we are not making prioritized decisions? From what I've seen we really haven't made any decisions whatsoever on which to figure out if we are prioritizing or not. I think prioritizing is a great thing when there is something to prioritize to. If the question is "should we prioritize?' I would say yes. Or maybe your concern is "how" we prioritize? Moreover and If I understand you correctly, we need to state an overarching objective and then prioritize all activities to point towards that objective? This to me makes sense. My understanding is that our overarching objective is stated in the D@W credo which is basically "advocating for democratic workplaces". If this is correct than we need to prioritize our decisions in such a way to ultimately achieves this. All I know is we will sooner or later need proposals that point to this objective. Perhaps we need to pose the question, "is advocating for democratic workplaces our overarching objective?" Then we could then pose the next question "how do we get there?". Then we would all brainstorm and each of us would have an idea and could debate which idea had priority within a network of priorities. Then we could really begin to prioritize. But we need to first put our finger on the objective.
Joe Sat 29 Oct 2016 11:37AM
Any collaboration group will have many different priority lists for different purposes. The one I'm suggesting we start with is one I would call something like general operations. It will tell everyone - those currently within this coop and especially those outsiders considering joining the coop - who the group is from a "how do we/they cooperate together POV. What are the tools used and the rules everyone is expected to play together by? How am I expected to act and help? What must I accept to be a member?
This exercise is a demo to help us all better understand the details of working without leaders or committees. A solution where each and every participant has equal power and freedom of choice to engage or not.
A next list might be one that matches the latest new proposal and sets the solution for how to best promote this on-line coop portal project that directly responds to the mission statement of d@w.
Each list is the mind meld of all participants so everyone can see what we are as one entity instead of some one person or committee making these decisions for everyone else.
We must find something that works for us before we can promote it to others. This how does a coop actually function issue is far more problematic than it appears at first consideration. The devil is in the details - the tools used, the process and the rules established. Finding full agreement is impossible, so instead discover the automatic compromise priority list reference with which to keep moving forward together.
Joe · Fri 28 Oct 2016 7:56PM
So does Loomio limit a thread to one proposal at a time? If yes, then this is somewhat problematic. Or is it, I'm just limited to one proposal at a time, because I already created one?
Others should put forth other basic group decision statement proposals, so we have several to consider and think about how we each would position them in a priority list reference. Which one will move to the top after we have several in the list to rank order? Which one decision creates the foundation for all other decisions below it?
This will be very exciting to discover! At least for me.
I wanted to add another decision proposal. "d@w will not have any leaders speaking for the group. Instead everyone will have exact equal power to engage (or not) and impact the one voice of the group."