Effective Decision Making
Joe
Public
Seen by 394
It's tough enough for us to make our own individual decisions in our lives. Try to do this as a group of two and it's 10X harder. Add a 3rd person and it's even harder. It becomes harder and harder as a group grows its participant size.
The AiD and muxive solution can and should be extended into the decision-making realm, but not necessarily to make the actual decisions. Instead to prioritize those past and present decisions made.
Think about this group making decisions as a group. Imagine we have made 5 decisions thus far. These can and should be prioritized. Often all decisions are connected. The first decision impacts the second. Those two impact the next one. But along the way often a later decision is found to be more important than earlier decisions. Often a later decision makes it necessary to change an earlier decision.
When all decisions are placed within a priority list framework and every member has an opportunity to reorder decision positioning, and everyone has equal power, and a single resultant rank-ordered listing is automatically generated in real time - then the group has one voice with which to reference to move forward with more harmony.
I would suggest to the group that we start making decisions - even if very small ones and then put them within the priority list framework. Give everyone a chance to rank-order all these decisions over a period of time and see what rises to the top and how the ordering then brings about new decisions and changes with old decisions.
Make sense?
No one is the group leader. No one has more power than anyone else. But yet the group finds its unique voice and its priorities. Anyone can come and anyone can go at any time and yet the group always remains in tact and never loses its voice, its values, its mission, etc.
IMHO - this is what is missing from tools like Loomio and what is necessary to keep like-minded activists on a ever-progressing path forward with far more harmony within each active participants mind, heart and gut. We can all disagree about specifics but we all accept what we are as one entity (with its one voice.) If you cannot accept this one entities' voice in the world then you are free to go find a better matching community or spin off and create a new one with like-minded others.
We can demo this for this d@w group. Just start putting forth decision proposal statements. When we get the specific decision language crafted to an acceptable place then we can add to the list of decision items.
Loomio can be used to always discuss better specific 'languaging' of each decision statement. You will see that nearly everything requires constant revisiting and change as time marches forward. The groups decision priority list will also change. New decisions will rise to the top often forcing required change to those less important decisions below.
Gotta experiment with new solutions to see what the reality is with each. Reality often is not what we imagine it's in our minds prior to implementation.
Joe Mon 31 Oct 2016 12:23PM
In Loomio, what does 5 agrees and 2 blocks out of 46 possible votes mean for a decision? Is there more confusion or "group clarity" established? And why have 39 participants not engaged? And does every proposal establish some hard decision? Does our coop require clearer process rules?
Joe Mon 31 Oct 2016 1:13PM
First, I'm NOT here to sell my creations. Only to make their possibility enter this groups awareness.
@johnrhoads And my solutions are far more developed than "what ifs" or hypotheticals. Again, here's a link to a working prototype: http://newhopeproductsco.com/aid_project/index.php
As I mentioned in the past, I'm more than happy to be moved into some side sub-group if this is what this small growing group prefers. But this has huge implications for what it is that you are creating for your coop (collaboration) framework.
Does it mean you do not want me to add my POV to the other work that the group does? I will not be the only member who sees other alternative paths forward. These are some very important decisions to make early on:
- Will majority vote rule?
- Will those who do not engage be ignored?
- How much time will you allow before some final decision is made?
- Who will craft the exact wording of any final decision text?
- Will those who engage more, effectively have more power?
- Will the group practice acceptance and tolerance of any new ideas or will bullying and/or pushing around of others be accepted?
- Will only tried and tested processes, tools and rules be allowed and tolerated?
- Will the group establish leaders and decision makers (or sub-groups) with more power?
- Will some get rewarded (paid) and others not? And if there is reward than will there be different award levels?
There are many many basic issues and decisions that should be established asap vs. hidden from membership. Transparency, honesty, truthfulness are very attractive and the opposites are very repulsive.
- Is this group wanting to include everyone or just those who align perfectly?
