Companies are increasingly turning to technology to assist in complex decision-making and improve the defensibility of their decisions. That’s not surprising, because poor decisions lead to wasted resources, missed opportunities and decisions that are hard to communicate and justify to stakeholders, leadership or the public.
However, successful decision-making requires more than selecting the right methodology or software. Organizations must also navigate the people side of team decision-making – from engaging the people involved and defining the decision problem to building support for the eventual outcome.
This guide explores some of the most common interpersonal challenges that arise when implementing structured decision-making approaches and offers guidance for keeping stakeholders engaged and aligned – so you can lead your team to decisions everyone can stand behind.
The hidden challenge in team decision-making: assumed agreement and disagreement
Many of the challenges around managing the interpersonal side of the team decision-making process start from one frequently overlooked phenomenon: a skewed perception of how much agreement actually exists within a group. This tendency to overestimate how much others share our views is known as the false consensus effect.
Teams often jump straight into defining the decision problem and gathering input, without first examining where participants actually agree or disagree – and to what extent. In turn, team members may mistakenly believe they are making decisions based on shared priorities and assumptions when in fact they are not.
These hidden differences may resurface later as disagreement, rework or erosion of trust when decision outcomes contradict participants’ unstated expectations.
In contrast, revealing areas of disagreement early in the process leads to valuable discussions that participants often don’t expect. As Craig Machtans, Manager at the Canadian Wildlife Service, observed while working through a 1000minds decision-making process with his team:
"Exposing people’s unstated assumptions is much more powerful than people would initially think – everyone assumes that they more or less think the same… when it’s really not true!"
Exposing people’s unstated assumptions is much more powerful than people would initially think – everyone assumes that they more or less think the same… when it’s really not true!
These discussions surface hidden assumptions, values and decision criteria, helping teams identify areas in need of clarification early on. The result is a better understanding of the decision problem and a stronger foundation for effective decision-making and team alignment.
At the other extreme, some organizations may assume that people from different teams, disciplines or stakeholder groups disagree so fundamentally that consensus-building is unlikely to succeed.
However, you may find that participants share more common ground than initially believed.
In addition, the goal of consensus-building is not to eliminate disagreement but to create a shared understanding: people are more likely to support a decision that they disagree with if they understand why it was made, and if they feel that their perspective was weighed fairly.
1000minds offers tools that help surface areas of disagreement and agreement at multiple points of the decision-making process, facilitating discussion and building understanding between participants at every step. You can read about these tools in our comprehensive guide to group decision-making.
Where organizations struggle the most
The human side of group decision-making manifests in these common challenges:
- Keeping participants engaged
- Framing the decision
- Maintaining expectations
- Establishing trust and legitimacy
1. Keeping participants engaged
Not everyone involved in a group decision immediately understands the importance of structured decision-making or why their participation matters. When people are used to making decisions in a particular way, it’s often difficult to break this status quo.
In addition, participants may already be balancing competing priorities and heavy workloads. And so, workshops or preference elicitation exercises can feel like extra administrative work instead of investments in better outcomes, especially when the alignment between the decision and personal priorities is unclear.
These issues can easily make stakeholders feel disengaged, resulting in it becoming more difficult to achieve meaningful participation and, ultimately, the desired outcomes.
2. Framing the decision
If (when!) there are multiple ways to interpret something, people will naturally vary in their interpretations. As discussed earlier, assessing disagreement early on is important for properly structuring the decision problem and improving outcomes.
Proper problem framing is essential because the way a problem is defined shapes the range of solutions considered. A poorly framed problem causes confusion, inefficient use of time and resources and can even lead organizations to optimize the wrong thing entirely.
3. Managing expectations
It’s important to ensure that participants have a shared understanding of both the decision process and its intended outcomes.
Stakeholders need clarity about their roles, the steps involved, the effort required and how decisions will ultimately be made. They should also be on the same page about the purpose of the exercise, how the results will be used and how “success” is measured or defined.
