Excising Advocacy from Problem Solving

Last Saturday I did something I've done many times before: taught an Introduction to Consensus workshop.

This time though, I prepared by spending a couple hours the night before contemplating how I might approach this familiar topic in a fresh way. My efforts yielded two innovations.

First, it occurred to me to start out by asking participants what it would take for them to be ready to create cooperative culture, given that they'd been raised and deeply conditioned in competitive culture.

This was meant as a pump-priming exercise in that it's been my observation that a lot of intentional communities struggle with that transition. In fact, it's my sense that most start-ups commit to forming communities without discussing this transition at all. They just agree that community living is a good idea and they're ready to give it a go without questioning whether there's any personal work they need to undertake before they're "cooperation ready"—by which I mean able to respond to the normal challenges of group living and collective decision-making with cooperative behaviors.

While it may seem obvious to readers that that will be needed (and surely this assessment will have been made by thoughtful community pioneers), that is not what I've found. In particular, at certain key moments, such as when another group member expresses a strongly held divergent viewpoint about a matter you care about a lot, a cooperative response is among the least likely things to happen.

Instead of something along the lines of "Wow, I wonder how you got there. I have a really different idea about that and maybe you've thought of something I haven't. Tell me more" a much more likely occurrence is "What the hell are you thinking?!" or maybe "Are you kidding me? That would be a disaster!"

When the stakes are high and you have a clear opinion about your preference, it is far more probable that you'll respond to divergent views by preparing for battle. That's the way we were raised and it's what we know to do. To be sure, this may come out in a variety of ways other than outright attack—for example, expressing sarcasm, playing the victim, faction building behind the scenes (while expressing false support in the moment), or spreading hyperbolic rumors about the bad things that will happen if the other view prevails. All those options are divisive and come out of an us/them perspective that is fundamentally contrary to cooperative culture.

So my opening question was not academic; it was germane. Consensus does not thrive in competitive culture, and groups are not likely to enjoy the results if members simply bring their conditioned competitive behaviors into the attempt.

As a consensus trainer, I try to get that point made in the first five minutes.

Second, I devoted half an hour to brainstorming a list of the major issues I see groups struggle with when using consensus. Whenever I'm conducting a workshop I'm concerned with whether I'm addressing the audience's major questions. By offering a menu of the questions that most frequently arise I figured I might be better able to hit the sweet spot. Instead of guessing what they'd ask for, or trusting that they'd know how to articulate their needs if I gave them an open-ended invitation, it occurred to me that I might be able to productively short-cut the process by suggesting subtopics.

I came up with a dozen (in no particular order):

1. Culture Shift 
Community living is an explicit attempt to create and sustain a vibrant cooperative culture. Accomplishing that requires a certain amount of unlearning competitive conditioning and I believe it's crucial that groups get introduced to this reality as soon as possible. Better a bucket of cold water up front than bringing them into awareness only after they've bought a house.

2. Working Constructively with Emotions
You can find entire books and workshops that purport to offer a complete overview of consensus yet don't address this aspect of group dynamics at all. As far as I'm concerned those approaches are incomplete. Groups that do not discuss how they want to engage with on-topic emotional responses are sowing the wind. For what they invariably harvest is the chaos of emotional distress, with no tools or agreements in place with which to engage it productively. Not only is this foolish, but it's needlessly risky.

3. Welcoming Non-rational Input
The default style of secular meetings in US culture is rational discourse—to the point where other ways of knowing or processing information are expected to be translated into rational thought as a necessary first step to be eligible for being worked with, or even acknowledged. While common, I question the wisdom of that approach. It's at least worth discussing the potential of widening the welcome mat to allow participants to offer insights and responses in the language in which they arose. Thus, groups could look at the pros and cons of explicitly developing the capacity to work emotionally, intuitively, kinesthetically, and spiritually—as well as rationally. That would be different, eh?

