Consensus Decision Making

Consensus can be a very powerful model of participatory decision making when it is considered to be a “win-win” process and held as integral to the purpose of the group. Although it is sometimes abandoned as being overly complex and time consuming, consensus decision making, in itself, opens the process to careful consideration, listening, and negotiation. In this context, decisions must be fully understood and agreed to by all members of the group, and the group holds the process of making a decision which is in the best interests of everyone.

What Happens When You Don’t Agree on a Decision-Making Process?

Sometimes a group will move forward on their path and begin making decisions before agreeing on how such decisions will be made. This may work –or appear to work – at the outset of a process, but some difficulties can occur.

Sam Kaner, Facilitators Guide to Participatory Decision-Making 

Divergence and Convergence

The 'breath' of divergence and convergence, of breathing in and breathing out is at the heart of our process design. Every process goes to a few or more of these ‘breathng’ phases.

Essentials of Meaningful Conversation: Seven little helpers

What are some of the ways that we can encourage and support each other to be fully present in the conversation?

What are some of the characteristics of good questions that we can ask of each other, that best serves our inquiry?

What are some of the structures and methods that enable us to participate in meaningful conversations?

What are some of the most helpful things we can harvest from our conversations?

How do we wish to make our decisions so that they create clarity and wise actions?

See also Hosting in a hurry (p.23).

Questions

Asking the right question

Asking the right question is the most effective way of opening up a conversation and keeping it engaging. A high-quality question focuses on what is meaningful for the participants, triggers our curiosity and invites us to explore further.

While answers tend to bring us to closure, questions open up to exploration.

When inviting people into a conversation that matters, it is helpful to have an overall question, one that itself embodies the purpose of the meeting. This is the key question or the “calling question” for the conversation or meeting. The calling question is best formulated together with key stakeholders.

The conversation may include other questions than the calling question. The questions you choose or that people discover during conversation are critical to its success. A hosted conversation could explore one question or a series of related questions.

Some guidelines for choosing questions

• A well-crafted question attracts energy and focuses attention on what matters. Experienced hosts recommend asking open-ended questions, not ones that have a simple yes/no answer.

• Good questions invite inquiry and curiosity. They do not need to promote action or problem solving immediately.

• You´ll know a good question when it continues to surface good ideas and possibilities.

• Check possible questions with key people who will take part in a conversation. Does it hold their attention and energy?

What makes a Powerful Question?

Hundreds of people around the world were asked - Several common themes emerged

A powerful question…

o Is simple and clear

o Is thought provoking

o Generates energy

o Focuses inquiry

o Challenges assumptions

o Opens new possibilities

o Evokes more questions

The Art of Harvesting

What if we were planning not a meeting but a harvest? In taking such an approach, we must become clear about why we are initiating any process. The Art of Hosting and the Art of Harvesting dance together as two halves of the same thing.

Harvesting is more than just taking notes. To get a sense of the complexity of this art, let's begin by picturing a field in which someone has planted wheat. How can that field of wheat be harvested?

We first imagine the harvest from that field as a farmer using equipment to cut down the wheat, thresh it, and separate the seeds from the stalks. The farmer might store the grain, further refine it, sell it quickly or wait for the price to increase.

Now imagine a geologist, a biologist and a painter harvesting from the same field. The geologist picks through the rocks and soil gathering data about the land itself. The biologist might collect insects and worms, bits of plants and organic matter. The painter sees the patterns in the landscape and chooses a palette and a perspective for work of art.

They all harvest differently from the field. The results of their work go to different places and are put to different uses. But they all have a few things in common; they have a purpose for being in the field and a set of questions about that purpose, they have a pre-determined place to use the results of the harvest, and they have specific tools to use in doing their work.

Despite the field being the same, the tools and results are specific to the need, purpose and inquiry.

There are eight stages of harvesting, elucidated in the companion book to this one. Briefly they are:

Stage 1: Sensing the need
Sensing the need may at first be intuitive or very basic – like sensing hunger, but once the sensed need becomes conscious one can act on it.

We sense that we are hungry and from there we plant a garden, knowing that the work of planting and harvesting lies before us but that the end result meets the need for sustenance.

The need is not complicated; it is real and clear and it speaks deeply and inspires invitation and action. Everything begins from this need, and the way we hold it and invite others into it informs the harvest that we take at the end of the day.

Stage 2: Preparing the field
In some cases the caller creates the readiness of the field by creating awareness around the need. Others with a similar need will recognize the call.

