Intentional Society: The power of consent
Is something calling you to intentional growth in relationship? Start with an exploratory call Saturday May 22nd, 11:00-11:55am Pacific Daylight Time (2pm Eastern, 6pm UTC)
Consent is my favorite group decision-making method. I know, I know - just geek out with me for a bit. 🤣 It gives every voice a veto, avoiding the short-circuit of autocracy and the tyranny of the majority. It also avoids the swamp of consensus, the curse of perfection. It works best as an engine of rapid screening and approval, churning through proposals aiming for "safe enough to try, good enough for now" decisions.
We practiced this multiple times last quarter, in our Intentional Society weekly sessions. It's got a bit of a learning curve, both in forming crisp proposals and in figuring out what makes useful objections. It's not as well known as "majority rule" or "everyone agrees," and it can be uncomfortable to consent to something that's good enough but has visible imperfections. But I'm still a big fan: no other method I know of has such a sweet spot of power-with, party size, buy-in, and efficiency. It can result in very high effectiveness... but that also depends on the system around it.
You have to have trust that new proposals and new decisions can keep iterating and improving. You have to listen for and respect that still, small voice that delivers the "not safe enough" message. Most importantly, you have to ensure that the right people are consenting! My rule for copacetic decision outcomes is that those impacted by a decision should be the ones to make it.
It took me a few years to appreciate the profundity of that maxim, so I'll repeat it: The people that are impacted by the results of a decision should be the people to make the decision. Self-determination! Cardinal principle in modern international law, and we hold these truths to be self evident, that equality and respect and consent are critical to good governance and peace between nations.
Yet how much self-determination are we "allowed" in our workplaces? In our schools? In our relationships with any kind of authority? All my experiences of resentment and revolt against decisions have been in response to things being done to me and which I objected to. Protests of that state of affairs are met with the excuse that "we can't please everyone, it's just not practical." Disagree and commit. Submit or quit. Is exercising that power-over required to keep organizations functioning?
One of my organizing principles for Intentional Society is that we can do coordination so much better. That we can respect the sovereignty and self-rule of each person while being more effective and agile than any bureaucracy of equivalent size. Yes, this requires more skill and more awareness, relative to conventional norms. Consent isn't a panacea: I haven't even mentioned the protocol layer of selecting the best decision-making methods for different risk levels. When you really think through some of the processes that we do mostly intuitively, stuff gets complicated!
So I'll leave the outer layers for another newsletter - we're updating our mission statement, which makes for a great case study. But I'm out of words for today.
Members and in-betweeners, you're invited to join us on Sunday! We'll select a dayboat relational practice based on how many people show up. (I'm slightly nervous that the mere existence of the multi-week voyages might scare people off? You are still welcome to join the campfire, and any week can be the right week!) FYI we may also extend a week (through Memorial Day weekend) before we do our retrospective session.
Cheers,
James