Effective Decision Making

Have you worked with flow charts? It would be interesting to see your idea put into this format.

As a process engineer and game developer, I have worked with flow charts. I have not attempted to flow chart any of this yet however. Not sure what piece you are referencing that might tell a clearer story as a flow chart.

For me a graphic is more obvious at first consideration.

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1QKM9BXo9RPwtRki92yOJcK71swGSCmFN8xF2klXxuL8/edit?usp=sharing

Are you thinking about flow charting a typical user story? Or is it something else?

Of course once the software tool is fully imagined then process flows become more evident. (BTW - this is being tackled by a small dev team now, but still has a long way to go.) But d@w can consider adopting the core principles of the solution now and mock it up to test it out.

The primary point is to consider adopting a progressive new solution that has no traditional leadership model included. We believe this is how the people can eventually eliminate the power leaders in the world.

I'm starting to understand you more clearly and really like your diagram. It really does become quite theoretical. I commented on a different post regarding this. For me it's about creating an overarching objective, asking the right questions in the right sequence (flat-file/sequential database) OR putting all questions into perspective and context (relational database), making decisions, enshrining the decisions into policy (documentation), monitoring and enforcing policy and review. I am not a software developer but have been looking at Agile and Scrum. Very interesting, logical yet paradoxical. One can look at it as a static process or a dynamic process similar to the law "a body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted on by a net external force". In this scenario, a body at rest (order) is a system that has been tuned to perfection, "written in stone", strictly defined, static and immutable. A body in motion (chaos) is a system that is ever-changing, adaptable, dynamic, liquid and loosely defined. I am not one to favor one over the other but see the virtues of both within context. I think of things such as "best practices" and this has it's virtues. It means, within a given context, things have been worked out to be "the way to do things or the way things are" and trying to make it better is similar to an exercise in futility (e.g. trying to make a circle more "round"). Conversely and especially in a dynamic system in motion (like Agile and life for that matter), there is more than one way to do things and getting anything "done" requires it. I see these things as relevant to decision making. Part of me wants to not have to ask the same question over and over again (desire for stasis) while the other part of me knows that in a dynamic system I will forever be chasing my tail - which can be satisfying in itself (thrill of the chase). Then there is the Qubit in quantum physics which I've been trying to wrap my head around.

Very well said.

But a big part of the challenge is actually simplifying the process and the communication. Everyone wants a say. Many people do not know how to put together the right words. Others have too many words and most do not want to read all those words. Also from my experience those who do end up engaging want things stated in slightly different ways. What happens is much time is spent trying to find agreement in messaging.

What my AiD or muxive tool does is ask everyone to simplify concepts and objects down to a bare minimal format, so there is no duplication and no misinterpretation. It's important the UI/UX bring the focus to the base concept in clear and concise rank-order form. Speed to learn where where things now stand and speed to update your own list is very important.

In AiD I call a list item a simplement - meaning simple+statement. In muxive they are called muxits. These are the most important objects within the solution. Each must be readily translatable into any language - for we need a tool that can work across any culture on our planet.

Another attribute I discovered is to, as much as possible, make these objects non-partisan, so they actually help bring together those with opposite views. E.g. instead of pro-life or pro-choice we use the object "abortion issue." This way persons on either side of the issue can prioritize it within the overall list similarly.

Duality exists all throughout the universe and humanity. Deal with issues in their full continuum and focus on prioritizing them this way and IMHO we have a much better communication tool.

KISS - keep it simple stupid! Coops need KISS tools. Capitalism creates complexity tools to hide behind.

I have years of development effort put into these new solutions. There's much more to them too, but best to reveal in small digestable pieces.

Before we do anything else I think we need a better coop comm tool (cct) with which to move forward. It needs to work for the d@w team. It needs to invite and create more engagement. It needs to make any personality (fully inclusive) type happy - both within the engagement component and the resultant component process steps.

Within my solution these lists are the primary engagement component and the one combined list (voice for the group) is the resultant component. IMHO this is way more simple than the traditional coop approaches that still rely on the old leadership model with its leaders and committees that in many ways still give advantage to those who can argue better. I can assure you the best arguers are often not the ones with the best solutions. Usually the opposite personality types have the better solutions. The problem is they rarely have the voices heard.

In this solution it's the creatives who become the leaders in the world. This tool creates the priorities, the focus is given to these priorities and the very limited time and resources is given to these priorities. IMHO it's very very important to move forward clearly understanding that NOT everything can be done. We actually MUST do more with less. We MUST increase efficiency and reduce waste. We must work in the present with a primary mission of long-term sustainability. This means "resource continuity" MUST be a law rooted within the framework of the sustainability model. This is where we need to head, but first we just need to communicate more efficiently and effectively.

