In the last couple of blogs, after looking at personality types and working styles of the wide range of members potentially involved in a group decision-making effort, I asked how a group that could be so disparate could make any decisions. In this entry we will look at how decisions typically are made in groups.
In the last blog post I said that compromise was one of my favorite subjects. Here we will begin to explore the advantages and disadvantages of compromise. There are actually many of both but, as you will see, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.
Last week, we looked at the first definition of compromise. I will reproduce the full list here for reference:
Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language defines compromise in this way:
Let’s continue.
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I apologize for being offline for the past two weeks. I have been dealing with the passing of my 103-year-old father. This involved making many decisions, both on my own and in consultation with my family and people we needed to work with outside the family. Some were easy and some difficult, but I did my best to follow the principles I am writing about in this blog. It helped keep me focused on the essentials and on easing the burden on others, as well as myself.
Now, back to Solution-Building, picking up where we left off.
The second Guideline follows, at least to a great extent, from the first. It, too, is a part of commitment.
Seems obvious, right? Doesn’t everyone come “ready and willing to participate?” Most of us have had experiences in which this is not true. Some people do not participate for a wide variety of reasons.