Introduction
Systemic consensus is a decision making process developed by Erich Visotschnig and Siegfried Schrotta - two ex-IBM system analysts from Austria - in 2001.[website] A key feature is the use of scalar, resistance voting: in contrast to the competition-promoting plurality vote where people can be dragged into outcomes they didn't want, the resistance vote promotes collaboration by selecting the outcome most people can live with.[details] Systemic consensus can occur online and offline, in short and full formats - all of which contain the same fundamental stages described below.
NB: This form of decision making is probably not what you're used to and requires practice and reprogramming of old habits.
Overview
The systemic consensus process takes a question as an input and gives a decision as an output. The framework for this process is composed of the following stages;
Express needs, wants and values
When a question is presented within the systemic consensus cycle, the first thing to do is gather the needs, wants and values (herein NWVs) of the involved individuals. This allows those involved to connect with each other and communicate their feelings in a structured way which is highly important because the whole process is emotionally quite 'cold' and deliberately avoids discussion to arrive at decisions. 'Needs, wants and values' should concisely reflect how people feel about the question and not incorporate proposals.
Safe space for personal, emotional expression
Connection between participants
Expression is personal: people speak for themselves
Proposals are withheld for the next stage in the process
3.b Form proposals
The next stage in the cycle is to form proposals which answer the question. This is also done individually, typically with a time limit. No proposals are excluded from the vote, but writing good proposals is useful and will likely receive less resistance. Good proposals are typically;
- Coherent: Actually referring to the question asked.
- Concise: No longer than they need to be.
- Clear: Without ambiguity
Add always the zero solution and the further solution as control proposals.
The zero solution: This proposal means that, if chosen with least resistance, whatever was in place before will stay in place. If the group can not agree on what was in place before easily the zero solution could be named chaos, general disagreement or uncertainty.
The further solutions option: With this option the group can decide to restart the systemic consensus in order to create better proposals in the coming round. If chosen with the least resistance the systemic consensus goes directly again to the needs, wants and values and the forming of proposals.
Individuals come up with proposals considering the question, the NWVs of the group and proposal forming guidance.
3.c Vote
The final stage of the cycle is to vote. This vote is a could be considered 'negative rating': every single proposals is voted against by every participant by expressing a negative rating. All scales start at zero which expresses the absence of resistance. The scale has a maximum value which expresses maximum resistance.
It is essential that in addition to the proposals formed by participants the following two control proposals are always included in any vote*;
- Zero option: We keep everything as it is and change nothing. This should be appended with a description of 'how everything currently is' decided on before the vote begins.
- Further solutions: We look for other solutions. The cycle restarts on the same question: participants express NWVs, form proposals then vote again.
The resistances are recorded for each participant and the proposal with lowest resistance is selected - the proposal that most of the team have the least issue with. Relative total resistance (RTR) provides a useful indicator of decision acceptance with great decisions having 0 to 10 % RTR, good decisions having 10 to 20 % RTR and OK decisions having 20 to 30 % RTR. Decisions with an RTR of greater than 30 % should provoke concerns. RTR can be calculated as follows;
| Relative total resistance to proposal | equals | total resistance to proposal | divided by | max. rating of resistance scale | multiplied by | number of participants | multiplied by | 100 % |
*The one exception is if two or more proposals are tied with equal, minimum resistance. This leads to an immediate 'runoff' vote in which only the tied proposals are voted against with the same scale.
