Blog 8

Consensus Style decision making is an ideal way to make decisions in a group setting. However, with that being said there are several preconditions that must exist in order for group -wide consensus decision making to be effective. First off everyone in the group must maintain an open- mind. If members of the group are opposed to slightly modifying what they believe in order to achieve total agreement, then it would be nearly impossible for any decisions to be made. Another precondition that is necessary for consensus decision making is that there must be a non-hierarchal form of power already in place. This means that there cannot be specific set of a leader(s) in the group, everyone within the group has equal power and say. Essentially all members of the group act on an level playing field. One of consensus decision making's main strengths is that by using this style of decision making every member of the group knows where they stand, and knows that are equally important and equally influential. One of the weaknesses of this style of decision making is that it tends to only work effectively on small scales. Trying to achieve total agreement among groups larger than about 100 members is a very difficult thing to do, mainly because it is nearly impossible for everyone's concerns to be met at that large of a scale.