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RE: GROUPTHINK - a systemic view on group decisions and consensus
Thanks a lot for this comprehensive review. After thinking deeply about it, this is similar how I am personally making my choice at elections. We have dozens of candidates/parties and we need to select one. Of course, the best candidate agreeing with all my desires does not exist (and this is probably the case for everybody else). Mentally, I check all the items that are important to me and see how close or far the different candidates are. The candidate with the largest overlap wins my vote.
Whilst this may not be systemic stricto sensu, this is close enough, I think. Do you agree?
Anyways, I am wondering about the final results of the experiment... I hope you will report them here at some point. (I didn't check recently.)
Thank you for stopping by and giving some thought to the topic.
To your described way of political choices. No, it doesn't come close to systemic decision-making, I'm afraid :)
The systemic consensus is not based on the candidate who, for example, represents a party program that comes closest to your wishes, since you are still "forced" to vote according to your preference. Systemic consensus is not about your preference or the greatest overlap with your preference. The method aims at proposals that represent your least inner resistance. If your ballot paper were a topic, such as some referendums in Switzerland, and if the referendum on the topic did not expect a "yes" or "no" answer from you, but a scaling statement in numbers, then it would be an election on the principle of systemic consensus.
The method responds to your human need to weigh more than one option, because you could live well with other options. If you choose between ice cream, cake, biscuits or pudding, it often happens that you accept two, three or even four of the suggestions, if not as your favorite food, as an acceptable candy that doesn't make you spit out right away. But it always gives you the chance to reject something completely. There is space between "here I feel zero resistance" and "here I have the greatest resistance".
For example, what do you do when you decide where you want to live with your family, if you have to move for professional reasons? You don't necessarily decide according to your own selfish preferences, if you could safely assume that the rest of your family would also decide according to their least inner resistance, you would be able to say goodbye to your burning favorite choice as long as the result doesn't reflect your greatest resistance.
Maybe you try this method on your work when you have difficult group decisions to make? I would be so excited about real results!
To me, the greatest overlap can be seen as the least resistance as well, can't it be? I am still unsure to really fully get the difference. At the end of the day, I will make one single choice but I will choose the one with the least resistance (or the maximal overlap) with me. Or maybe, the difference lies in the fact that in the systemic system, one doesn't choose, but give one's resistance score to all options. Did I get it?
For the living place choice, we actually used something similar to my voting decision making strategy. We defined a set of criteria and converged on the place that had the maximum overlap with all requirements. At the end of the day, this may not be systemic as well.
We are working in small collaborations of 3-5 people. We never arrived at making any difficult decisions. We usually end with a consensus on what to do and who does what, and we just follow all options without choosing :)
Yes! You got it :)
Good for your working team that you find consensus. Happy to hear that. If you may ever come into a situation where this formal method could be of use, I hope, you'll remember it.
I am about to present the concept in my work environment. I am curious about the outcome. The team will give feedback if they are interested in a presentation.
Have a good day:)
Please let us know how it will be perceived. I am quite curious!