In contrast, when these expectations are unclear, participants are likely to become frustrated or disappointed during the process. Building alignment early on helps create a smoother experience and improves confidence in the outcome.
4. Establishing trust and legitimacy
Perhaps the most important aspect of successful organizational decision-making is establishing trust and validity in the decision and its outcomes. If stakeholders feel excluded or uninformed, then even a decision that is technically sound can lose trust and legitimacy, which makes it less likely that stakeholders will support it. This renders successful implementation of the decision much more challenging.
How to successfully bring people along
With a bit of foresight, the above challenges are all manageable. Here are some practical strategies.
1. Clarify the purpose and expectations
Before you begin, make sure everyone understands:
- Why the decision is being made
- What success looks like
- What roles participants will play
- How the outputs will be used
People are more likely to invest time and effort when they can see a clear connection between their own participation and meaningful action.
You should also introduce participants to the steps of the decision-making process that they are about to embark on. You can read more about this process in our group decision-making guide.
2. Demonstrate why a structured decision-making process is needed
People are more likely to engage when they understand how common poor decision-making and lack of agreement are, and what the consequences are. Here are some supporting arguments and resources that may be useful for encouraging engagement.
Biases present in decision-making
Research has consistently shown that, in general, individuals are highly susceptible to biases in their decision-making. Biases can have serious consequences and they afflict everyone, including well-established subject matter experts (SMEs) – and we are often not even aware of them when they occur.
For example, we may place undue weight on recent experiences, be influenced by first impressions or information that is easiest to recall or seek information that confirms pre-existing beliefs while overlooking contradictory evidence.
Our article on common decision-making biases and their consequences discusses some of these biases in organizational decisions.
“Noise” or variability in decision-makers’ judgments
As mentioned earlier, it often comes as a surprise to people about how much variability or “noise” exists in their judgments. Even SMEs with similar backgrounds and access to the same information often come to vastly different conclusions: e.g. a study involving 34 SMEs, mostly clinicians and researchers, revealed extensive disagreements in their diagnoses of the same patients (Mahmoudian et al. 2021).
In the image above, each column shows how a participant ranked the same set of options. The wide spread of rankings illustrates the level of disagreement, or “noise”, in their judgments.
When even established SMEs vary so widely in their judgments, what does that imply about the rest of us? And how can we feel confident in the quality of our decisions overall among all this noise?
Read more about this variability and what to do about it in our article on noisy expert judgments.
An interactive exercise to demonstrate noisiness and spark discussion
Oftentimes, the most convincing evidence is when people experience these problems first-hand. You can easily do this by running a 1000minds ranking survey with your team – a “noise audit” (easily set up and only a few minutes for participants to complete) – to assess and demonstrate the extent to which team members vary in their judgments.
Follow the ranking survey by reviewing the results with the group and revealing their agreements and disagreements (noisiness). These results are also likely to spark interesting discussions about the underlying assumptions and potential decision criteria.
3. Establish clear roles to keep the process running smoothly
Successful decision-making projects typically have clearly defined responsibilities for participants. Although the exact structure varies between organizations, most projects benefit from having an executive sponsor, a process owner or champion and a core group of decision-makers and subject matter experts. Their roles are discussed here.
The executive sponsor
The executive sponsor provides strategic direction and visible support for the initiative. Their role is not to manage the day-to-day activities, but to communicate why the decision matters, ensure that the project receives the necessary time and resources and help remove organizational barriers when they arise.
Executive support is especially important when introducing a new decision-making process or when the results will influence important organizational priorities. Strong executive sponsorship is frequently cited as one of the most important factors behind successful project outcomes.
The process owner
The process owner (sometimes called a champion or project lead) is responsible for keeping the decision-making process moving. Their job is to plan the process, manage timelines, organize workshops, engage stakeholders and ensure that decisions do not stall. They are often the main point of contact for the project and play a key role in helping the organization move from discussions to action.
