Quick meetings with all staff members to gauge and improve the level of ConsensusPollingAwareness
Why this is important
ConsensusPollingAwareness: We want all AboutUs staff worldwide, to be familiar with consensus polling, when it's a good idea to create a new consensus poll, how to create a consensus poll, what the roles are, and how to talk about the whole process and share it with others.
We are done when
We have talked to all staff members
Plan for the last two weeks
Julia, Ted and Obed need to meet to evaluate the interviews.
What comes next? When do we meet? How useful were these meetings? Obed Suhail
One of the 3 of us needs to call a meeting, yes? TedErnst | talk 08:37, 14 September 2007 (PDT)
document can change often and people don't seem to change their status nearly so often, which means current status percentage isn't accurate at any point
"document has changed, is your status still accurate?" automated?
facilitator can review comments by the yes people and if what they say they like is gone from the document, ask them to review
good idea to have a few lines of "purpose" at the top of any consensus poll
when a newcomer comes to WhoWeAre, aren't the likely to wonder if we've already decided something about WhoWeAre? i.e. Arif was suggesting that maybe we should put our previous mission statement (if we have one) on top of the WhoWeAre page
might not two competing factilitators lobby in opposite directions?
if there is a decision that needs to be done by a certain time, consensus polling might not work - CEO could put a caveat at the top to say that s/he will make the decision on a certain topic
holding a person or group responsible if something goes wrong, accountability - for example in a company, invest in a particular stock or not
most people participating (among staff) are there because they think they are "supposed" to be there, not because they care - so they just set their status to yes and go away, which doesn't mean there's a real consensus
there was a problem with the AdultContentPolicy where at least one NotYet person didn't feel like his concerns were addressed - no one attempted to help this person clarify the concerns and they never go into the document as it passed in spite of the not yet.
Some staff felt "badgered" by facilitators in past consensus polls. They report feeling that the facilitator had an agenda of getting them to "yes", not hearing & incorporating their concerns.
Some staff suggested that the consensus poll merely made it "look" like there was no conflict because everyone had a "yes" next to their name, but in fact, that just covered up the conflict.
Some staff felt that there was too much compromise. If one person wanted a red room, and another wanted a white room, they ended up with a pink room. Something neither of them wanted.
Perhaps those who are familiar with the consensus process understand "blocking" consensus. Without an understanding of this key power, I'm not sure that consensus polling can succeed. Folks need to understand blocking.
