Negative Consensus

Brilliant meeting facilitator JohnVlissides invented this pattern recently. He was trying to quickly push for vital consensus with an eminent group of egotistical and opinionated software engineers.

The goal was to set priorities for a list of items. The usual way would be to ask for each item, "Should this one be high, medium, or low?" There was no way this group could quickly come to a decision.

John turned the process on its head by asking rather, "Who would object to this item being a medium?" He guessed at the correct priority for this opening bid. If there was an objection, he would try the same question with a different priority. If that didn't work, he would try a different priority, or return to the original bid.

Boffo success! The group quickly made the obvious priority decisions. The discussions about the non-obvious decisions were enlightening, and didn't take long.

John had to be firm about returning to the precise wording of the question, rather than let the discussion float around. By the end of the exercise, the group seemed to have "gotten" the process and were beginning to be self-policing.

This technique seems vulnerable to PaintingTheBicycleShed?.

That's not quite all there is to it. You have to amend the question, "Who would object to this item being a medium?" with a pointed "and why?" The idea is to make people accountable for their objection by having them articulate the reasoning behind it. That keeps people from objecting for the fun of it, increasing the probability that only people with serious concerns will air them.

--JohnVlissides (feeling brilliant)

One club at MIT had a good tradition: they used both "black ballot" and "white ballot" summary motions: black meant the question under consideration was generally agreed to have failed, and white was used to signify general consent. It sped up meetings enormously -- you could see the general consensus growing as folks started muttering "white ballot" as debate on a generally-acceptable item dragged on.

Some people, like me, just like to talk. It's good to have a mechanism where they can be stopped when they're repeating the group's general opinion. -- KenMeltsner

The best approach I have found to "forcing" consensus is similar to this - it uses the tricks the interpersonal skills tests use - where you are forced to allocate a fixed number of points between options. In the HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW situation, you say "You can have two HIGHS, four MEDIUMS and two LOWS". The group will quickly work out what the highs and lows are. You can adjust the numbers to fit the situation. I just can't think of a snappy name - RationedAllocation??

-- JonFawbert?

CategoryCommunication