What’s the difference?
Decision Gathering - Is a phase in making a decision that includes people.
It is a must to include subject matter experts, or the parties that will be affected by the decision.
Decision Making - Is the act of making a decision.
Individual Decisions vs. Group Decisions
In order to avoid “design by committee” while keeping an environment of co-creativity and decentralized autonomous organization, we make this distinction.
It’s important for individuals to have agency to make decisions within their scope of influence.
Individuals should consider the reversibility and consequences of a decision.
The more irreversible and consequential a decision is, the more likely a group will need to be involved and vice-versa.
Here is an outline of our approach to decision making, which is modelled greatly from the work done at Gini and Enspiral.
Safe-to-fail: Easily reversible and relatively inconsequential. - Just do it, then document.
- Ex: Creating RFPs, helping a community member, writing docs/blogs.
Mandate: “what you were hired for” Things like, agreed upon okrs/projects/DNE budget in foreplanning - Just do it, then document.
- Ex. Running a marketing campaign exploring Web3 alternatives. Pushing a PR inline with the product roadmap. Updating artifacts for consistency, etc.
Effects Others: Affects team operations/ budget, timelines, other groups you work with - Use Consent Process, document.
- Ex. Changing a tool(slack to discord/notion to discourse) or process, going on Vacation, hiring/firing, UX changes, Legal risky stuff.
Effects A lot: Affects Strategic Initiatives, Multi-Groups, Culture - Use Advise Process, document.
- Ex. Documentation overhaul, Reallocating Budgets, launching a new product or multi-group initiative, etc.
How to use Consent and Advise Process
The spirit of the Consent Process is “no objections” not “everyone agrees.”
In the consent process we are identifying the stakeholders
- Preference: What they want to see happen if they had it entirely their way.
- Scope of Tolerance: The options they would commit to even if it’s not their ideal version.
- Objections: The absolute disagreements that need to be addressed before moving forward.
Consent Process:
Present Proposal & Clarifying Questions Round
Quick Reactions Round
Consent & Integrate Objections Round
The spirit of the Advice Process is co-creativity, and not authoritative judgement or watered down compromising.
Advice is just that, Advice. It is not dictation from other people on how you should work.
The Advice/Consent Process
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RULE: A decision at this level cannot be made without an honest effort to seek advice from the critical stakeholders.
- Subject Matter Experts
- Parties Affected by the decision.
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The person proposing a decision to be made(The Proposer) , creates a proposal “Advise Process - Decision on ______”
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The Proposer then outlines the what, why, and when of this decision.
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The Proposer then explains their initial proposal
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The Proposer then identifies the
- Subject Matter Experts
- Parties Affected by the decision.
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The Proposer then solicits advice from these parties, in such a way that is respectful of their existing workload and commitments, and through the appropriate communications channels.
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The Proposer then moderates discussions asynchronously, calling a meeting if needed to better understand the Advice that is being provided.
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The Proposer then indicates we are now seeking Consent, Consent process is activitate.
- Updated proposal with advice & clarifying questions round
- Reactions Round
- Integrated Objections & Consent round.
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Proposer curates insights into a usable and referenceable document.