4. Working with Conflict
This is the most volatile and dangerous aspect of emotional engagement, where feelings are most prone to being packaged with aggression. If a group fails to discuss how to handle conflict there will be nothing in place at times of need, and the group will be at the mercy of how individuals express and respond to distress. As most of us have had any number of bad experiences with that catch-as-catch-can approach, groups tend to be very nervous about engaging with emerging conflict and tend to default to a strategy of avoidance and containment. If encysting doesn't work, they just hope to survive it, like a bad storm. I think we can do better, which includes valuing conflict as a potential source of both information and energy.

5. Plenary Worthy 
One of the ways that groups inadvertently make poor use of whole group meeting time—a precious commodity—is by regularly allowing the group to work at a level of detail that is not worthy of the whole's attention. Instead of handing it off to a manager of committee when that point is reached, they continue to labor. The main reason that happens is because the group has never defined where the boundary of plenary worthy lies. In the fog of uncertainty the group soldiers on, simultaneously extending meetings (by drifting into territory they should have left alone) and undercutting the work of committees. Yuck.

6. Separating Advocacy from Problem Solving
As a long-time observer of how cooperative groups address issues, I've discovered that there's great potential for streamlining if issues are worked in two distinct phases instead of commingling both into one muddy free-for-all: a) first determining what a good response needs to take into account; and then b) figuring out what response best balances the factors identified in the first step. Further, as a firm believer in offering a seat at the table for on-topic passionate expression (what's the fun of hiding your light under a bushel?) I think it works best if time on the soap box is limited to part a). In the follow-up, problem solving phase you need a different energy—less circus and more collaboration.

7. Seeing the Glass Half Full
Although every now and then you encounter moments where the ideas and energy are all running in one direction—either all joy or all dross—that's rare. Most of the time you have a mix. In those moments you have a choice: should you focus on what's working or what isn't? While that question may seem trivial (after all, both are true; both are equally valid), it isn't. The norm in Western culture—where the individual is king—is to focus on differences and discord well ahead of common ground. In consequence, the presence of commonality can often go undetected for an embarrassing length of time. Why? Because you tend to find what you're looking for. This is important because durable agreements are built on a foundation of common ground. Yet consistently missing the boat results in needless delays. Ugh.

8. Dynamics of Blocking
For groups making the transition from voting to consensus, blocking can be a terrifying concept to embrace. (You mean just one person can stop the entire group from moving forward? A: Yes. Yikes!) The worry is that the group may have jumped out of the frying pan (an out of control majority) in exchange for the dubious advantages of greater exposure to the fire (tyranny of the minority). What's the bargain in that? It's important to carefully walk new-to-consensus groups through what constitutes legitimate grounds for a block, by what process a block will be validated, and the primacy of crafting the right energetic container for coping with a block. (And don't forget to keep breathing!)

9. Facilitator Authority
While most consensus groups accept without question that meetings will run better if facilitated, that doesn't necessarily mean they've digested what it is a good facilitator does, and how that's distinguished from the more familiar role of chairperson. For one thing, they ain't the same thing, and the role needs to be defined. For another, facilitators need express permission from the group to effectively handle phenomena like repetition, speaking off topic, sarcasm, and emotional outbursts. Without that authority, the facilitator role tends to devolve into little more than deciding who will talk next.

10. Commitment to Training 
It's not reasonable to expect new members to arrive on campus with a working knowledge of consensus. While you'll probably get a handful of community veterans to join, that will be the exception not the rule. Most will be starting from scratch or have partial experience that may be more problematic than beneficial. Thus, you're going to need to train new members (just as you may need to train facilitator). It is not a one-and-done proposition; it's an ongoing commitment. Hint: while it may be tempting, it's penny wise and pound foolish to expect new members to pick up the nuances of consensus by osmosis (watching others). If you want everyone singing from the same hymnal, it's less expensive in the long haul to give everyone voice lessons.

