DECIDING

When facilitating, experience has taught me that it is around the decision making process that groups often get stuck. This isn't because they are decision making. On the contrary, it is because they are not doing that.
I therefore advocte keeping decision making as simple as possible, using an extremely simple TIME, COST/BENEFIT, FIT, RISK matrix.

Decision making is, if you think about it, relatively instant.
"Shall we spend $xM on this project?"
"Yes".
Takes no time at all.

"There are four options here, and option four has three sub options.Which shall we pursue?"
"One, and three."
Instant.

But the problem comes because, when they are supposed to be making decisions, groups aren't. They're doing other things, like questioning, opining, seeking and giving information, even generating ideas.

Now, you can make the argument that these are all valid things to do before making a decision. Correct. But they aren't making the decision itself.

This then raises questions about what you are there to do as a facilitator - how you add value and even who is your client.  I see adding value as to facilitate (the word coming from "make easy"), and since I know that it is the stuff around decision making, rather than decision making itself, which gets sticky and eats up time (paid for by somebody), I try to position the decision to be made in as simple terms as possible and focus the group down to actually making decisions, which takes hardly any time at all. In this I am trying to bring my experience to bear to save time and money, by manging the process - in this case, managing it away from deviating behaviours, and focusing it towards productive behaviour (ie. decision making).

In fact, the simplicity of my model was originally derived from facilitating hundreds of groups where, without providing it, but asking people ahead of the workshop, this was, unprompted, in fact the criteria on which they almost always based their decisions anyway.

I think there is one more thing to say about the sticky business of group decision making (or, as it turns out, behaviours AROUND rather than actually, decision making) and it is this. Critical, in my view, to good group decision making, is clarity of the options. This finds me as a facilitator doing several things:

Firstly, managing idea generation and recording it in such a way that ideas generated can easily be absorbed and understood by a group selecting from them.

Secondly, ensuring clear display of these (or otherwise generated options) for decision making purposes.

Thirdly, providing simple tools to establish the group's choice (decision) - for example simple voting mechanisms.

Fourthly, keeping the group doing what they should be doing - the simple, speedy act of deciding.