 Decision Management Solutions® |
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Decision Making based on Consensus
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"Consensus," British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said, is "the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects." This pessimistic view about consensus decision-making is well deserved. The terms "collaboration," "consensus," and "compromise" are often confused. Collaboration implies a set of activities that lead to sharing information, consensus requires compromise and giving up beliefs or values, and compromise entails giving up a position. Consensus is like averaging or mixing too many colors of paint—the result is always brown and never satisfactory. At Robust Decisions, one central idea is that collaboration is important but consensus is not. Thus, the Accord tool suite is designed to help foster collaboration but not necessarily consensus. This is accomplished by creating an environment in which it is easy to share information regardless of cognitive style, position in the company or role on the team. Further, Accord tools allow calculation of decision-making metrics from multiple viewpoints. This allows the results to be seen through the eyes of a range of stakeholders further building a collaborative environment. That being said, Accord Basic and Accord Professional both calculate the level of consensus for each alternative/criterion evaluation and can optionally display a value from 0 — no consensus at all, to 1 — full consensus. Additionally, the what-to-do-next analysis takes into account the level of consensus when giving guidance about further effort. It is suggested, rather than focusing on consensus decision-making, that energy be put into developing collaborative decision-making. 
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