11. Triumph of Curiosity over Combat
The key moment in cooperative culture is what happens when people encounter serious disagreement about non-trivial issues. Do they lean in and express curiosity ("Whoa, I'd like to hear how you got there. Maybe you're seeing something I missed") or do they gird their loins and prepare for a fight, to defend their turf? Cooperative culture is not about being wimpy, but neither is it about limiting dissent. In fact, the higher the stakes the more important it is that the net is cast wide.

12. How Power is Associated with Roles
One of the more important measures of a cooperative group's maturity is its ability to openly and sensitively discuss how power is distributed in the group and what can/should be done about the ways in which it's uneven. Because power is the ability to influence what others say and do, you cannot give it to those with less, but there are things the group can do to encourage its members to develop their capacity for leadership and to grow to become more powerful. Is the group being sufficiently mindful about power distribution when authorizing people to fill key roles? Is it thinking strategically when committing resources to train members to be better able to fill needed roles?

The Fog of Consensus

Back in 2003, there was a powerful documentary released called The Fog of War, in which Robert McNamara (Kennedy's Secretary of Defense) offered a mea culpa about his role in perpetuating and expanding the Vietnam War. He painfully explained how hard it was to know what was actually happening in the chaos of war. In hindsight, he regretted his role in that American tragedy.

As a long-time observer of cooperative groups that struggle with inclusive decision-making, it has occurred to me that may groups suffer from an analogous malady: the fog of consensus, where they get bogged down in disagreements and don't see the way through.

I was recently sent the following explanation of how a group makes decisions. Notably, this is was the output of a carefully considered process to learn about consensus:

The group makes decisions by consensus as defined by the following:

A. After discussion, the presider of such meeting will first ask who is for and then who is opposed to the action being voted upon.
 
B. If there is one or more persons present opposed to the proposed action, further discussion will be held to ensure that all points of view have been heard.
 
C. After completion of such additional discussion, the presider will again ask who is for and who is opposed to the proposed action and shall then call the vote on the action for recording in the minutes of the corporation.
 
D. Any member may request that the proposed action under discussion be held over to the next meeting, in which case, the members present will decide whether or not to so hold-over according to steps A, B and C of the above process.

Oh boy. Here was a group that genuinely wanted to be inclusive yet never got off to the right start. I have a number of concerns with labeling this group's process "consensus." As you read my comments, please keep in mind that this process is meant to be a thoughtful, respectful adaptation of consensus. (I shudder to think what we'd get if the group intended mischief.)

1. Notice how decision-making is described in terms of voting. While this is a natural extension of what we learned from student council meetings growing up and by observing the US Congress, it is not how consensus works.

What's laid out above is a form of majority voting in which serious effort is made to resolve differences such that proposals are passed without dissent, if it can be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time—where “reasonable” is defined by a majority of those present at any given time. It is, if you will, a nicer form of majority rule—but the power still resides in the majority, rather than in the whole.

To embrace consensus, participants need to understand that it necessarily entails culture change, purposefully moving from a competitive culture to a cooperative one. You have to view meetings as an opportunity to have your mind changed, rather than as an occasion to convince others of the superiority of your viewpoint. It is, to be sure, not easy to effect this change, but it is possible and can lead to wondrous results if you make the investment. To be fair to the group that drafted this process, many groups stumble over this foundational point.

2. I am hopeful that it was an inadvertent mistake to imply in Step B that ensuring "that all points have been heard" only happens if there is dissent regarding the proposal. Wouldn't you want to start with that? Wouldn't you want to start with that every time?

3. In my experience, a good facilitator does not test for consensus unless they feel it is in the room. While anyone can make a mistake in discernment, I find it counterproductive to ask for consensus when you know it isn't there. It just puts pressure on the minority to acquiesce (while simultaneously sending a signal to the majority that they can ease off because they'll win the vote if it comes down to one). Instead of encouraging groups to redouble efforts to find a middle way (where bridging prevails), testing prematurely for consensus tends to frustrate groups and draw participants back into a competitive mind set (where advocacy prevails).

