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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank
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To: TimF who wrote (12069)4/20/2001 2:29:19 PM
From: Lane3  Read Replies (2) of 82486
 
But who decides who the screwballs are?

When you design a consensus process in a work, community, or family setting, the first thing you do is explain the process to the participants and get their agreement to commit to it. You don't proceed without that commitment. The objective is to come up with something that all the participants can support. It's an analytic process, not a negotiation process, that builds common understanding and agreement at each step along the way.

In every group there are some people who just can't open their minds enough or aren't collaborative enough to get with the program. There are lots of process tools and facilitative tools to bring people in. People who just can't participate in such a process probably have, er, something wrong with them, shall we say. Those are the screwballs. They're rare. And you know them when you see them. They confirm it when they are cornered and acknowledge that they aren't willing to work for a consensus even though they said they would.

In everyday usage, obviously consensus is a more general term, but I think the lessons of formal consensus processes are useful. I wouldn't measure in in terms of the percentage of people who agree but rather but the absence of objection from people who are qualified to participate and who sincerely want to collaborate. Of course, both of those criteria are hard to assess in unstructured situations.

Karen
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