Loomio

Organisation structure; decision making.

KVM Kannan V M Public Seen by 411

When rational discussions can not get to a conclusion, it is necessary for an organisations to have a decision making structure to take a choice out of the opinions of its members.

(i) Having approval from everyone will not possible always.
(ii) The choices made by the majority may not be right.
(iii) Voices of minority shouldn't be left out.
(iv) Decision making should not take too much time.

a decision making structure should consider all these issues. There wont be a way that can give absolute justice to every issues, but we can optimise the result.

Here are couple of proposals to optimise the result(For in case of usage of media, here it is assumed loomio is used for discussions and polls.),

(a) Giving a definition for majoriy, like if more than X% of members agree on something it is a majority. (this gives more power to minority). In case of proposals, it will be considered accepted more than X% votes(except for condition (b)). (view (c))
(b) Veto power. This will be too much power for an individual, it can be misused knowingly or uknowingly. A workaround will be declining a proposal when more than Y% of people block an proposal even if it has X% approval.
(c) To make sure decision making will not take too much time, there should be a time boundary for a discussion. Discussion and voting on it will be closed and decision will be made from present votes at that time. If someone finds a need to continue a discussion after the boundary time, he/she can either start a new thread or request to reopen the old discussion/poll.

PP

Pirate Praveen Sat 18 Feb 2017 5:31AM

(b) Veto power. I think individual veto is okay if only used to block proposals against basic principles. There has to be a certain level among the members to not misuse the veto power. We could ask some neutral persons to check if a veto can be considered legitimate concern or abuse in case there is a doubt about misusing veto power. Veto power is the most important option to make sure majority does not deviate from basic principles.

We should make it clear that, veto will not be allowed to block proposals which are in line with the basic principles only on the ground that the person vetoing is not interested to make the effort.

PP

Pirate Praveen Sat 18 Feb 2017 12:07PM

Related article on a non hierarchical software firm http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38928528