4. Under Step D, a request to table a proposal (because there was dissent at the last vote) has to be supported by a majority of the members. Think about that. It means that people who voted for a proposal must now agree to set that decision aside in the interest of members who don't feel good about the proposal. While that might happen, it's a high bar.

Taken as a whole the majority is under no obligation to work to find an alternative solution to the proposal that they support. In consensus, everyone has a good faith obligation to work toward a solution that everyone can agree with. In turn, individuals have a responsibility to make sure that their concerns are rooted in group values (as distinct from personal preferences). The individual's right to stop a proposal single-handedly, is paired with the responsibility to not abuse it. Under the system outlined above, the group has protected itself from the possibility of an individual monkey-wrenching the process (enabling tyranny of the minority) by allowing individuals to be outvoted (enabling tyranny of the majority). 

Haven't we had enough of that? Isn't it time to try something else?

5. Notably, there is no mention here of how the group develops proposals; how it intends to delegate; how it will protect the rights of members who miss a meeting to have a say in proposals brought up in that meeting; how it works through differences; how it responds to emotional input; or how it trains new members in its process. Nor does it attempt to describe the culture it is striving to create. That's a lot of missing parts.

6. Although subtle, notice that meetings are being run by a "presider" rather than a facilitator. While it is not spelled out what a presider is, I am concerned that it may be the president or a committee chair—people who are not necessarily neutral on the topic at hand (when you think about the power that resides in committee chairpersons in the US government you'll get a better sense of how the person who runs the meting has the potential to steer things in a direction they favor). In consensus you want a disinterested facilitator. but nowhere is that spelled out in this document.

50 Shades of Consensus, Part II

The first 25 shades of dysfunctional consensus were posted March 2. This is the conclusion.

26. Putting a 20-Pound Meeting in a 10-Pound Sack
If groups are not disciplined about matching the amount of time truly needed to work topics with the amount of meeting time available, there's a tendency to try to get it all done by shoehorning, which leads to blisters. If you have five topics ready to go and you expect each to take 40 minutes, don't try to do all five in a two-hour meeting. Better to handle well the most pressing three, and set the other two aside for another time. Pressuring people to swallow food that has been inadequately chewed leads to indigestion and is a poor bargain.

27. Always Having Plenaries at the Same Time
While there's something to be said for regularity (if it's 2 pm Sunday do you know where your meeting is?), there may be no time of the week that works well for everyone. If you're struggling with some people frequently missing meetings and you miss their voice, consider mixing up your meeting times. Some people work hard and long and can only attend evening sessions; others are exhausted after dinner and unable to contribute well then; others religiously protect Sunday afternoons for family (or football). Offer a choice.

28. Filling Positions with Volunteers
One of the challenges with many consensus groups is that they depend substantially on filling manager and committee slots based on which members puts their hand in the air first. While this may work fine for who oversees the Thursday Night Bowling Club, there are key positions where groups need high trust and discretion from the people in those slots, and a call for volunteers is a chancy proposition. Being more deliberate will pay dividends.

29. Not Specifying the Qualities Wanted from Positions of Responsibility
If you take to heart the previous point, the careful selection of people to fill positions will be much more satisfactory if you can take the additional step of specifying the qualities you want from managers or committee members before you select them—so that you've established some objective screens to use in the assessment of candidates. Otherwise it tends to be a popularity contest.

30. No Term Limits
Sometimes members settle into a certain niche in how they serve the group as a volunteer (it could be accounting; cooking the common meal every Sunday evening; being the in-house IT expert; serving on the Steering Committee). While this is invariably meant well and the person may be fairly good at what they do, without term limits it can become virtually impossible to get that person out of the role to make room for new blood. Better, I think, is the expectation that after so much time (five years?) that the priority be given to new folks to fill roles—which means no change if no one else wants the job, yet otherwise provides for hybrid vigor and deals even-handedly with any tendencies toward entrenchment (where others are reluctant to join a committee because old so-and-so, who's difficult to work with, is on it and has been there forever).

