Open Decision-Making (2014)

Problem in Japan with that approach is that decision making is more often than not guts-based and driven by seniority/authority than an "open decision" like described in this article.

In my experience, lack of consensus is always due to people who have strong opinions and potentially a lot of knowledge in a general area, however the specifics/particulars of the problem are not known or understood by them, hence they are effectively “trying to solve the previous problem, not the current problem”. The metaphor often used is “they were fighting the old war” and I think that makes sense: people who get into high management positions think that they know everything, and they do, but about “old stuff”. New problems, or problems in a slightly different subarea come about and they are suddenly finding themselves unqualified, so they try to re-establish dominance through pulling rank.

Just my 2 cents

It's not practical in a lot of organizations, but something I like to do, when possible, in the face of a non-consensus decision is simply to wait.

That might seem inconceivably frustrating for people who like to make continuous changes - especially if the delay is weeks, months or even years. But sometimes a good idea or answer will develop during that time.

If a good solution doesn't emerge, then sure, it's possible that outside pressure may make it necessary to select one of the options anyway. But I think that's rarer than people expect.

I read the article and while the approach seems reasonable, in real life it doesn't always work.

My colleague tried a similar method recently and the result was a total disaster. In stage I, collecting the inputs, he gathered everybody's opinions. In stage II, consensus, everybody was happy. Why? Because person A said we should do A, person B said, "Fine, but we should also do B", person C said, "that's perfect, but we must also do C". The result was a huge monster that everybody thought was possible to realize, except person Z who was responsible for QA and knew very well it's going to fail. Now, in phase III, obviously problems started to pile up. Person Z was overworked and in the end he left the company.

So, basically you need to be smart and know when it makes sense to use the methodology and when it makes no sense. As a rule of thumb, if you work with a small group of smart people who also have a rough idea of what others are doing, it's worth taking the risk.

This article completely jives with my own experiences using democracy in the workplace.

My misc Yes and:

I've always struggled to articulate my ideas, experiences. Workplace democracy is a hard sell. I've only successfully used it when I had full control, like a benevolent dictator. Supremely ironic.

Focus on good structures and processes and the outcomes will take care of themselves. h/t Luke Hohmann and The Journey of the Software Professional.

Workplace democracy is about both empowerment and responsibility. I hired really good people. The answers we need are right here. The trick is creating the environment where the team can find and flesh out their answers. Together! Maybe this is called nurture.

My team members have always owned their processes and structures, and therefore they earned their outcomes. Using democracy instills emotional involvement and commitment.

My primary involvement was adjudicator, enforcer. If a team made a joint decision, I held them to it. No sniping, sabotage, withholding, backstabbing, and all those other icky personal political BS details. If someone wanted to, needed to, revise a team's decision, then it was handled democratically. So be prepared to be the asshole.

Democracy feels slower, more painful. That's only because the heartache is front loaded. It's one of those "go slower to move faster" things. If you stick to the process, there's much less rework, relitigation.

Trust is key. In that "disagree and commit" sort of way. In owning and learning from mistakes. In demonstrating that team decisions will not be capriciously or casually disregarded or overruled.

Like a magpie, I cobbled together goofy ideas from every where. Joint Application Development (JAD) for brainstorming, project planning. Approval voting for triage. Roman evaluation for hiring. Balance of powers between roles (Marketing, Engineering, QA) for governance. Streamlining from Goldratt's theory of constraints. Etc, etc. Books like Innovation Games are good sources.

Democracy is hard. Requires commitment. It gets A LOT easier once the culture is established (eg storming, forming, norming, performing).

Major caveat: Once you experience democracy, a high trust environment, it kinda ruins you for the rest. It's really, really hard to suspend disbelief.