The process owner is often also in charge of building the 1000minds models to support the decision-making process. Sometimes, this responsibility may be shared with or delegated to another team member they are working closely with.
These tasks include designing and setting up models in 1000minds, drafting and refining decision criteria based on stakeholder input, identifying alternatives, facilitating stakeholder engagement workshops and communicating results. 1000minds enables team members to collaborate easily on model building by allowing shared access to project folders with other members.
Decision-makers, stakeholders and subject matter experts
Finally, other stakeholders and subject matter experts may contribute at various stages. They may be consulted on defining the decision problem, drafting decision criteria, evaluating alternatives on criteria (via a 1000minds categorization survey) and providing their judgment on criteria weights (through preferences surveys or an interactive voting exercise).
Not everyone needs to be involved in every step; depending on their expertise and the logistics involved, different stakeholder groups may be involved at different points along the way. Nevertheless, it’s important to involve the right people at the right stages to optimize both the quality of the decision and stakeholder trust in the outcome.
4. Collaborate on criteria
The consensus-building value of making and agreeing to criteria is hard to overstate.
One of the most important elements of structured decision-making is developing decision criteria collaboratively. But this is also often one of the most interesting parts.
If you’ve already conducted a 1000minds ranking survey with your group of decision-makers (as recommended earlier for surfacing areas of disagreement), reviewing the results together as part of a workshop is likely to spark discussion about decision criteria and hidden assumptions.
Seeing the variation in everyone's rankings tends to get a reaction: having assumed they were broadly on the same page (as noted by the false consensus effect), people are often genuinely surprised by how differently their colleagues ranked the same options. This discrepancy naturally gets people talking about the reasoning behind their judgments – in essence, their decision criteria!
Then, run the ranking exercise again but this time as a group. This facilitates further discussion and agreement on criteria and can even surface new criteria that people hadn't thought of before – some of which may turn out surprisingly important to the decision at hand!
On the flipside, other criteria may turn out to matter less than expected once the group talks through what's actually driving the decision. During this activity, the workshop facilitator should note criteria that arise.
You may also find hidden assumptions about criteria that require clarification. For example, different team members may have different interpretations of what a criterion means, or how it relates to the problem at hand. Such clarifications are not just useful for refining the decision criteria themselves, but also for elaborating on other details about the decision scope or context.
The result of this activity is a more complete and relevant set of criteria than could likely have been produced otherwise. Though the discussions may initially seem a bit like roadblocks, your team will quickly find that they offer rich opportunities for learning and building alignment. Our experts at 1000minds can advise you through this process and help you engage your team effectively.
5. Communicate throughout the process
Communication is integral for building and retaining engagement and trust, which consists of two parts: communication about the process and expectations, and communication related to consensus building.
Communication about the process and expectations
Clear communication creates transparency around the decision-making process and helps keep stakeholders aligned during the project.
As you go through the decision-making steps, be sure to communicate:
- The outcomes of workshops and discussions
- What progress has been made
- What is happening now
- What comes next
- What decisions have been made and why
- Any changes to the process, scope and next steps
Regular updates help maintain momentum and reduce uncertainty, particularly when decision-making unfolds over an extended period of time.
Consensus building
Continue to identify areas of disagreement, and incorporate consensus- building sessions throughout the process. Just as was done for collaborating on criteria, the process of giving individual (and potentially anonymous) feedback can also be applied to rating how alternatives perform on criteria, and eliciting judgments about the relative importance of criteria.
For example, 1000minds categorization surveys can be used to gather participants’ judgments on how alternatives should be rated on the criteria for assessing them. These surveys are most useful when alternatives need to be evaluated on qualitative criteria that require human judgment (e.g. what constitutes a “high” environmental impact?)
As with the ranking survey, you can follow the categorization survey by convening as a group to review the ratings and discuss areas of agreement and disagreement (noisiness) until consensus is reached about final ratings.
