One of the primary challenges of large groups using consensus is how to structure the process so a reasonable amount of communication occurs. There may be advantages to moving the group into smaller subsets to facilitate more in depth, back and forth discussions. Also time outside of the actual meeting space can be used to advantage.
There is a balance between how much the large group should work through and what content small groups can work on, or even own outright. In most large groups, small groups, usually called committees or teams, seek and process information, and then make a recommendation to the whole group to decide upon. If the whole group does not agree with the proposal, it can take many minutes of discussion, or even another meeting or three to get a decision made. Sometimes this is a great check and balance, however it may be that the large group time is wasted on issues which would be better made by a small group. Large group decision making is sometimes not an effective process and you can waste a lot of peoples time by endlessly processing issues that only a small handful of members care about. For example, if the group agenda includes 1 hour of discussion about what to plant in the garden, and there are only 3 gardeners in a group of twenty, you have wasted an hour of seventeen peoples time.
The facilitator should scrutinize the agenda before the meeting and pull out issues that are best done in small groups before the meeting ever starts. You might also pull them out as the meeting begins and ask the group if its OK for a small group to own that decision. Then you can ask for volunteers, setup the meeting where the decision will be made while everyone is present. However, if you miss this you, or you miss judge this, you will have to find a way during the meeting to break it out.
One way to test for this is for the facilitator to ask: “If you really do not care about this decision, raise your hand.” If a significant amount of the group does not care about the decision, it may be better to give the ownership of the issue to a small group. This is good area to include in your meeting planning.
Another way is to create a small disappearing task force to deal with an issue, made up of those who volunteer at the meeting. The facilitator calls for the creation of the group, and the time of the first group meeting is announced. It may also be useful to expressly charter that group with the scope of their task, and to acknowledge that they will be making that decision for the rest of the larger group.
If during the discussion time on an issue you notice that only a few people are activily participating in the disscussion, you can point out that observation and suggest those folks form a small group.
In giving small groups decision making authority, one area that is important to define is what decisions are appropriate for small groups (committees) to make and at what point should the decision making buck pass from the committee to the whole group? Often this calls for a seat of the pants judgment call, although it is possible to create a list of trigger conditions which would guide small groups.
One technique to try with an experienced group is to brainstorm up what things does the large group offer and do well, and what things do smaller groups do better. Often participants are very aware of the strengths and weak ness’s of large group time and this awareness can launch process changes that help the group.
One of the worse feelings is to have something you care about decided by a group who didn’t let you know that they were deciding it. When decisions are made in a subgroup without notice and members hear about them way after the fact, it can cause bad feelings, loss of trust, and even anger. All decision making avenues, be they large group, OR small group, need to have adequate notice. If group members don’t know what is going to be discussed or decided at a meeting, how can they participate in the discussion other than attending every meeting, most of which may be of no interest? Clearly defining what decisions will be made, and when they are going to be made would be a big step in letting people know about what it going on. This means OUTREACH by committees regarding decisions they make.
If you have a regular meeting place, One idea is to use a central located bulletin board to announce decision meetings. Use bright colored paper forms which are posted to announce upcoming decision meetings. The paper is boiler plate with large text that says: To Be Decided and it has a place for when and where the decision will take place and of course lots of room for what the decision is about. Anyone can fill this form out and post it in a central bulletin board location, or send it to everyone. Set some time limit that it must be posted some number of days in advance of the decision. (the blank forms can be kept right on the decision making board) Anyone who cares comes to the meeting and those people make the meeting. The decision notice itself can have room for comments and ideas to be written on it to gather information from those who might have ideas but don’t want to attend.
If a central location or consistent process for announcing decision meetings is followed, then any individual can post an idea and facilitate a decision about anything of interest. Those folks who are interested would come to the meeting, or give input in another way. This process requires members take the responsibility to check the decision board. There are groups that use this method exclusively for their decision making, they have no committees, and no general meetings. Individuals determine the course of action that they want to do, post a notice and whomever is interested shows up and those that show up make the decision. Large general membership gatherings are then used for parties and fun social events, or group brainstorming of larger values and goals.
If a central meeting place is not available, using electronic means, such as websites can be utilized.
For a decision board to work, members have to show personal responsibility for staying in the loop. By posting decision meetings with five days notice, it should always be reasonable for folks to be able to get notice of, and give input to decisions.
On the decision board it is good to post instructions about what kinds of things are not appropriate for small group decisions. Using the decision board puts a large responsibility on the part of the members, and also promotes individual initiatives. Members that live off site, or don’t come to the community center on any sort of regular schedule, need to find a meeting buddy who will call you and let you know when things come up on the decision board.
The decision board can free a group from many of the mundane tasks of group maintenance, leaving the larger meetings for more appropriate large group topics.
1.
Fill
out the form including a description of the decision, when and where decision
is going to be made.
2.
Date
the form - it is best to allow at least a weeks notice for decisions.(5 days
minimum)
3.