31. No Evaluation—of Managers & Committees
Another way to get traction on managers or committees that are not functioning well is to become diligent about periodically evaluating (every two years?) their performance. I'm talking about all managers and committees—not just those deemed problematic. The last thing you want is for a request to evaluate to be seen as an invitation to a hanging. Evaluations should be a time to celebrate what's working well, not just a chance to poke at the sore spots. For this to work you'll need to establish generic objectives for the process (for example, are they accomplishing their work in a timely manner?; are they playing nice with others?; are they meeting our expectations for reporting on what they're doing?; if it's a committee, is there good morale among members?) and assign someone (Process Committee?) to oversee its administration. Most groups are poor at this.

32. No Evaluation—of Plenaries
Parallel to the last point is developing a culture where the group regularly evaluates plenaries, so that there's a feedback loop on how you're doing your business. Plenary time is expensive (in a group of 30 you're burning an hour of people's time every two minutes) and you want to be mindful about using it well. The point of evaluations (maybe five minutes at the end) is to reflect on how well (or how poorly) the plenary functioned while the experience is still fresh and the data can come from the head and the heart. Then the facilitators (or whatever group is responsible for running the meetings) can take that in and adjust as needed. You don't want to settle for so-so plenaries (that you're able to survive); you want great plenaries—where you're able to thrive!

33. Sloppy Mandates
One the things that undermines (or at least complicates) attempts at evaluation (Point 31 above) is the lack of clarity about what managers and committees are supposed to do. In the interest of effective delegation it's imperative that plenaries craft crisp and comprehensive mandates that spell out such things as duties, authority to act on the plenary's behalf, what values are expected to be reflected in actions and decisions, resources available, and reporting expectations. When mandates are sloppy, the work of managers and committees is often reviewed and second-guessed by the plenary. Not only is this inefficient (contributing mightily to the phenomenon of agenda overload), but it seriously degrades morale.

34. Undefined Leadership
All groups need leadership. While cooperative groups understandably are allergic to autocratic leadership, we still need people who are inspiring, who are wise, who can think strategically, who can organize, who are sensitive to relationships, who are able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, etc. In most cases, cooperative groups (which groups using consensus strive to be) are looking for members who can be leaders in certain roles (such as the person in charge of organizing the winter solstice celebration; or the honcho for constructing a new cistern); they are not looking for someone to be "the leader." It can help enormously if the group actually takes the time to define what it wants from people taking on leadership functions, both so that people putting themselves forward will know what's expected, and so that you have some objective criteria with which to measure people against if there is tension.

35. Hot Potato of Accountability
A lot of cooperative groups struggle with the issue of accountability—holding people's feet to the fire when perceived to be coloring outside the lines. This comes in two flavors: a) behavior that does not align with group agreements (say, being aggressive and belligerent when advocating for their viewpoint); and b) failure to complete a task in a satisfactory way (you're late, went over budget, were disrespectful to co-workers, did the work poorly, etc). As it's inevitable that this dynamic will occur, you need to create an understanding and culture that addresses it, rather than one that allows it to fester and become anaerobic. You need, I believe, a known channel by which any member of the group can approach another about critical feedback they have about how they're functioning as a member of the group—all with an overarching goal of being constructive, rather than punitive or shaming.

36. Failing to Pair Rights with Responsibilities
When someone is upset it's relatively common for them to insist on their right be heard—which is a real thing—while forgetting that this is paired with the responsibility to listen and take into account the viewpoints of others. This dynamic can be further complicated by the person stating their upset in a provocative way (featuring "you" statements instead of "I" statements). On the one hand, listeners may be inspired in the moment to comment on the provocative way that the upset person is expressing themselves. This, however, does not land well for the upset person, who is trying desperately to be heard. Untangling this rats nest often requires that someone be able to set aside their distaste with the upset person's delivery to focus instead on their point and why it matters, with the intention of later—after the upset person reports feeling heard, which invariably leads to deescalation—getting around to giving that person feedback about their delivery and asking them now to extend to others the same respect and attention they demanded for themselves.

