The Three C’s of Decision Making

Friday, November 21, 2008

By Janet P Schmidt

Decision-making is both about the end decision, and about the process of the making of the decision. Who gets to decide? Who is asked to provide relevant information? Who has access to influencing the decision? How is the decision shared with others? These are frequent questions (often phrased as complaints) stated by staff at all levels in organizations and teams.

At the mediation centre I worked at until the mid-90’s we worked very hard at ensuring that the decision-making process was open to everyone. In the end we discovered that there were three very important aspects of collaborative decision making. First, how the decision was actually made, second, what the decision actually was, and third, communicating that decision to those impacted. The end result of addressing all three of these aspects in a transparent, participative manner resulted in a productive and creative workplace.

The best way to address these three aspects was not as easy as one would imagine. When one is outside of the decision circle the answers seem more obvious than to the one(s) sitting with a decision that must be made - often in a short period of time without full information. The questions of the ‘how’ and ‘who’ of decision making at times poisoned what otherwise were good working relationships. At some point we as an organization decided to address some of the issues around decision making. As an organization, we valued collaboration yet sometimes we would spend far too long talking and not enough time fulfilling our mission. Other times people made decisions that left other staff feeling angry and isolated which also resulted in lots of talking - this time in the privacy of people’s offices.

We looked for models on some alternative organizational structures and found none that addressed the polar problems of imposed hierarchical decisions on the one hand and the endless conversations of consensus-based decisions on the other.

So we began to experiment. One of the experiments that eventually became the standard for our organization was to divide decisions into three categories. We realized early on that all staff, not just the senior staff, were involved in making a variety of decisions on a daily basis. There were also clear differences in the types of decisions staff made or participated in. This generally depended on a person’s role and responsibilities. The decisions were broken up into three types: concentrated, consultative and collaborative.

Concentrated decisions were decisions that individuals made without any consultation with other people. A problem needed to be addressed. The individual had the resources and responsibility to make a decision to address the problem and therefore made a decision. The decision was concentrated because it was focused on one individual getting the necessary information and then deciding.

The second type of decision was consultative. These tended to be decisions where the person was solely responsible for making the decision but did not have all the information to make a proper decision and so consulted with those who could provide more information and insight. Decisions in this group were ones that usually affected a larger group of people. It was believed that people who were impacted by a decision generally have information, which if shared with the decision-maker would lead to a good decision. Ultimately the person tasked with making the decision would sift through all the information and make the decision.

The third category was collaborative decisions. Collaboration can be done in one of two ways; voting or consensus. In most organizations voting is used to determine if the critical mass is in agreement, whether this critical mass is 50% or some higher figure is up to the organization to decide.

Consensus is when groups decide that the threshold of agreement is 100%, everyone agreeing on a certain course of action. In order to achieve Consensus, the response to a question needs to still include options – from ‘whole-hearted agreement’ to ‘I will support the decision even though I have serious reservations’ - in other words ‘I wouldn’t do it this way, but I don’t think this course of action will create enough problems for me to veto this process’. Consensus decisions tend to take longer and are often reserved for decisions that would have long term impact on direction in the organization. We observed that most organizations use voting - our organization agreed to practice consensus. Along the journey we discovered that effective use of consensus required education and high skills in dealing with conflict in an open and respectful manner.

Some lessons that we learned through this process:

1) When there was disagreement, it tended to be about the kind of decision process that should be used rather than the outcome of a decision. This was helpful in depersonalizing some of the challenges that were made to each of us when colleagues questioned the method we used. Staff were encouraged to see questions around decision making as an opportunity to learn from another perspective rather than as an attack on their character. It was assumed that none of us were above mistakes and so could be corrected.

2) There needed to be a forum to try and reach some agreement on what decisions required which decision making process. Early on we had a staff meeting where we selected some staff positions and identified collectively what decisions the person in that position needed to make and what decision making method should be used for each decision. This seemed to help people reach some collective clarity on what was expected.

3) When to use consultative decisions always remained a bit unclear. We noticed that the tendency of decision makers was that they always assumed that they had more information than the persons who were being impacted by the decision. This is not surprising given that people generally do not know what they don’t know. On the other hand, it was very clear to those who were not consulted because their concerns were not addressed by the decision. We discovered as a general rule that more decisions needed a consultative response rather than a concentrated response and with past experience in hierarchal decisions and pressure to make decisions and move on to other tasks, most of us erred on making too many concentrated decisions.

4) There needed to be an atmosphere where people felt free to challenge the type of decision model being used. I remember that on more than one occasion people came to me asking me about the decision making model I used. This was never comfortable, but I would say that it was always helpful (if I would listen to the other side, rather than just defend my choice). I had to learn the discipline of not being defensive and truly listening to my colleagues’ concerns - not just listening for where they were wrong or ill informed.

5) At staff meetings when we discussed issues it became necessary early on to identify the kind of decision that would be used for different agenda items. We divided our staff meetings into a) Information - informing people of concentrated decisions, b) Consultation - where issues were discussed so the relevant decision makers could gather all the information to make the best decision possible and c) Discussion - was the time we continued the process of reaching consensus on some of the outstanding issues. We would never expect to reach consensus in a single staff meeting on an issue that would significantly impact the organization.

6) Staff meeting minutes were kept in a public place so all people had access to them. Our organization had many levels of meetings as we ran numerous programs. All these minutes were made available to all staff, those who attended the meeting and those who did not attend the meeting. Staff minutes were kept in the library so anyone including staff, volunteers and members could have easy access to them. Minutes at any level were never seen as an item of secrecy.

It took us some time before this new system went smoothly. Unexpected problems emerged, after all, we were treading on new territory. Also, all of the staff had to learn new ways of doing things. Some of us had to stop certain ways of working that did not support the new system.

As a staff, we worked very hard at ensuring that the decision-making process was open. Our hard work was well rewarded. By the end of the year many of us commented on the fact that this was the best organization we had ever worked for. It was without a doubt the most supportive, honest, happy workplace I have ever had the privilege to work in.