Decision making in groups is always really tricky. I mean, as much as we'd like to work with a group of people whose thoughts are completely in line with ours, it's not very feasible, unless you happen to be one of these guys:
So like a good Singaporean, I've always chosen the most efficient method of decision making: democracy! (We love democracy, right?) It's worked because in Singapore we have a tendency to face problems with a "just suck thumb lor" attitude. This may or may not be due to our (patriarchical, as people in the west like to call it) government. Regardless, its an integral part of our culture. That means if the majority agrees to it, even if we don't, we tend to just go with it. Conflict is no good. We avoid conflict. I've known that the majority rules method isn't the best method of going about this, but I'd always thought it was adequate- it sacrificed complete consensus for time-efficiency. It minimised conflict between members (eliminated it, even!) but then we recieved this little graph in CAC class, and I was surprised, because the 'majority rules' method was, to say the least, awful! It didn't do well efficiency-wise(shock!!), neither did it do well in terms of buy-in. I've been thinking about it, and also about what we've learnt in the CAC classes so far, and it makes sense to me now: to decide things by majority vote eliminates conflict, but it also eliminates the opportunity for people to TALK. To give FEEDBACK. The best decisions are decisions that take into consideration the needs and ideas of every team member, not just the majority. Time needs to be invested into the decision making process so that adjustments and concessions(if need be) can be made. "Majority rules" isn't efficient, it's lazy.
