May 9, 2005
Consensus Building
I just finished reading Ed Wesemann’s book The First Great Myth of Legal Management is that it Exists. Anyone who quotes Douglas Adams in his book is okay by me.
In that book, he frowns on management by consensus, viewing it as an excuse to avoid tough issues and decisions. He questions the value of planning as most firms do it. I understand where he is coming from. He has seen too many ineffective firms who use required “consensus” as an alternative to vision and leadership. However, don’t confuse consensus building with Wesemann’s “managing by consensus”. How else does a leader lead unless he or she builds a consensus among the players? The team has to believe in the destination and that it is worth pursuing.
Vision is not enough. The team has to have a common sense of where the firm is going, how it is going to get there, and what cultural guidelines will influence the decisions of the firm in the real world of day-to-day operations.
The first rule of any successful planning process is that “the plan has to be to change the plan”. Objectives are only temporary targets. They were set based on assumptions about the future and the capabilities of the law firm. Planning actually occurs continuously, fed by new information. Formal planning is a periodic checkpoint. The process should be structured to extract the consensus that already has been building, inspired by the leadership and circumstances on the ground. Structure planning is essentially the process of determining and critically testing consensus. The process is generally exercised by listing and ranking, not through debate. Only wide differences are debated. An important part of consensus building process is drawing a line to separate the main items from the minor items. For example, what threats face us? How do they rank in terms of likelihood and impact? Are there any wide differences in assessment? Develop strategies and programs for the most important items –the “main things” our success depends on. Recognize that the remaining items are minors and, while they are not to be forgotten, the key to effective leadership is to concentrate the team’s efforts on the “main things”.
The process I use to build a consensus works this way. Suppose I have a planning group of 8 to 12 key team members and we are tackling the question of identifying our best opportunities. I would ask each individual to list what they think our 5 best opportunities are for the next three years. Then I would ask them to number the items on their list from 1 to 5 – number 1 being the best and/or most important. I would then start around the room asking the first person for their number one item. I would list it on a flip chart. I would then go to the next person and ask for their number 1 item. If it had already been listed, I would ask for their number 2 item, etc. Each participant can give me only one item at a time. I would continue around the room until every member’s top five items were listed. As a result of this process, we might have 12 to 15 items listed. Interesting enough, almost every member will have at least two to three items in common with the rest of the group. At that point, I would ask the group to individually rank the items on the new combined list of items. I would ask them to draw a line below their 4th item. I would go around the room again, asking each to identify their 4 top items. We would tally up those items mentioned most often to create a “main things” list of 4 to 5 items.
Anyone who disagreed with the items in our new “main things” list would be given an opportunity to present their case. Usually, there is very little disagreement at this point. Once the best opportunities are identified, we would move on to develop the strategies, tactics, resources, programs, responsibilities and schedules for achieving the main things.
The consensus building process does not remove vision. It is a method for achieving it by creating a shared sense of ownership in that vision.
PS: The Douglas Adams quotation use by Wesemann is: "The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." It comes from Douglas Adams' book "Mostly Harmless"–the fifth book in the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy series.
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Filed under Management, Planning by Tom Collins