The Essential Ingredients
Critical to the success of consensus is a foundation of essential ingredients. These include organizational principals that create efficiency, interpersonal skills that support collaborative relationships, and intrapersonal skills that grant individuals a mindset open to possibility. A strong foundation is one built on all of these levels.
Realize that when consensus fails, it is more often from a weak foundation than an error in process. Know that while organizational structures can be changed relatively quickly, building the inter/intra personal skills needed requires more patience.
Additional useful mindsets while in consensus process
- Creativity / innovation
- Progress is possible
- Believing and Doubting Game
- Asking for 100%
- 10 / 10 / 10. Consider the consequences and outcomes of your various options in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years.
- We is primary, and I is not relevant
- Break it up (create sets of smaller, more manageable decisions)
- No free lunch – rarely is a solution possible without a weighting or prioritization of needs
- Meditation
- Stories of challenging and complex consensus decisions in the past (“Chicken Soup for the Soul”) that resolved