The same kind of approach applies to determining the relative importance of the criteria. Send out a 1000minds preferences survey to gather input independently and reveal areas of disagreement. Follow this up with a consensus-building workshop involving a 1000minds voting exercise, where trade-offs are evaluated and agreed upon through rounds of voting and team discussion.
As you work through these activities, keep in mind that consensus does not require unanimity. Rather than making everyone agree, the goal is to build a sufficient level of agreement to proceed. Even though some people may still prefer another outcome, good consensus-building focuses on building enough shared understanding that they can still accept the decision – e.g. a useful question to ask minority dissenters is “Can you live with the majority vote?”
The process of gathering individual judgments, identifying areas of agreement and disagreement and using structured discussion to refine decisions shares many similarities with the Delphi method. For a detailed overview of Delphi, see our guide.
After the decision
The decision-making process doesn’t end when a conclusion is reached. What happens next matters too: when decisions aren't translated into action, or participants don't see what became of their contributions, they may feel that their input was not valued or their time was poorly spent.
To maintain stakeholder trust and confidence, encourage future participation in decision-making and translate your decision into effective outcomes, two things still need to be done: (1) implement the decision, and (2) close the stakeholder feedback loop.
Implementing the decision
Implementing a decision seems like an obvious next step; but surprisingly, there is sometimes a gap between the decision that has been discussed and what is actually put into action.
Ensure that the outputs from the decision are connected to relevant organizational processes and assign ownership for implementation. Someone must be responsible for ensuring agreed actions are carried out and that momentum is maintained once the workshops and discussions have ended.
As you work on implementing the decision, you may also discover new things: e.g. stakeholders who weren't consulted may provide feedback during the implementation process which may prompt your team to refine the decision or solution. For this reason, it's good not to dissolve the decision-making team straight away.
Lastly, organizations should also monitor outcomes and learn from experience. Examples of relevant questions worth asking might include:
- To what extent did the decision achieve the intended objectives?
- Were any assumptions incorrect?
- Have priorities changed?
Closing the stakeholder feedback loop
Participants should also be kept informed about what happened as a result of the process and how their contributions influenced subsequent action. This is known as “closing the stakeholder feedback loop”.
Closing the stakeholder feedback loop is commonly done via a “you said, we did” campaign. This involves informing participants what the outcome of the decision was, what actions were taken based on participant input, and what is still left to do.
Potential questions include:
- What were the findings of the decision process?
- What actions were taken to implement these findings?
- What feedback could not be implemented and why?
- What ongoing work, if any, remains to be done?
Clear communication of how participant input was put into action builds trust and improves engagement in future decision processes.
From assumed agreement to genuine alignment
1000minds provides the structure and analytical rigor for making complex decisions. But getting the most from the process also depends on how well the people involved are brought along.
Taking the time to surface assumptions, build a shared understanding of the decision problem and agree on priorities increases the likelihood of decisions that are robust, transparent and easy for people to support. Though these discussions may require time and effort, they are often among the most valuable parts of the process.
The benefits can extend beyond the immediate decision. Once teams have established clear criteria, priorities and a decision process, they have built team decision-making skills and a framework they can return to rather than revisiting the same underlying questions each time. This can make repeated decisions more efficient and, where appropriate, easier to delegate while maintaining a consistent approach.
Though managing these processes may seem complicated at first glance, you don’t have to do it all alone. Our team is happy to support you: simply send us a message or schedule a call. We will help you plan and navigate the decision-making process effectively, so your team can reach robust decisions with confidence.
References
A Mahmoudian, S Lohmander, M Englund, P Hansen, F Luyten & International Early-stage Knee OA Classification Criteria Expert Panel (2021), abstract, 2021 OARSI Virtual World Congress on Osteoarthritis: OARSI Connect ‘21, “Lack of agreement in experts’ classification of patients with early-stage knee osteoarthritis”, Osteoarthritis and Cartilage 29, S299-S300.
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