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Virtual Consensus

Purpose

• To come to an agreement or make a team decision without a face-to-face or teleconference meeting.
• To help a team learn to use the consensus method.
• To use email as a learning and decision-making tool.
• To add to some fun to a consensus decision-making process.

Participants

The number of participants is unlimited but all must be able to communicate with each other via email.

Process

• This activity is used when a team must make a decision that does not require a great deal of explanation and discussion and where you do not expect a great deal of controversy. Typical decisions might be approval of a final report, agreement on the agenda for a project review and approval of proposed reporting process.
• Send an email to each participant describing the decision to be made and/or providing a copy of the document as an attachment.
• In the same email message provide the following decision options:
  1. I can say an unqualified "yes" to the proposed decision.
  2. I find the decision acceptable.
  3. I can live with the decision but I'm not especially enthusiastic about it.
  4. I do not fully agree with the decision but I do not choose to block it.
  5. I do not agree with the decision and I feel we should explore other options.
• Ask each team member to select one option and hit reply button with his or her response.
• Compile the responses and if most of the members select one of the first four responses, you have a virtual consensus.
• Provide the team with a summary of the responses indicating how many votes each option received.

Variations

• Add some fun by making a game out of the exercise. Ask each person to also provide you with his or her guess as to which option will receive the most votes and how many votes the winning option will receive. Give prizes to the people who selected the winning option and a larger prize to the person who correctly the guessed the number of votes the winning option would receive.
• If many people select the fifth option, you have misjudged the situation. You need a real-time meeting.