Multivoting: Let the Team Decide!

Mind Tools Newsletter 62 - 28th November 2006 This newsletter is published by Mind Tools Ltd of 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London, EC1V 4PY, UK. You have received it because you have subscribed to our double opt-in newsletter. To subscribe or unsubscribe, just click the links at the bottom of this email.

Contents: What's New Team Decision Making: Multivoting Mind Tools Store A Final Note

Does the idea of team decision making fill you with horror? The thought of endless discussions and disagreements.? The thought that, at the end of the day, you will probably have a mediocre solution that no one really buys in to?

This is the reality of team decision making in many organizations. Team decision making sounds like a great idea, but too often just doesn't work.

The reason for this can often be quite simple: Sometimes, people just don't know the techniques needed to build consensus and get the buy-in of their teams.

Where this is the case, the secret of successful group decision making can be as simple as having the right decision making process in place.

One great technique to consider in this situation is Multivoting. It’s a simple yet effective process: its power is in ensuring everyone gets their say on the options, as they are narrowed down. And because everyone has an absolutely fair say, it can build a dauntingly powerful consensus. Today's’ new article describes the technique in detail. Try it for your team’s next decision!

What's New?

As well as Multivoting, we have two more new articles at Mind Tools site: Beating Procrastination, and the Life Career Rainbow. Our Beating Procrastination article helps you overcome an issue that can so often hold you back from starting a new project, or getting something important done. And the Life Career Rainbow is a useful technique for helping recover balance in your work and life.

Rachel and the team at the Career Excellence Club, have had a busy two weeks too. New Mind Tools for members’ range from Negotiating a Pay Raise, to Overcoming Self Sabotage. We have an illuminating podcast Expert Interview with John P Strelecky, author of the Why Café, focusing on the big question of life fulfillment; and our latest Bite Sized Training lesson focuses on personal strategy. These are just some of the many resources available to club members.

If you like the idea of the Career Excellence Club, why not join us for a first month’s subscription of just US$1? Simply click here to find out more.

Anyway, enjoy the Multivoting article. It's a technique that gave us a real buzz the first time we discovered it!

Best wishes,

James & Rachel

James Manktelow and Rachel Thompson
MindTools.com
Mind Tools – Essential skills for an excellent career!

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New Article
Multivoting
Choosing fairly between many options

Have you ever felt short-changed because of the result of a traditional vote?

The democratic system of majority wins is usually a fair way to make a decision. So long as voters have sufficient information on which to make a choice, the system usually works well, just as long as there are only a few options from which to choose. 

Do we nominate Mary or Bill as the team representative? Hands up of those in favor of Mary… 3 hands. Those in favor of Bill? 12. Great, Bill it is.

But what happens when the choices expand and each vote is then dispersed over a wider range? A winner emerges but there are many more people who didn’t vote for the winning option than people who did.

Who should we nominate for employee of the month? Sara, Suzanne, Katherine, Joseph, or Charles? Sara gets 3 votes Suzanne gets 4 Katherine gets 3 Joseph gets 5 Charles gets 4

Here, Joseph is nominated by a hair, but only five people feel their opinions were taken into account. The remaining 14 people have had their choice cast aside like yesterday’s news.

When there are many choices, simple majority rule voting is often not the best method for reaching decisions, if you want everyone to feel that they own the decision. Yet with idea sharing and brainstorming activities frequently taking place in workplaces today, voting is needed more and more. This is particularly the case where the decision is subjective, where different strong views are held, where many members of the group have power, or where strong commitment to the outcome is needed.

When group consensus is needed, multivoting is a simple process that helps you whittle down a large list of options to a manageable number. It works by using several rounds of voting, in which the list of alternatives becomes shorter and shorter. If you start with 10 alternatives, the top five may move to the second round of voting, and so on.

In addition, in all but the last round, each person has more than one vote, allowing them to indicate the strength of their support for each option. Everyone votes in each cycle, so more people are involved in approving the final outcome than if only one vote was held.

Multivoting helps group members narrow down a wide field of options so that the group decision is focused on the most popular alternatives. This makes reaching consensus possible, and gives an outcome that people can buy into.

An alternative but slightly more complex group decision making tool is the Nominal Group Technique. With this, group members nominate options, and are ranked by group members according to priority. The key difference between the techniques is that multivoting is easier to understand (and can therefore seem fairer), while Nominal Group Technique can be used in a single round rather than several rounds (and is therefore quicker to use.)

How to Use the Tool:

Multivoting is really very straightforward once you get the general idea. The easiest way to understand how to conduct a multivoting session is through an example.

Step 1: Generate options
Henry and his team have a difficult choice to make. Raw material prices for the textile factory they work in have just gone up significantly, but the company can't raise prices. Labor costs are going to have to be reduced if the plant is to survive.

