Winners and Losers

When your team makes a decision, are you labelled as the winner or the loser? But what if we redefine this paradigm, fostering an environment where everyone emerges victorious?

Working in a cross-functional team can be very challenging nowadays. In such teams, every peer is quite unique and brings his unique perspective to the team. This diversity aids the team in exploring new solutions and enhances the team’s long-term success, provided the decision-making process is effective.

Generally, teams try to find consensus, a solution to a problem that is preferred by all team members. Sometimes this is straightforward, as everyone shares the same preference. But quite often, preferences differ, leading the team into discussions and arguments, with voting serving as a last resort to make a decision.

When a team votes unanimously, at least one person ends up being the loser, because the rest of the group chose a different option. The issue might not necessarily be the chosen solution itself, but the emotional impact it has on the individual who didn’t get their way. No matter how strong one’s ego is, in the end, this person has to commit to the team decision.

What if we could completely avoid voting, thereby eliminating this dichotomy? What if, instead of striving for unattainable consensus, the team could fallback to consent, bypassing the need for voting entirely?

Consent-based decision making is a method to identify if anyone is strongly opposed to the proposed outcome. Unlike consensus, it doesn’t aim to satisfy everyone’s preferred option, but focuses on ensuring that no one will be negatively affected by the decision.

Consider the following example.

A data product team needs to choose a language for data analysis and processing in their upcoming project: SQL or Python. Both languages have their strengths.

The team is asked if anyone has significant objections or concerns about using either SQL or Python. The BI Engineer expresses a strong personal preference against Python, citing a lack of familiarity and confidence in supporting the team effectively with Python-based analysis.

Despite explanations from team members about the advantages of Python for data analysis and its extensive ecosystem, the BI Engineer remains firm in their objection, concerned that their limited knowledge in Python might hinder their ability to contribute effectively to the project.

While other team members have personal preferences, none of them have substantial objections to using SQL. Recognizing the BI Engineer’s concern and the importance of their role in data analysis, the team decides to proceed with SQL as the language for the next product.

Is the decision made by the team correct? I don’t know the context, but I can see that the team did not make a decision against someone’s objections, even though they could have prevailed by majority vote. On the other hand, the team has gained time to work on the BI Engineer to catch up with the latest trends.

It’s important to reflect on whether our choices might inadvertently make someone feel like a loser before resorting to voting.