What are the preconditions necessary for using consensus decision making in a group or organization? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the process?
There are many preconditions necessary for using consensus decision making. When I read through them I felt like "how could this all ever be accomplished"? I also thought that every single principle was necessary for consensus decision making to work. The preconditions are as follows: trust, respect, unity of purpose, nonviolence, self empowerment, cooperation, conflict resolution, commitment to the group, active participation, equal access to power, patience, impediments to consensus lack of training, recognition of external hierarchal powers, and no social prejudice.
I think that after reading through all these preconditions they make total sense, and in an ideal world this would seem easy to accomplish. However in the real world it seems almost impossible to accomplish having all these preconditions in a group of people. I think that if everybody was committed to making consensus decision making work it would not be that bad. However, using this type of decision making in the real world with people who might not understand the benefit of it would be nearly impossible.
That being said, I think that consensus decision making is a very interesting style of deliberating. I would not be opposed to it in any way. I think that the way it works is very conducive to everybody feeling heard which leads to multiple ideas to help come up with the best possible decision. In that manner consensus decision making seems to be a great option.
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