If our own coop cannot do this then we will certainly fail the greater mission.

"AiD and muxive solution": Are you suggesting that the group stop using Loomio in favor of these?

"priority list framework": does that exist within Loomio? Is it a part of your AiD/muxive alternative?

"this is what is missing from tools like Loomio"? I really get the sense that you are suggesting we stop using Loomio.

"We can demo this for this d@w group"? are you suggesting that we make a marketing pitch to use these other tools instead of Loomio? this seems entirely self serving at this point.

I for one, think we should give Loomio a serious try. It was only 19 days ago that Betsy first advertised it.

Also, on the point of priority. I don't think this is really an issue. If one decision needs more priority than another, then I think it will naturally get more attention. At the very least, I think it's way too early to fault Loomio here.

"Others have too many words": I couldn't agree more. Especially when many of those words are invented by the person using them and have no meaning to anyone else. "AiD, muxive, simplement, CCT"

"What my AiD or muxive tool does is": So, this answers my question above. This is your tool.

"we need a tool that can work across any culture on our planet" And I assume you're the right person to develop and implement that tool.

"KISS - keep it simple stupid!" I find this offensive.

"Within my solution...IMHO this is way more simple than the traditional coop approaches that still rely on the old leadership model with its leaders and committees that in many ways still give advantage to those who can argue better." This gets at my core gripe with all of this. the fact that this is your solution places far too much power in the hands of a single individual. you developed and implemented the tool, you know how it works better than anyone. With Loomio at least it was developed democratically by a group. That was the very first thing that appealed to me. Better than facebook which is owned and controlled by a capitalist entity. Now, you're suggesting we switch to a solution that is under the control of a single individual?

David, I understand your concerns and appreciate you sharing. My reaction is sort of "nothing ventured, nothing gained." What is the worst that could happen? We always have the ability to reevaluate our decisions in light of new experience, etc., and come to a collective decision, or maybe form a new group according to our own rules. Re: 5/44 I see your point that a small minority is making the decisions. Would you support some proposal that stipulated a minimum % participation to achieve passage? Similar to the electorate maybe people don/t want to participate, are uninterested, and so on. Regretfully I have to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld in that "you have to use the army you have", or else engage people to join until we feel we have enough people, diversity, to proceed. In business its recommended to recognize that its the people who are really interested in your product that you should pay attention to; they are the ones that drive your development; they are the ones who will support you and tell their friends about the new service they are using, expanding your business's market; so maybe our group, tho small, may be the right place to start, since we are starting. There are no rules telling us what we can or can't do, except those we make ourselves. Personally I'd like to explore the possibilities.Joel Gingery

"What is the worst that could happen?" The vast majority of participants feel, left out. The group disbands.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the proposal here. Perhaps the only thing that's being suggested is that we use these other solutions along side Loomio. Even if that's the case, I feel that it's far too premature. I think we should give Loomio, in it's current form, a serious try. If we find it lacking functionality we want, wouldn't it make more sense to request those features be added to Loomio itself. Otherwise I think we are adding unnecessary complexity.

In an effort to find something positive in all this disruption, I will say this. It's forced me to take a more critical look at Loomio. And that has only further convinced me that Loomio really is the best choice available to us at the moment. It was built by a democratically organized group, the exact sort of group the d@w project advocates for, that group has been using it in their efforts and improving it to better support democratic collaboration, it's open source (AGPLv3 no less), it's very stable, it's functional, it's user friendly. I honestly can't find anything I don't like about this tool.

Thanks David. This is great! Always good to test all possibilities and see how the group reacts to the disagreements. Do they stay together and become stronger or separate into factions and become weaker?

I voted yes to effective decision making which to me goes without saying but needs to be posed so we can move forward. What tool we use is a different story. I'm more interested in using Loomio due to it being seasoned and simple and falls in line with my POV. My big concern is what to do with the decisions after they are made which brings me to proposing the use of more tools in the Loomio toolkit - namely Trello, Slack and perhaps Cobudget when needed. Without complicating things like David suggests while entertaining abstractions from Joe, I think, like Joel said, we can do all of the above and get away with it because we have that liberty and intelligence. @joe21 Although you may have the next "app", I think, in order to not get quagmired in what-ifs or hypotheticals, that we should focus on the Loomio tools at hand which come with a giant user base and tested proof-of-concept. Although your tool may have merit, the d@W loomio group may not be the best place to market it or test it out. Have you tried other marketing pathways or even better a new Loomio group for this purpose? That to me would be the place to validate your proof-in-concept. I would be hip to participating in that group but probably not in this group.