Decision making

Seven methods that distribute authority and record how a decision was actually reached.

Decision-making reveals an organization’s real power structure. The module’s purpose is to make that structure visible and, where you want it to be, distributed.

The methods

Consent (sociocracy)

A proposal passes unless someone raises a paramount objection — a concrete reason it would harm the organization’s ability to do its work. Not a preference, an impediment.

Objections are recorded and must be resolved, usually by amending the proposal. They cannot be out-voted.

Advice process

One named person decides — but only after seeking advice from everyone affected and everyone with relevant expertise. The advice is recorded. The decider is not bound by it, and is accountable for having sought it.

This is the method for decisions that need to be fast and owned, without being unilateral.

Systemic consensus

Participants rate their resistance to each option, not their enthusiasm. The option with the lowest total resistance wins.

This finds the outcome everyone can live with, which majority voting systematically hides: a 60% favourite that 40% actively cannot accept loses to an option nobody loves and nobody resists.

Simple majority

More than half. Fast, familiar, and appropriate for low-stakes reversible choices.

Qualified majority

A 2/3 or 3/4 threshold, for decisions that should be hard to make and hard to reverse.

Dot voting

A fixed number of dots distributed across options. Best for narrowing a field, not for the final call.

Delegation poker

Not a decision about a topic but about who decides — mapping a class of decision onto a delegation level from “the manager decides” to “the team decides”. Run it once and the answer applies to every future instance of that class.

Running a decision

1. State the question

   A clear proposal, with the background and the constraints, authored in the locales your participants read.

2. Choose the method — before you start

   Choosing a method after seeing the input is how a process becomes theatre. The method is part of the proposal.

3. Invite participants

   Individuals, a team, or everyone. Who was invited is recorded — including the people who did not respond.

4. Collect

   Votes, resistance ratings, objections, or advice, depending on the method.

5. Resolve

   The calculator applies the method’s rule. For consent, outstanding objections block resolution until they are addressed.

6. Record

   The outcome, the rationale, and the full input set. This is the artefact that makes the decision reviewable later.

Where it is used

Hiring

Which candidate, and on what basis.

Budgets

Participatory allocation and resource proposals.

Policy

Working agreements, team norms, process changes.

Delegation

Deciding who decides, once, rather than case by case.

Turning it off

FEATURE_DECISION_MAKING=false.

The module offers methods; it does not enforce one. An organization that wants its manager to decide can record exactly that with the advice process — the value is in the decision being explicit and on file, not in it being democratic.