Consensus Building

The principles of consensus building could play a much greater role in the decision-making for planning and implementing investments in our city and regional infrastructure needs. Many infrastructure projects involve urban redevelopment, transportation, water, and energy that require a great deal of political will from the public sector, substantial upfront investment using public or private funds, and a very lengthy process for stakeholder input. Too often the public involvement process is merely a box to be checked in the environmental review process and not a serious effort to seek and build consensus.  If project opponents are not meaningfully engaged at the outset during the planning stages of project development, even if a simple majority of the governing entity wants to move forward, the unresolved concerns can repeatedly be reasserted to prevent the project from progressing efficiently.

Consensus can be defined as a general or wide spread agreement among all the members of a group of diverse stakeholders. It is not about achieving unanimity. Rather, it is more of a nearly unanimous agreement that allows the project to move forward. The process may go beyond reaching the terms of consensus, and could also include implementing agreement(s) successfully.  Obtaining consensus involves investing enough in the decision-making process to bring the right people to the table, to get the right ideas on the table, and to engage stakeholders in ways that invite productive problem solving.  Obtaining consensus can be assisted with the involvement of a consensus building “process facilitator” to shape and shepherd the process.

In consensus-building the process facilitator assists competing interest groups to reach agreement on issues in controversy affecting a large number of people. Consensus-building typically involves informally structured, face-to-face interactions among representatives of stakeholder groups. One objective is to gain early participation from affected interests with differing viewpoints, including potential opponents. The goal is to produce sound decisions with the broadest support possible, thus greatly reducing the likelihood of subsequent disagreements or legal challenges.

The book by Lawrence Susskind and Jeffrey Cruikshank, “Breaking Robert’s Rules: the new way to run your meetings, build consensus and get things done“, is an excellent blueprint of how to conduct a consensus-building process. The purpose is to improve the simple majority rule process run by Roberts Rules of Procedures, with a process intended to gain broader support and better solutions. Five steps are identified in the consensus-building process: convening, clarifying responsibilities, deliberating, deciding, and implementing agreements.

1. CONVENING – Every project must have a public champion, perceived as trustworthy, who has the interest of the larger community at heart and the wherewithal to get everyone’s attention and participation.  This is the type of person that would serve as a convener.  He or she would be assisted by a skilled facilitator to support the process efforts, but the project convener must be the face of the process.  To begin with, the convener, the community and other stakeholders conduct a written conflicts assessment to determine if a consensus-building process makes sense. Once decided, the facilitator and convener can educate interested parties on the process and help them think through whether they would wish to participate.

2. CLARIFYING RESPONSIBILITIES – After a conflicts assessment and a decision to proceed is made, the next activity is to clarify participants’ roles – convener, facilitator, politicians, stakeholder groups, community representatives, and recorders. Agendas for meetings and ground rules for the process are all established during step 2.  The group should assess available computer-based communication options since this can greatly simplify the process and get greater participation from more representatives and groups of stakeholders. A mailing list or email distribution list should be established as well, to keep everyone up to date on the process.

3. DELIBERATING – Deliberations are a critical step in reaching agreement.  As in any collaborative processes the stakeholders must feel their interests are heard and understood by the other stakeholders.  This must be done in a constructive fashion and the skills of the facilitator will be very important in making this happen.  Brainstorming and inventing must be separated from commitments so that all ideas are given consideration before beginning to narrow down the options.  If necessary the process facilitator can create subcommittees and seek expert advice. When it comes time to write everything down the group should use a “single text” procedure. This is a method to work with one neutral document recording the progress, which is reviewed and approved by all the stakeholders.

 4. DECIDING  – Consensus-building, like other forms of collaborative conflict resolution, is based on the four basic principles of “win-win” negotiation (see Fisher and Ury 1996): separate the people from the problem; focus on interests, not positions; invent options for mutual gain; and use objective criteria.  In this stage of the process, stakeholders should try to maximize joint gains. All the principles of effective interest based and collaborative negotiations should be applied in coming to decisions. Multiple drafts of proposals can be circulated until consensus is reached. Again, a record of the decision making process and conclusions can be made through a single text document procedure.

 5. IMPLEMENTING AGREEMENTS – Once consensus has been reached, an implementing agreement should be finalized that incorporates some history of the process and participants and outlines the areas where agreement has been reached.  All the stakeholders should be signatory to this agreement. This agreement should indicate not only how the agreement will be implemented but also how it will be monitored and enforced.  There should be a process in the implementing agreement for how conflicts will be resolved that arise later on.  A collaborative process for conflict management, such as mediation or using a standing neutral decision-maker, should be considered in the terms in the agreement.