37. Defusing the Stalemate of Who Gets Heard First
Often, when someone feels outraged, they'll have a story about how they have been denied a right that has not been addressed (they were disrespected, their input was blown off, someone was allowed to dump on them in public with no consequences, the group responds in a condescending manner when the person reports uneasy feelings or discordant intuition). Because this slight may be unknown to others, it may appear that the upset person is the aggressor, and others will want to start to unpack the dynamic by focusing on how they have been dissed by the upset person. However, to the upset person, the roots of the dynamic start with how they have been dissed, and they naturally prefer that the unpacking begin with a focus on them. Even though, in the end, it doesn't make a whit of difference where you start so long as both sides get air time, it can be the very devil breaking the initial logjam.

38. Learning How to Have Hard Conversations
The trickiest conversations are those where there's non-trivial disagreement and the stakes are high. However, within that class, there is a subset that's even dicier: topics that are known to also touch the third rail of personal integrity or the possibility that you (or a love one) will be voted off the island. Examples include: a) power dynamics (the perception that someone has misused their influence for the benefit of some at the expense of others; b) the limits of diversity (defining when the group is being asked to stretch too far); and c) involuntary loss of rights (the conditions under which a member may have their rights curtailed, perhaps by virtue of persistent non-compliance with group agreements, or an egregious act that endangers life or property). These are thermonuclear topics, about which groups are well advised to think ahead about how they want to handle them pre-need. Hint: ducking doesn't work.

39. Navigating the Boundary Between Public and Private
Consensus groups, almost by definition, are attempts to create a culture where the balance point between public (group business) and private (individual or household business) is intentionally shifted more toward the public end, by which I mean that some level of things that are considered wholly private in the mainstream are seen as group business in cooperative culture. The trick is knowing where the line is. Most delicate of all are those dynamics that are some of both. Take for example the case where two couples split up because the partner in one couple wants to get together with a partner in the other couple, and all of this proceeds against the wishes of the ex-partners. While there is nothing original (or even rare) about this script, it illuminates the issue. On the one hand, everyone will agree that the choice about intimate partners is a private matter, yet the outcome of a switcheroo like this has obvious impact on group dynamics and it can be paralyzing to witness this and have no sense about whether or in what circumstances it's OK to explore the feelings that come up. To be clear, the individuals do not need the group's blessing to proceed, yet the group needs a way to collectively process the shake-up or it undercuts the relationships that are the lifeblood of the group.

40. Failing to Define Emergency Powers… Until There's an Emergency
Groups can go a long time—even decades—without facing an emergency that requires a streamlined response. The problem is that you don't know if and when an emergency will occur and it's too late to establish a process once you're in one. (If the house is on fire you don't call a meeting, you call the fire department.) Thus, it behooves groups using consensus to define the circumstances in which it's prudent to have a small group make decisions on behalf of the whole for the duration of the emergency. This includes: a) the conditions under which emergency powers can be invoked; b) the specific powers granted to the emergency group; c) who will comprise the emergency group; d) the process by which invoking happens; e) the reporting standards by which the whole group is informed what is happening; and f) the assessment afterwards about how well that went. Don't wait for the common house to catch fire!

41. Email from Hell
In this electronic age, a great deal of communication happens via email. While some of that is excellent (making announcements, posting minutes and reports, sending background materials ahead of major discussions) it is not well suited to all forms of communication. In particular, it is an incendiary way to express upset. In the worst cases people will say provocative things in email they would not say face-to-face, which is toxic to relationships. Worse, there is almost unlimited opportunity to misinterpret tone, emphasis, hyperbole, and sarcasm in email—all things that are much more easily corrected when people are communicating in the same room. Thus, groups are well served by developing protocols for the healthy use of email. Leaving it all up to individual discretion is naive.

