Go:

Visual Taxonomy

Links

Hide/Show:

Taxonomy Path

https://guides.shiftbase.net/integrative-decision-making-2/

Integrative Decision-Making

WHO

All employees.

WHAT

A decision-making process used in companies practicing Holacracy. 

WHY

Decisions are often made through unstructured processes, creating misunderstandings and leaving some people to feel that their are not being heard. Integrative decision-making is a structured process for presenting decision proposals, reviewing them in groups and modifying them according to feedback from colleagues.

HOW

Format:

1. Present proposal;
2. Clarify questions;
3. Reactions – people voice their changes and suggest changes;
4. Proposer amends, clarifies his proposal. No discussions here;
5. Objections – proposal adopted if there are no objections;
6. Integration – aim is to create a proposal that satisfies any objections that have arisen whilst dealing with the proposer’s initial tension.

Important working principles:

• People should not expect to reach 100% certainty, progress is more important than perfection;
• Iterate, letting user feedback steer you, in order to find your answer;
• Discussing the work is not the same as doing it;
• consensus is slower than consent- make the decision ‘safe to try’; that is, it won’t hurt your organisation;
• trust people; give them the benefit of doubt;

Before stating:

• Establish clear roles: FACILITATOR: can enforce a few rules. SECRETARY: records meetings, decisions that have been made, and also helps people write their proposals
• Team size: 7 (give or take two). The two pizza rule should apply. IDM loses effectiveness as you scale.
• Table Position: Where people sit is important since it effects when in the process they get to have their say etc. People should be randomly assigned seats each time. Good idea to have the leader sit somewhere in the middle so they don’t have the first or last word.
• Proposal duration: it is suggested that proposals are adopted for a month before they are revisited.

Crafting Proposals:

• Proposer explains the tension that underpins their proposal and suggests a solution.
• People often ask for a ‘timeout’, and ask for help creating their proposal.
• In Holacracy a lot of proposals come in the shape of a policy, accountability, or role; for all you can create something new, update something already in place, or get rid of something (following CRUD roughly).
• Helps to take a structured approach, particularly since this makes it scalable.

Clarifying Questions:

• anyone can ask any number if questions, to help them understand the proposal
• this is not a space for back and forth discussion
• people’s reactions will often come disguised as questions; facilitator should watch out for this
• no back and forth of questions here
• avoid reaching the ‘how’ stage. The ‘how’ should be left for those executing the proposal. More important in this phase to discuss and fully understand the root of the tension.

Reactions:

• One person at a time here. People can suggest edits to the proposal, say ‘no reaction’, or could result in a ‘safe to try’. ‘Safe to try’ is harder to achieve in bigger companies.

SOURCES

Meeting with purpose by Derrick Bradley

The creative forces of self-organization by John A. Buck & Gerad Endenburg

https://medium.com/org-hacking/holacracys-integrative-decision-making-process-f750d4b82abc

Holacracy’s Integrative Decision Making process

I think I’m getting close to coming full-circle on Holacracy. At first I was totally psyched by how radically innovative it is; then the skeptic in me kicked in and it seemed more like an idealistic framework that can never work in a large scale organizations. But the more I study it and similar approaches, it resonates with me more and more. I’m not ready for a full “why is Holacracy awesome?” post, but I do want to focus on one aspect of it that can potentially stand on its own merits:

Holacracy’s Integrative Decision-Making Process

It’s a structured process for making decisions in a group that rings truer to me than both consensus and top-down decision making (the two extremes of the spectrum).

Here’s the gist of the process:

1. Present Proposal — proposer describes the problem that she saw and the solution she proposes
2. Clarifying Questions — anyone can ask clarifying questions. Proposer can answer. No reactions or dialog allowed.
3. Reaction Round — each person can react to the proposal as they see fit. No discussion or responses.
4. Amend & Clarify — proposer can optionally clarify the intent or amend the proposal based on reactions. No discussion allowed.
5. Objection Round — The Facilitator asks each person in turn: ”Do you see any reasons why adopting this proposal would cause harm or move us backwards?” (an “Objection”). Objections are stated, tested, and captured without discussion; the proposal is adopted if none surface.
6. Integration — The goal is to craft an amended proposal that would not cause the Objection, but that would still address the proposer’s problem. Focus on each Objection, one at a time. Once all are integrated, go through another Objection Round.

Beyond the meta-benefit of a repeatable, structured, decision-making process the two things that I like the most about this are:

• Separating getting clarify on the proposal, giving everyone an opportunity to be heard (react) and dealing with material objections into three separate activities. They address three separate needs for the people who are engaging with the proposal and deal with each one separately.
• Defining a valid objection as something that would “cause harm or move us backward”. This is typically where consensus-based decision making tends to fail. And also somewhat related to Fred Wilson’s recent post on satisficing — by setting an agreed-upon acceptable threshold for proposals, we can avoid some of the major pitfalls that cause important decision-making processes to stall.

Mieke Byerley Sorry for arriving at a this thread a little later. Thor, from your proposal description, it seems you are looking for something called
Integrative Decision Making https://guides.shiftbase.net/integrative-decision-making-2/, which is a hybrid of the
Systemic Consensus Principle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wR5YXYECOE&feature=youtu.be , and the
Advice Process http://corporate-rebels.com/advice-process/

These are all process that Deep Democracy, Participatory Democracy and Wise Democracy are leverging and working with in varying degrees and mises. It is also valuable to consider the Cynfin Decision Model ( as not all decisions require the same response).

Enspiral brought a platform into existence for these precise discussion processes called Loomio https://www.loomio.org/ and there is also Discuto which is better tailored to collaborative Policy development. https://www.discuto.io/en/nhp

There are probably more if I spend time digging through my database, but hopefully this is a starting point.

P.S Thor if you would like an introduction to the Enspiral Network let me know as I have multiple contact points there not least the founder. :) Unfortunately I cant offer the same where Discuto is concerned.Integrative Decision-Making – ShiftBase Guides

· Reply · Remove Preview · July 27 at 11:17am

Subcategories

Pages

Pages in Other Languages

Categories