Making decisions

Last updated on 2026-09-01 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • How can I make sure meetings end with important decisions having been made?
  • How do I harness participant’s energy and opinions into concrete decision making?

Objectives

TBD

In most meetings, at least some agenda items will be ones on which decisions need to be made in order to keep work moving forward, or to meet deadlines. If none of the items on your agenda require decision making from the group, you should reconsider whether it is useful to have the meeting at all. As discussed previously, information dissemination is usually not an appropriate reason to hold a meeting. Information can be circulated by email instead, without interrupting peoples’ work.

Given that there are agenda items requiring decision-making, you should be clear about what the role of the meeting participants is in striking a decision. We go into depth in how to establish decision making roles and responsibilities in another course in this series (Collaboration on Remote Teams). In brief, items placed on the agenda should be there because the participants at this meeting have some level of decision making role in their resolution. That might be as an advisory body, or as an official body whose decisions are binding. The individuals at this meeting were invited because you believe that this group of people are likely to have useful insight and expertise in helping make these decisions. They may also be included because they will be impacted by the decision, and therefore have a stake in carrying it out.

The difficulty of coming to consensus seems to raise exponentially with the number of meeting participants - so how can you ensure that decisions that need to be made actually get made and not deferred to a future meeting? We recommend that meetings adopt a modified version of Martha’s Rules, which are designed to allow groups to make progress without requiring strict consensus.

Martha’s Rules and Culture

The designers of Martha’s Rules note that their success is dependent on the culture of the group implementing them. In particular, successful implementation requires that participants be:

  • Willing and able to listen to others,
  • Trusting enough of the group to voice their opinions,
  • Invested in the group’s welfare and,
  • Willing to adopt other’s proposals in lieu of their own.

Our Collaboration on Remote Teams course delves into how team leaders can nurture these aspects of culture within their team, but some of the methods we’ve already discussed in this course go a long way towards establishing this culture. For instance, participants will be more willing to listen to others if they know that their right to share their opinion is being safeguarded by the Facilitator. Martha’s Rules also call for agenda items to be set and shared in advance of the meeting, and for each to have an associated time limit. You’re already well prepared for those elements!

The Steps

There are five steps to Martha’s rules, although the designers note that these five steps do not need to be followed exactly, and should be modified based on the group’s needs. The five steps are:

  1. Preparation,
  2. Generating proposals,
  3. Making proposals concrete,
  4. Taking a “sense” vote, and
  5. Taking a “vote” vote.

We’ve already covered the preparation steps, so let’s talk about generating proposals.

Challenge

Evaluating Multiple Proposals

Exercise about implementing Martha’s Rules - could we use the table from the publication and ask the group which proposals should move forward to the next stage?

Solution text here.

Key Points

TDB