42. Falling in Love with One Format
While the spirit of consensus is that the input of all members is welcome, meetings are never a level playing field and wise groups take that into account. The default format for most groups is open discussion, where people speak on a topic roughly in the order in which they indicate that they are ready. While that approach is meant to be evenly accessible to all, not everyone is equally comfortable speaking in front of the whole group, nor does everyone digest information and know their own mind at the same pace. Thus, some people wind up talking a lot more than others, and some may rarely speak. To address this, some groups embrace Go Rounds, where everyone has a protected chance to speak, and air space is much more evenly distributed. Unfortunately, Go Rounds are slow and there's a fair amount of repetition. The point is that there is no single format that works best all the time and groups are well served by facilitation that mixes things up. Do your facilitators have the latitude to do this? Do they have a sufficiently large toolkit and understanding of the tools to pair formats with what's needed?

43. Creating Constructive Containers
One of the most important skills of the consensus facilitator is setting things up to succeed by establishing the right stage (narrowing the focus of the conversation to something small enough to be digestible, yet large enough to be interesting); establishing the right tone (constructive, creative, and compassionate; rather than critical, combative, or compromising); and then getting out of the way, letting the wisdom of the group bubble up in that favorable environment.

44. Bloodless Facilitators
For some reason, a lot of people think that being a neutral facilitator means a neutered facilitator. No! You can be passionate without having a dog in the fight, or letting your ego get in the way of progress. You can care deeply that we're getting to the heart of the matter and that no one is being run over, without taking sides or trying to peddle a solution. You can empathize when people are contributing heartfelt feelings, and cheer when a bridge is discovered between seemingly intractable positions. To paraphrase Emma Goldman, I believe the facilitator's mantra should be: If I can't dance it isn't my meeting.

45. Everyone Has a Role
I figure that for all topics that the plenary tackles, every member will have one of two relationships to each: either they'll give a damn, or they won't. If they do it's relatively obvious why that should be engaged—they care about the outcome and would like to influence it. More subtle is why to be engaged if the outcome matters little. The way I see it, you are perfectly positioned to safeguard the process, to help people bridge to each other and not get bogged down in the trenches of their positions. You can help people hear each other and remember to think about what's best for the group—not with judgment, but with compassion. It's not just the facilitator's responsibility to safeguard process; it's everyone's responsibility.

46. Failure to Invoke Common Values
The lode star for plenary agreements is how to sensitively balance the applicable group values to the issue at hand. Obviously, the first step is knowing what your common values are. The second, more nuanced step, is inviting them into the conversation at the earliest opportunity so that they can be on the table as active elements when crafting a response. It is not enough that your values exist etched on a stone tablet that rests in a trophy case gathering dust in the living of the common house (next to the portraits of dead founders). They need to be alive and in the room guiding your work and being adapted to emerging shifts in who the group is and intends to be. Lacking a rudder, there is a lot of drift and decisions influenced by force of personality.

47. Welcoming Emotions
Many groups are uncertain what to do with emotional input. Mostly they hope it goes away and doesn't cause too much damage on the way through town. There's a lot of holding one's breath and hoping for the best. We can do better. Emotions can be volatile, sure, and people can undoubtedly be hurt by their raw expression. Yet emotions are also a source of information (people can know things more deeply through their heart than their mind) and a source of energy. (Who says meetings have to be energetically flat?) If you think of emotions as the flow of water through a fire hose, I suggest preparing for those moments when the flow is high by learning to hold the hose, not by reaching for the valve to shut down the water.

48. Expecting New Members to Pick it Up By Osmosis
Consensus is an unnatural act—at least for those of us raised in the competitive, adversarial overculture, which is just about everyone. Thus, it's not particularly smart to assume that new members are going to take to consensus like ducks to water. They need help. Having new people watch plenaries and absorb it through observation is a start but you need more. Have an experienced member sit with the new folks afterwards and walk through what happened. Take the time to train new members in the culture shift needed for consensus to thrive; it will be time well spent.

