"After the two hour meeting, I wasn’t really sure if we had decided to purchase the new system or not. Some people didn’t seem to go along with it because they thought the existing system could be improved to meet user requirements. I know we’re going to revisit this “decision” next week, and the week after that."

The quotation above describes a common business situation: lack of agreement on how decisions are made within a team. All companies operate with some type of team structure, but few take the time to understand, agree-upon, or explain who makes decisions and how these decisions are made within the team structure. Because of this confusion, a majority of teams operate in an ambiguous mode; since there is no clear understanding of how decisions are made, decision-making takes much longer than it should.

The first thing a group should do, is agree upon a decision-making model.

Most teams choose a consensus model; it takes more time, but results in strong decisions. Lately, we have seen teams achieve great results using the presidential model, with a strong leader in charge.

The biggest problems occur when the team doesn’t understand the model that it is actually in. For example, members may believe that they are in a consensus model, but in reality, the top executive is making all the decisions. In a case like this, productivity and team mental health will be improved if people understand that they are actually working in a presidential model. They can then make recommendations to the top executive instead of laboring to reach team consensus only to have this consensus overturned.

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