Ideas to Action Decision-Making Framework: Sharing Power, Making Decisions Under Pressure

This article is adapted from the Crash Course on Facilitating Decision-Making organized by the Anti-Oppression Resource Training Alliance (AORTA). You can find more information about AORTA at aorta.coop.

Check out AORTA's work at aorta.coop!

The crash course provided 4 lessons in facilitating decision-making that focus on sharing power while moving quickly when under pressure:

1. Show the stages: explaining what will happen in each stage of the decision-making process
2. Close the door: explaining what will happen in the present stage of the process
3. Set criteria: setting criteria to help narrow down options
4. Map authority: identifying who is responsible for each stage of the process

The lessons in this course are inspired by the Just Transition principle: “If we aren’t prepared to govern, we aren’t prepared to win.”

Lesson 1: Show the stages

Strong decisions are made in stages. Lesson 1 presents the “ideas to action” decision-making sequence:

1. Learn about the problem
2. Generate options
3. Identify constraints / criteria
4. Narrow down options
5. Decide
6. Implement

Showing the stages means clearly explaining what will happen in each stage, and when it will happen. 

Example: ‘We have just discussed the problem, and we will now generate options to address it. We will identify constraints in the next session. In the final session, we will narrow down our options and decide on what to do. From there, we will implement our decision!’

Important note: stages 2 and 3 can be switched around depending on the group’s preference. Sometimes it can be helpful to generate options before identifying constraints, and other times it can help to identify constraints / criteria first.

Lesson 2: Close the door

Decision-making processes often conflate stages. So treat each stage as a ‘room’, and focus on one room at a time. 

After showing the stages (explaining each stage in the process), you close the door by explaining clearly what will and won’t be done in the present stage.

To continue the example from above: ‘In this session, we WILL be generating as many big, bold ideas as we can about how to address our issue. We will NOT be narrowing down or judging our ideas in this session. That will come in the next session.’

Important note: Showing the stages and closing the door doesn’t necessarily take more time; what it requires is more discipline. If you don’t show the stages and close the door, you risk having a messy decision-making process that takes more time overall to make sense of.

Here are some facilitation best practices:

1. Don’t make people multitask: this is what closing the door is all about!
2. Ask specific questions: broad, open-ended questions can block meaningful participation
3. Set clear expectations: being clear about what you want out of a stage (e.g. to be imaginative, be bold, be precise) sets people up to succeed and thus creates trust

Lesson 3: Set criteria

This lesson is focused on generating options and identifying constraints (stage 2 or 3 in the process).

Without criteria, we risk defaulting to inequitable or unstrategic decision-making. The absence of clear criteria can lead to confusion and misunderstanding, lack of participation and buy-in, inaction, and so on.

Criteria can be anything; it all depends on the situation. For example, the criteria for generating options could be passion, need, organizational niche, easy win, etc. What is important is that criteria be adapted to the circumstances of the issue.

Here are two examples of criteria for different organizations:

Scenario 1: At a campus occupation for Palestine, the university administration has called the police to intervene.	In this scenario, there is a risk of chaos, conflict, and repression. As such, the criteria might be urgency, protection of the most vulnerable campers, and available skills of campers.
Scenario 2: An abolitionist organization is redefining their role.	In this scenario, criteria might be group niche, community need, personal interest.

An example of using post-it notes to indicate preferences.

Important note: It is recommended not to use ‘capacity’ as a criterion when generating options, because this can lower people’s expectations. Capacity can be used at the stage of narrowing down options.

Here are some idea-generating methods:

1. Dot-mocracy: add a dot to your top 3 ideas that meet all of the criteria
2. Colours and signs: 
   1. Use coloured post-it notes to rank ideas: red means no, yellow means maybe, green means yes
   2. Then add a ‘!’ to the green post-it you feel most strongly about
   3. Add ‘?’ to a yellow post-it you think could become green with conversation

Lesson 4: Map authority

This lesson is focused on identifying the decision-making responsibility in each stage of the decision-making process.

A common misconception is that the only way to distribute power equitably is to have full transparency and an absence of hierarchy. The problem with this approach is that it takes away from the efficiency of role differentiation.

Decision-making power can be distributed at every stage of the decision-making process. Mapping authority is about being clear about who has decision-making power at which stage. Doing so helps to set clear expectations as to where people do and don’t have decision-making power.

For example, a pro-Palestine student coalition might map authority like this:

• Learn about the problem: members of each org in their general meetings
• Generate options: members of each org in their general meetings
• Identify constraints / criteria: delegates of each org to a coalition body
• Narrow down options: delegates of each org to the coalition body
• Decide: vote taken by members of each participating student organization
• Implement: all members of the groups in the coalition

Conclusion

The ‘Ideas to Action’ decision-making sequence is one among many decision-making frameworks available to activists. Others include consensus decision-making, consent decision-making, and the DARCI decision-making framework. You can find articles about these decision-making processes, and others, at the HUB Wiki home page.