- Will decisions and rules be allowed to change as time marches forward?
- To change anything will it require great effort and much time?
All these very difficult to answer questions went into my solution design with automation included and equal power guaranteed. I'm just trying to save you all a lot of time trying to create something that will work with tools that will at best just create another mostly corporate model.
But do press on, push back, if you know I'm wrong. Push me aside or out and then everyone here will better understand what d@w really is. In my solution people like me don't get pushed aside. Their ideas just move down the list. No one needs to become the bully. Everyone has equal power to drive the concept to very low priority for the group for the moment. Who knows when something will click and then rise to the top.
But please try to create some sort of prioritized decision list or doc asap using whatever tools you think is best. We all want to see something simple and easy to reference all the time to assess progress.
This is very very tough stuff. No one has figured it out yet. It's why corps rule the world today and coops do not. But do not give up the fight!
David Brinovec Mon 31 Oct 2016 3:19PM
So, the proposal closed. 5 agreed, 2 blocked. I was curious to see what would happen myself. It looks like all Loomio did was to simply make a record. My opinion is that it's up to each person to decide for themselves how to react to the outcome. I think the important take away here is that people are not machines. We can make up our own minds. My point about priority above speaks to this.
"Also, on the point of priority. I don't think this is really an issue. If one decision needs more priority than another, then I think it will naturally get more attention. At the very least, I think it's way too early to fault Loomio here."
On the idea of putting automation in place to set our priorities for us. For one, People are going to work on what they want to work on. Alot of people are not going to go along with priorities set by any tool. I don't think it's trivial to automate how this or that decision relates to any other. Everyone will have differing opinions on everything. Maybe this can be accomplished, but I suspect it will be a daunting task.
I think Loomio does it's job very well. It simply automates some of the drudgery involved in decision making. The record keeping. It doesn't draw conclusions and then try to dictate to people what they should or should not do.
Betsy Avila Wed 2 Nov 2016 5:10AM
Really like @davidian1024's analysis of the proposal result and second his comments. And thanks for finding a link that further describes the distinction between disagree and block. :star:
John Rhoads Tue 1 Nov 2016 1:28AM
One interesting tidbit I found regarding voting in Loomio comes from the Argentinian Pirate Party instance of Loomio. Check out how they added "committed" to the vote choices.
Short of having the "committed" feature choice, we should be looking at Trello to fill in the gaps.
David Brinovec Tue 1 Nov 2016 11:05AM
That was something I thought about. It does seem a bit unbalanced that there is a block vote, which seems to basically translate to "disagrees strongly", while there is no "agrees strongly".
Before I cast my block vote, I skimmed this Loomio community thread on the difference between block and disagree. Food for thought.
https://www.loomio.org/d/xPyUG8tE/why-the-distinction-between-disagree-and-block-
William Beard · Mon 31 Oct 2016 2:14AM
Well said John. I was going to vote agree, but after reading everything here and some good points brought up by David. I think IF we do want to vote on our process that it be clarified and put up for vote again.
I also certainly want to vote agree and support prioritized decision making. Which works in an egalitarian way like Joe describes. As John said, I think that's best done with Loomio and the integrated tools here.
As suggested I agree that Joe's approaches "AiD and muxive solutions" could be explored in a 'project team' or it's own thread by those interested in that work. Clearly Joe you have passion for these approaches and I see your good intentions, heart and work. However, I also don't understand them at this point. In the interest of useful feedback, creating new terminology occurs to me like 'corp speak' which I certainly have participated in, and which I actively work to avoid. I've learned it's most engaging to any audience to just say what you mean and find the common words to do so.
Enjoying having some time to participate here today, and the process. I hope we can find a good way to prioritize, as I'd like to have a clear set of topics or projects that I can participate around with agreed on results that will contribute. Right now I find myself trying to catch up on a lot of conversations, and don't feel I'm moving toward a common goal.