In preparing the field – sending out the call, giving the context, inviting etc.– we set the tone of the whole process – the seriousness and quality will determine the quality of what we reap. The work of readying a field for planting can take a whole year during which we condition the soil, clear the rocks and prepare things. What we are doing here is actually harvesting a field so that the seeds can be planted.


In other words: start thinking about the harvest from the very beginning – not as an afterthought.

Stage 3: Planning the Harvest
Planning the harvest starts with and accompanies the design process. A clear purpose and some success criteria for the process of the harvest itself will add clarity and direction.

What would be useful and add value - and in which form would it serve best?

Translated into a simple check-list, it becomes:

o What intent are you holding?
o Who is going to benefit?
o How can you add most value to the work at hand – how will the harvest serve best?
o What form or what media will be most effective?
o Who should host or do the harvesting?
o What is the right timing?

Stage 4: Planting the seeds
The questions around which we structure the hosting become the seeds for harvesting. All gardeners and farmers know that planting seeds depends on the time and the conditions. You can’t just plant whenever you want to. You plant once the conditions are right to maximize the yield.

In hosting practice, this means being sensitive to timing when asking questions.

In sowing the seeds that will drive the inquiry – identifying and asking the strategic and meaningful questions – you determine the output. So in planning the harvest, ask yourself, “What it is that this process needs to yield? What information, ideas, output or outcome will benefit us here and now, and what might take us to the next level of inquiry?”

The process itself is an on-going one. With each part of the process, you harvest something. Some of it you need to use right away, to help lead you into the next process. Some of the harvest you will need later.

So part of planning the harvest is also knowing for whom, when and how you need to use it. Another part of the planning is asking yourself in which format the harvest will serve you best.

Stage 5: Tending the crop
Protect the integrity of the crop. Nurture the crop as it grows, weed it and thin it to keep the strong plants growing and get rid of all that will not nourish or serve. This involves a combination of feeding the field and letting it grow. But it also involves just sitting in the field. Holding space for what is emerging and enjoying it.

During the process, enjoy seeing your work unfold in all its complexity. The more you can welcome the growth you are witnessing, the higher the quality of the harvest. Now you are in the pulse of noticing both the quality of the field and the quality of the crops.

This is where we engage in conversation and exploration – where the richness of the harvest is born. The richer the conversation or exchange, the richer the harvest!

Stage 6: Picking the fruits
Picking the fruits corresponds to recording or creating a collective memory. The simplest way to harvest is to record what is being said and done, the output of the conversations, etc. This creates a record or collective memory.

Recording can be done in words.
• your notes, which will be subjective
• or transcripts of output from conversations recorded on tapes, etc., which will be objective.

Recording can also be done with pictures / photographs / video / film.
• pictures evoke and recall feelings, atmospheres, situations.
• you can video the conversation - record both verbally and visually

It is helpful to give some thought in the planning phase to how you want to harvest. What kind of records, templates etc. will help you gather the relevant information or knowledge?

Stage 7: Preparing and processing the fruits
Creating a memory is the first step. As we pick the fruits or seeds for processing, some will be used right away, some will be used for further processing and some will be used as seed for the next season.

The second step is making collective sense and meaning. This is where we add value and make the data useful. There are many ways of doing this. The general idea is to take loads of bits of information and transform them into “holons” – wholes that are also parts of greater wholes.

Things that can help in this process:.
• Harvest in a systemic way. Ask collectively: What did you notice? What gave sense and meaning to you? Notice the patterns - they indicate what is emerging
• Use metaphors, mental models and stories to make complex issues simple
• Use drawings and graphics to make complex issues manageable and visible

Stage 8: Planning the next harvest - feeding forward
Most harvesting is done to bring closure to a process or bring us to the next level of understanding. More importantly, it helps us to know collectively, to see the same picture and share the same understanding together.

A few comments

The above reflections mainly concern collective harvesting.

Individual reflection and harvest will raise the level of the collective harvest.

During learning processes, individual harvesting can be done intentionally, by using a journal as a learning tool.

Web-based tools open up a whole world of possibilities that are not dealt with here.

Harvesting the “soft” is much more subtle and subjective than dealing with the “cognitive” or more objective, tangible parts. A qualitative inquiry into what we have noticed, what has shifted or changed in our relationships, in the culture or atmosphere may give us some information about the softer part of the harvest.

For the most effective harvest, these eight steps should be planned beforehand, as part of designing the whole process.

Summary of The Art of Harvesting version 2.6.; written by Monica Nissen and Chris Corrigan with input from the Art of Hosting Community of Practice.

The full article can be downloaded from the Art of Hosting website: www.artofhosting.org