Respect Decision-Making Processes

Respect decision-making processes and understanding the importance of driving consensus.

Practitioners: tactical, integrative, and strategic

Everything we do is the result of a process. One of the key ideas in operational excellence is that everything we do is the result of a process, including making decisions. How we make decisions is just as important as the decisions we make. There are some among us that would argue this point. I’ll say no more about that. We must respect decision-making processes like we do any other process.

A decision is not the end of the process. A decision is a point within the process that leads to an outcome. A decision is a choice among options. We may think the choice is obvious but rarely is that the case. This is why practicing consensus is a critical part of decision making.

Respect Decision-Making Processes

From Edgar H. Schein’s Process Consultation Revisited we take a better look at healthy consensus. Schein explains that consensus “is a psychological state that must be tested for and might be described as follows. I understand what most of you would like to do. I personally would not do that, but I feel that you understand what my alternative would be. I have had sufficient opportunity to sway you to my point of view, but clearly have not been able to do so. Therefore, I will go along with what most of you wish to do and will do my best to implement it.”

Consensus is not unanimity

There is a lot to uncover in this statement of consensus. Being listened to by the group, given the opportunity to disagree, establishing commitment to the group over ‘being right’. When we practice consensus in this way, we strengthen the group, we gather ideas, and we practice dialog – shared learning – over discussion – winning a debate.

Schein also gives us a six-step roadmap to problem solving. Those steps move from problem formulation, through proposed solutions and predicting consequences, into action planning, action execution, and outcome evaluations. If we have our process lenses on, we can see a process take shape once again. But I digress.