He needs to decide how to do this, but he wants to bring his team along with the difficult decisions that have to be made. After a brainstorming session, his team comes up with a list that looks like this:

1. Lower production employees’ pay scales
   
2. Decrease break time
   
3. Make the lunch period unpaid
   
4. Purchase automated packing equipment and eliminate two full time positions
   
5. Implement a better forecasting model and eliminate overtime
   
6. Reduce benefits such as subsidized child daycare
   
7. Reduce administrative staff
   
8. Outsource machine maintenance
   
9. Outsource housekeeping/janitorial service
   
10. Eliminate the shift supervisor position and pay a “lead-hand” premium instead

Tip: Henry has to be confident that the option selected is valid and will deliver the savings needed - otherwise a weak choice will have the weight of everyone's approval. He needs either to make sure that all options are good at this stage, or allow exploration, investigation and debate between voting rounds.

Step 2: Clarify options
Ensure that everyone understands what he or she is voting on.

Step 3: Assign votes per person
A "rule of thumb" is that the number of votes each person gets should be about half the total number of options. In our example, each of the 11 people voting would be given five votes, because there are 10 options.

Step 4: First round voting begins
Each person is allowed to allocate his/her votes across the options as he/she sees fit. Each person can put more than one dot against an option if they want. A common method is to use sticky dots (or equivalent) and have the participants place a dot, or dots, beside each option they like.
 

Tip: If decisions are contentious, you may want to conduct a secret ballot.

Option		Votes
1.	Lower production employees’ pay scales
2.	Decrease break time
3.	Make the lunch period unpaid
4.	Purchase automated packing equipment and eliminate two full time positions
5.	Implement a better forecasting model and eliminate overtime
6.	Reduce benefits
7.	Reduce administrative staff
8.	Outsource machine maintenance
9.	Outsource housekeeping/janitorial service
10.	Eliminate the shift supervisor position and pay a “lead-hand” premium instead

Tips: To avoid having people cast all their votes for a single option, you can restrict the maximum number of votes that people can allocate to each option.

Step 5: Narrow the field
The top 40%-50% of the original list is chosen to move onto the next round of voting. In our example the top four options are chosen.

1. Purchase automated packing equipment and eliminate two full time positions
   
2. Implement a better forecasting model, and eliminate overtime
   
3. Outsource machine maintenance
   
4. Eliminate the shift supervisor position and pay a “lead-hand” premium instead

Step 6: Next Rounds of Voting
Repeat steps 3-5, for the next rounds of voting.

In the second round of our example, there are 4 options (40% of the original number of options) and each person receives 2 votes, and the voting might go like this:

Option		Votes
1.	Purchase automated packing equipment and eliminate two full time positions
2.	Implement a better forecasting model and eliminate overtime
3.	Outsource machine maintenance
4.	Eliminate the shift supervisor position and pay a “lead-hand” premium instead

The top 2 options will be chosen for the next round, and then each person will have just a single vote. And so 11 votes, one per team member, will be cast among the 2 favorite options:

Option		Votes
1.	Outsource machine maintenance
2.	Eliminate the shift supervisor position and pay a “lead-hand” premium instead

Key Points

In a team setting, where consensus is an appropriate method for making a decision or narrowing down a field of options, multivoting is a fair and inclusive process. It respects the opinions of all participants and allows everyone to be fully involved in the decision. It works particularly well after a brainstorming session when you have a large number of options and need to narrow the field to those ideas that are most plausible and realistic.

The Mind Tools Store:

• The Career Excellence Club: The Career Excellence Club is the Mind Tools members area, with member-only discussion forums, the Mind Tools Extended Toolkit, downloadable MP3-based Book Insights and Interviews, regular coaching, training, and much, much more. More >>
  
  
• Make Time for Success: Learn 39 essential personal effectiveness techniques that help you bring your workload under control and maximize your productivity, so that you can make the most of the opportunities open to you. More >>
  
  
• How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You: Learn the 48 simple but essential skills you need to become a top leader in your industry. More >>
  
  
• The Mind Tools E-book: All of the tools on the Mind Tools website in one convenient, easily-downloadable, easily-printable PDF file. We have excluded advertising to enhance clarity and have formatted sections to be easy to read, print and use. More >>
  
  
• Personal Coaching from Career Excellence Professionals: Find career and life direction, bring your job under control, build self-confidence and put yourself on the path to long term success with a Mind Tools coach. Our coaches give you the focused personal coaching you need to make the very most of your career and life. More >>
  
  
• Multi-User Licensing Center: License Mind Tools programs and article for your training or in-house event. More >>

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A Final Note From James

Team decision making needn’t be a chore or a thankless task that gives you the least bad option. By getting the process right, using multivoting, and other team tools here at Mind Tools, and you can make decisions effectively and achieve great outcomes for your team.

Regularly over the coming weeks, and as always, you’ll find new tools here at Mind Tools. (And of course even more in the Career Excellence Club.) Look out for new free articles coming soon on TRIZ, a creative problem solving technique, and Dealing With Uncertainty, an article by popular Mind Tools contributor and emotional intelligence expert, Bruna Martinuzzi.

Have a wonderful week!

James

James Manktelow

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