Deciding by consensus without everything grinding to a halt

A department head wants to rethink how files are shared out among her six team members. She has a precise idea, but she knows that a new organisation announced without discussion will not hold. So she opens the subject in a meeting. Everyone has a view, and the objections are many and relevant. They agree to come back to it. Three meetings later, they are still coming back to it.

This is neither ill will nor a lack of authority. It is a consultation that is missing a framework.

Why consensus matters so much

The culture of shared decision-making is not a cliché. Swiss public life rests on concordance and on the consultation procedure, in which a draft is submitted to the cantons, parties and organisations concerned before it is adopted. Many companies work along the same lines: a decision gains legitimacy because those it affects have been able to have their say.

That logic has real strength. Objections surface early, the decision is better informed and, above all, it is applied without underground resistance. A manager who bypasses it gains a few weeks and often loses the team’s commitment.

Consensus does not mean unanimity

The most common misunderstanding is believing that a consensual decision has to satisfy everyone. It does not. Consensus guarantees that serious objections have been heard and taken into account, not that everyone got what they wanted.

As long as that point stays implicit, the discussion cannot stop: every unsatisfied objection restarts the debate. So before opening the consultation, three things need to be said:

• the exact question being consulted on, and what is not up for discussion;
• the deadline, after which views are no longer gathered;
• who decides, and on what criterion.

It is this framing that turns an open discussion into a shared decision. It is also part of what we work on when defining a team vision: a common direction does not stop one person from deciding.

Bringing objections out at the right time

A consultation that only gathers the views voiced out loud in a meeting is incomplete. In a team with several languages, several levels of hierarchy and different temperaments, the most useful reservations are often the ones nobody expresses in front of everyone.

Three practices change the outcome: sending the question in writing a few days before the meeting, having small groups work and report back a shared position, and asking “what could make this solution fail?” rather than “do you agree?”. These are meeting facilitation techniques, but they determine the quality of the consultation itself.

Closing, then applying

Once the deadline has passed, the decision must be made, written down and assigned to someone. Written down, because everyone must be able to check what was decided. Assigned, because a decision that belongs “to the meeting” belongs to nobody, and nobody will defend it when it is challenged.

This is especially true during a reorganisation, when the team needs to know who to turn to when the new organisation shows its limits.

Time spent consulting is not lost. It is recovered at the implementation stage, provided the consultation had a beginning, an end and an owner.