If
you can’t make the decision meeting, or have an idea or concern, add your
comments on the sheet. Put your name on your comments so you can be contacted.
4.
Take
the sheet to the meeting, consider all the comments on the sheet. Ideally,
follow-up with commenters who wrote on the sheet but didn’t come to the meeting
with how their comments were considered.
5.
On
the back of the sheet, or on an attached sheet, write down what was decided, by
whom, when.
6.
Post
the decision made in the decisions made area.
Small group decision making
should not be used when:
· The decision involves spending group money that is not in a committee budget, or otherwise budgeted, or is outside the general parameters of a committees budget. (For example if the commonhouse committee wanted to donate $100 to the Kara clothing fund)
· The decision changes the use of, or significantly alters a common area. (For example building a storage shed on the island)
· The decision affects the property of one or more lot owners. (For example, lets raise pigs in the back of the commonhouse).
· There is a conflict between individual self interest and the best interest of the group. (For example I want to sell the commonhouse tables and buy camping gear)
· In your best judgement the decision should have input from everybody at a general meeting.
Often between meetings, information sharing can occur. One way is to use a paper survey to collect peoples opinions about details of an issue. Be sure to number the questions and create an adequate range so you can tally it to see where the memberships opinions are similar or different. For example, you can ask for a range of opinion from 1 to 5 to get a numerical value stating opinion. If almost everyone is towards a 1, and only a few people are towards the 5 you can spend time, out of the meeting, talking with those who have different opinions and understanding why.
Another way of empowering small group meetings by involving the whole membership is to use a routed proposal form, which is routed around to everyone in the group. The proposal form gives the reason for the decision, the proposed action, and the pros and cons of the decision. Room is left on the proposal for everyone to add more pros and cons. Once it has routed around the group it is posted for a week with a meeting date on it. Anyone who is interested comes to the decision meeting. The decision meeting then has at its disposal the input of pros and cons from every member, whether they attend the meeting or not. This idea requires a certain level of discipline of routing the form expediently.
A variation is to include a range of decision choices on the sheet such as I agree, I want to talk about this in a small group, I want the whole group to talk this over, I disagree.
Sometimes there may be problems of trust in a group, where members are not confident that a small group can adequately make the right decision. When this occurs it can often be useful to brainstorm up situations where small groups in the past did not make a good decision, and then look for reasons why those small groups might have failed. Often, this generates some good ground rules for small group decision making.
Another problem with small group use is that if there are several, they all want to use up large group time by making reports about what they did. Sometimes this can use up a lot of large group time. It may work better to have the groups post their notes and decisions in some central location where those who are interested can read all about it. Remember, one of the reasons to use small groups is to move the decision making on smaller issues to those who care about it most. By giving 30 minute reports on all their activities at large group meetings, the majority who may not care at all are wasting their time.
Requiring all decisions to be made by the large group is one way to ensure that everyone has access to decision making. However, small groups can effectively represent the interests of everyone by adequately announcing in advance issues for decisions, and creating ways for everyone to give input.
E-mail hardly needs an introduction in our modern world. It has become one of the dominant communication tools around the world in just a decade. One of the challenges many groups find is that e-mail is over used or used to broadcast unhappy and demoralizing messages to the whole group. E-mail can be a very effective means of distributing information and gathering opinions. For example, there are free e-mail list serves, that allow you to create a group e-mail address, so anyone can send a message to all the members of the group at once. The obvious disadvantage of this, is that a complex or exciting topic can generate dozens if not hundreds of communications. The resulting tangle of e-mail message spaghetti, with replies to replies to messages you haven’t even read yet, can get quite confusing.
Many groups that use e-mail well adopt a set of ground rules, just like they do for their face to face meetings. Some simple ground rules can include things such as: No mean messages to the list (Send angry e-mail to an individual, not the whole group), include the message you are replying to, use the subject field to identify clearly the topic of the message, and perhaps even a automatic meeting generator, so when a particular topic generates 20 e-mail messages someone steps in and schedules a face to face meeting to work on the issue in person.
One of the interesting effects e-mail has for some people is that it can free them up to talk about things, or say things, they are much too shy to say in person. This often comes from the ability in e-mail to write out your thoughts, then edit them, perhaps several times, before sending. For some people this is a real positive aspect of e-mail and so be sure if you find uncomfortable e-mail coming out not to just abandon e-mail as a communication device but recognize its value to those that can’t say those things in person.
One way to quickly poll a group is to set up a voice mail system. Many local phone carriers offer voice mail at very little cost and some even have customizable mailboxes which can respond to input such as “press star for yes, Press pound for no”. You can change the message daily and have members call in to hear the “crisis of the day”.
Business and groups often create website to advertise their products and services. Many free web servers provide a limited amount of space where you can post notices, information and meeting minutes. Slightly more sophisticated web sites allow folders to be password protected and so you control who has access to information you might want to restrict. A website might be a good tool for posting proposals, with an email link right on the web page of the proposal to direct comments to the owners of the proposal.