What tweaks can we make to remove the time-wasting and factionalizing "fallback" voting and find practical ways to do consensus-based decision-making? My research suggests that Sociocracy could provide some valuable clues to us. It was created for use in business and other organizational settings where traditional consensus-seeking would not be quick enough. Hello, that's us! Sound interesting? It is!

The aim of sociocracy is inclusive decision-making because it has proven to be more effective. Both consensus and consent are collaborative processes that result in unified, harmonious actions. There are, however, two valuable distinctions:

Excerpts from the essay "Consent & Consensus"
by Sharon Villines, January 2007
http://www.sociocracy.info/consensus.html

{continuing from above}

(1) The cognitive difference between asking for "agreement" and asking for "no objections" is profound. Consensus facilitators are more likely to be searching for agreement. Sociocratic facilitators specifically look for objections within defined parameters. Asking for agreement affects the perception of participants, often adversely, and influences the kinds of solutions they will propose or accept. To hone a good decision, all the objections must be examined carefully.

(2) Consensus is specifically a decision-making process and as such is heavily dependent on the skills of the facilitator and the experience of the group. Groups using consensus have no predictable structure for the execution of decisions and must design their own, often building on structures designed to support majority vote decision-making and based on parliamentary procedure. The sociocratic governance structure is specifically designed to support inclusive decision-making and is based on principles derived from cybernetics, systems theory, and complexity theory from which the concept of consent is also derived. Thus the theory base of sociocratic
governance and decision-making is more consistent.

Practical Consensus

To make consensus workable in highly diverse groups, particularly between people who did not have daily contact nor shared aims in the rest of their lives , various teachers of consensus and professional facilitators have come to put limits on consensus, for example, redefining "agreement" to mean "agree that this is in the best interests of the group even though I don't agree." People are allowed to "stand aside" so the group can still declare consensus. Some define consensus as "all but one" or "all but two." Culturally, consensus has come to mean many things from a sacred union of minds in the same tradition as sense of the meeting to a negotiated supra-majority vote.

In the 1960s, Gerard Endenburg, a former student and friend of Boeke's, began to apply sociocracy in a business setting . Because consensus, the sense it was being used, does not work well in a business setting, he needed an alternative. This is when the concept of consent , along with the development of the circle structure which governs the execution of decisions, were developed . This greatly expanded the depth and range of sociocratic governance.

In the business community, the constrictions of "the individual bowing to the interests of the whole" and "unanimous" were not a workable basis on which to make decisions. In a large competitive workplace of highly diverse workers, in fact in any large organization, making decisions with consensus as defined by Boeke and others would have difficulty making decisions as quickly as necessary if at all. There was not the time for everyone to meet together to work out traditional consensus agreements.

But Endenburg also knew that highly efficient systems in the mechanical and natural world are efficient precisely because they maintain their collaborative systems -- their "consensus." How?

What he learned is that in nature and in machines, if a part cannot function, it stops. It objects. It can either function or it can't. Thinking by analogy, he realized that in human systems, the analogous mechanism was consent. A person consents to a decision. Or objects. Humans, like organs, have a range of tolerance. In order to function well, they must remain within that range. Once a condition moves outside that range, they begin to fuss and fume. They become stressed and eventually stop functioning.

If one part of a system doesn't express its objections as soon as it experiences discomfort, the whole system could suddenly collapse and be irreparable. Consider the example of the body's organs working in "consensus." If one does not object as soon as it begins to fail, like the heart, the whole body will die.

Thus objections had to be taken seriously. Objections, Endenburg realized, not agreements, were the needed and necessary corrections that allowed a group to make good decisions and maintain energetic and harmonious functioning.

By changing the premise of "consent," "consensus," and "unanimous" from "agreement" to "no objections," Endenburg made inclusive decision-making more effective. By using the word "consent" he emphasized the process of resolving individual objections, avoided the religious and emotional connotations, and returned to the original meaning of consensus.

Endenburg put two further conditions on objections. Firstly, the objections had to be paramount, meaning they had to be serious enough to prevent the person from supporting the aims of the group. And secondly, they had to be reasoned. The person had to express their objections sufficiently clearly that the rest of the group could understand and resolve them.

In sociocracy if a decision would interfere with a person's ability to be enthusiastic and energetic in working toward the aims of the group, that person has an obligation to object. Objections are made in the context of the aim statement. Can I help the group achieve this aim if this decision is made? Will this decision interfere with my work? Will it help me do my work? Will it allow me to remain a member of this group?

Thus it is more accurate, I argue, to say that sociocracy is a further development of consensus that preserves the important elements of fully inclusive decision-making and develops them so they are broadly applicable. Any group that has a clear and common aim whether it be a social, religious, business, or civic group, a family or a multi-national corporation, can use consent decision-making.

Further, within the sociocratic structure a group can decide, by consent, to use any other basis for decision making for some decisions.

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