This
is perhaps one of the most crucial issues in a modern organization. We live in a time in which employee
involvement is urgently sought. We increasingly want to make use of the
competences, knowledge and experience of our employees and team members to
achieve better overall results. But everyone with experience in the field
realizes that a multitude of ideas, opinions, perspectives and personalities are
virtually impossible to get in line. The frustration of a lack of consensus
often leads to the abandonment of attempts to reach a decision together. This can show itself in three different reactions. Either:
1- The Leadership decides to make all
decisions themselves. This usually leads to great frustration among team members - employees. They lose their involvement because they
are visibly and noticeably put out of the game.
2- The decision remains absent; the question remains open and no decisions
are made. This
often leads to annoyance because the necessary choices are not made, and in the
meantime the reality does not stand still, and coincidence determines the
results. The
situation is experienced as a lack of leadership, which also reduces
involvement and makes employees fall into a kind of 'survival mode' in which
their own comfort becomes more important than the result.
3- To prevent these two predictable
drawbacks, leadership decides to take the matter at heart, but with a smart way
to involve people in a process that gives them the illusion that they are involved. This manifests itself in 'hollow' meetings
where many experience the feeling of manipulation and waste of time.
It
goes without saying that we would benefit greatly from a productive
alternative. And
this alternative exists! There is a way to deal with participation, without creating the three
negative effects mentioned. Management can make the difference by
developing a certain methodology, applying it visibly in practice, and
preferably also embedding it into the culture of the organization.
The
solution is that we first and foremost set a clear process goal: we want to make the
best possible decision that can also count on maximum support. Both factors are important! Leaders do well to focus on the product of
these two elements, and not on the content (from their superior knowledge!) alone.
The next step is to learn to distinguish a number of ways to reach a
decision. These
methodologies can be classified in a hierarchy of methods, according to the
quality of the decision they deliver. We distinguish, in growing order of
quality and performance:
- unilateral decisions (from management)
without good communication
- unilateral decisions with good
communication
- unilateral decisions after consulting the team members
- voting; where the number of votes makes
the choice
- compromises; where a mix of solutions
from different visons or groups creates an outcome
- consensus: where every related person
absolutely agrees with the same decision; feels the same (without “adding water
to the wine”)
An important and very ‘innovative’
methodology is the Sociocratic decision making method. It
is far superior to any method of one-sides decision making, and performs much
better than the democratic methodology (voting)
and is substantially different from the compromise. The latter is the disease
of manipulation, which leads to monsters of decisions where only losers arise. In
practice, many dilemmas can only be addressed in a qualitative
manner by using a ‘Sociocratic method’, when a
consensus from the nature of the case becomes impossible. It is simply the most
performing alternative for absolute consensus. It is even better because even
in a consensus a group could be the victim of the ‘halo-effect’, people
following a statement just for conserving the good relations, without a
critical approach to the content of the decision. In a separate contribution I
w describe the rules of ‘Sociocratic decision making’
Working with delegates is also part of the
range of methodologies, but has its consequences (especially limitations) for
the end result. In fact we cut the decision making process in two parts. The
first part is to agree with highly involved people, well selected because of
their knowledge or commitment. That is the most easy group to get an agreement
with. The second part of the process is the commitment of all those related
people who are not part of the delegation. They are very often forgotten,
because they are too difficult to convince. They will have to follow the
conclusion of the smaller group. Even is the delegates had a mandate from the larger
group, there is always a limit to this mandate. Mostly the role of the
delegates is to ‘defend’ the interest (or even demands) from the larger group.
Whenever something else comes out, you have a problem. The risk that this could
happen, is another burden in the first part of the decision making. Delegates
will discuss carefully and rather stubborn. The conclusion obviously is that
working with delegates is a poor form of participation.
Hugo
Der Kinderen
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