49. Disinviting Don Rickles
One of the trickier aspects of cooperative group dynamics is knowing how to work with the two-edged sword of humor. While it can provide a much-needed leavening and ease, it can also be overdone (pulling people prematurely out of a tender moment), strained (forced humor tends to be worse than none), or even divisive (think sarcasm and put-down humor, a la Don Rickles, where someone is isolated as the the butt of the joke). At its nastiest, humor can be used to zing poisoned darts across the room, where criticism is voiced without attribution ("Oh, I was only making a joke; I didn't mean anything."). You want your facilitators to root this out, rather than unwittingly enabling it by letting it slide.

50. Faithless Consensus
Finally, a word about the power of expectations. Mostly people recreationally bash meetings like they complain about the weather, perhaps not understanding how outcomes are influenced by projections of dismal meetings (where the group will be inefficient, people will listen poorly, little will get accomplished, you'll get a headache, etc). For the most part your reality will be profoundly guided by your expectations. If you expect a poor meeting, you are already 90% of the way toward having one—even before the meeting has started! The good news is that this can be turned around. Fifty years ago the Lovin' Spoonful released their pop hit, Do You Believe in Magic? That question is completely contemporary when applied to consensus. There will be no magic unless you believe.

Consensus Challenges: When Do You Know Enough To Act?

I'm in northern California this weekend, conducting a facilitation training, and the teaching theme is consensus. Two weeks ago students were asked what aspects of consensus were most challenging for them to understand or deal with well, and I got lots of replies. Today I'm launching a blog series in which I'll attempt to address a number of the issues that the students identified:

I. When do you know enough to act?
II. Closing the deal
III. Wordsmithing in plenary
IV. Redirecting competition
V. Bridging disparate views
VI. Harvesting partial product
VII. When to be formal
VIII. Harnessing brainstorms
IX. Coping with blocking energy
X. Defining respect
XI. Balancing voices
XII. Knowing when to accelerate and when to brake
XIII. Knowing when to labor and when to let go

• • •

While it's easy to agree on the goal of gathering as much relevant information on an issue as possible before making a decision, it turns out to be surprisingly nuanced knowing when you have enough information to act. That is, at what point does the perceived cost of delay (in order to gather additional data) outweigh the risk of making a mistake in acting without it?

I figure you never know everything, so the question becomes when do you know enough? This is about risk assessment (the consequences of making a mistake because you acted precipitously) and also about where the group stands on the spectrum of risk averse (the world is a dangerous place) versus risk tolerant (the world is full of opportunity). What looks like a prudent action to the latter can appear as recklessness to the former; what appears as prudence to the former comes across as overprotective to the latter. There is no right answer or single best approach. The group will simply have to discern the balance point case by case.


Fortunately, when the group has a relatively stable population it learns from experience and you don't have to start from scratch each time. Over time, you'll develop a sense of what has a chance to fly without reexamining the entire range of options. 


When it comes to risk assessment, there are a number of potent questions to ask:

o  What happens if things go badly? 
Sometimes, when you really look at it, the bad thing isn't that bad, and it makes sense to not be so cautious. Other times the cost of getting it wrong is unacceptably high, and it's wiser to gather more information—or to figure out how better to limit the damage in the event of failure.


o  What is the cost of delay?
This is the obverse of Act Now coin. It may manifest as frustration, dissipated energy, or a loss of momentum. Sometimes that's more expensive than making a mistake.


o  Is the decision reversible?
This can be an important consideration in assessing the cost of a poor outcome. It's one thing to be embarrassed by a mistake; it's another to be stuck with it.


o  To what extent can we gather information about what others have done in similar circumstances, and how well to do we think their experience applies in our situation? 
Even where we think this is possible, do we have the time, resources, and motivation to do the work? It's not particularly helpful to pine for information that's inaccessible or to wait for data that no one has the availability or inclination to gather.


In the end, there is no guarantee of success and you have live with the reality that you are susceptible to failure through taking an action and also vulnerable to failure through not taking an action. You can pick your poison, but you can never be totally safe.