Collective Sensemaking Café Making sense together before making decisions

Meetings often bring together people who have already chosen an outcome and others who still want to explore the issue. When decision-making begins too soon, dominant voices prevail, and people leave unheard, unconvinced, and without ownership. Separating dialogue from debate allows shared understanding to develop before a decision is made

How often have you taken part in a meeting to decide an issue where there have been two factions in the room?

The first camp has already decided what the outcome should be and sees the meeting as a way to coerce the others in the room into agreeing with them. In contrast, the second faction wants to explore the issue further before deciding.

The two groups battle, and usually those who have made up their minds in advance win. This group tends to include more senior managers, more dominant personalities, and those used to getting their way.

In my corporate life, I experienced this many times. They were painful affairs.

I tended to be in the group that felt the need to discuss the issues more, as it always seemed to me that we never really explored issues deeply enough and far too often made poor decisions.

I never had a problem with a decision being taken. Decisions have to be made. And I never had a problem with a senior manager making the decision – whatever the outcome.

All I ever wanted was to be heard before that decision was made, and that often didn’t happen.

So I would leave the meeting reluctantly, accepting the decision and feeling no ownership of it, unlike others in the room.

It need not be like this. There is a simple solution. Split the meeting into two parts.

A high level HR manager at a Dutch bank took this approach during two difficult meetings -one with a diverse group of stakeholders and the other with many high level managers from Dutch banks and banking regulators.

In both cases, attendees lauded his results saying they had never been to a meeting so productive in making decisions.

“It was unbelievable how quickly we started to trust and connect, and could really talk with each other”, one attendee told him.

The first part is a dialogue that explores the issues without a predetermined outcome, focusing on better understanding the problems.

This can be run as a whole-group discussion, but it is better to run it in the Knowledge Café format – taking care to avoid groupthink and group polarization.

The second part can be more of a debate — making the decision. This can be as passionate and as heated as any meeting where a tough decision must be taken, but in-depth exploration has already been done.

You go into the first part, saying:

We are going to take some time to explore and discuss the issues — to gain a better understanding of the situation. We are not going to make a decision, and it is important that everyone’s voice is heard.

You then go into the second part by saying:

We have spent time exploring the issues, you have all had your opportunity to contribute to the discussion, but at the end of the day, we need to make a decision. Time for dialogue is over — we must now make a decision.

The gap between the two meetings could be a tea break, a morning and afternoon session, or, better still, several days where people can have side conversations and explore some of the issues further. It may even make sense to have two or more Café sessions if the decision warrants the time taken.

Try it. It is such a simple thing to do. Split meetings into two parts:

1) To better understand the issue

• Dialogue – Café style
• Divergent
• About understanding the issues

2)  To make a decision

• Debate
• Convergent
• About making a decision