Cross Collaborate» agreement

Can Government Solve Big Problems Collaboratively?

John Folk-Williams — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:22:47 +0000

The Open Government Initiative of the Obama Administration has given high priority to increasing the use of collaboration in the federal government. Yet many federal offices have not in the past encouraged the sort of collaborative mindset that is necessary for meaningful efforts in this direction.

As William Eggers and John O’Leary have noted, it’s often the failure to work inclusively that leads to disappointment or even disaster, as they discuss in the fatal tunnel collapse of Boston’s Big Dig project. If We Can Put a Man on the Moon draws lessons from many other examples of what can go wrong when government tries to solve the big problems.

What I want to look at in this post, though, is one of the major positive cases they cite: the successful effort to reform the healthcare system in Massachusetts. Their summary of key steps in that process nicely defines the elements that characterize good collaborative work to solve a critically important public problem. It’s a useful example for federal officials to keep in mind as they move ahead with the Open Government Initiative. Although this case occurs in a legislative context, the model can be effective in most public policy settings.

Here are the major steps they single out:

High Level Leadership: Governor Mitt Romney made a priority of reforming the health care system in Massachusetts and defined a set of principles to guide the effort. When he turned to the state’s health staff for proposals, however, he found they were too narrow in scope and tied too closely to the existing system.
Outside Team: In a controversial step, the Governor brought in a team of outsiders who could bring new ways of thinking to the problem. It was their task to develop proposals for fundamental change. He made clear they had his complete support by locating their office close to his own.
Consultation with Key Players: After a false start when the team’s proposal, prepared without input of the Legislature, was rejected, they regrouped and changed their approach. They set aside their own work and began a process of regular consultation with all the key players. This collaborative approach ensured that no one would be surprised and that everyone could feel satisfied that their concerns were being addressed.
Collaborative Mindset:Turning to a collaborative process required an important change in thinking about the team’s own role. Instead of acting as the experts who would analyze data and design their own reform policy, they realized they needed to keep an open mind and consider a wide range of alternative proposals, including many they disagreed with. Switching from a technical to a collaborative mindset was itself a remarkable adaptation. Most expert consultants practice either one approach or the other, but this team realized they had to respond to the situation before them instead of following their customary practices.
Collaborative Leadership: Even more important was the Governor’s adoption of this same approach. Instead of presenting his plan to the Legislature as a definitive position, he gave speeches describing what the team was finding and what he and the Legislature need to consider. In this way, he demonstrated his willingness to propose the ideas of other leaders and to share credit with them for the ultimate decision. That’s an important quality in a collaborative leader – the use of power, in Mary Parker Follett’s terms, “with” others rather than “over” them.
Collaborative Decision-Making: Eggers and O’Leary praise the collaborative approach in contrast to a collective one based on consensus, or unanimity, of all the major interest groups. They see the typical “blue ribbon committee” process as an attempt to bring dozens of representatives of different interests together in a room to reach agreement among them all. That’s a formula for gridlock. They see the essence of the collaborative approach as drawing on the ideas of the key groups without expecting the impossible of total agreement. The Governor was seeking fundamental change, they point out, and that comes hard. Inevitably, some groups will resist and try to slow down or kill the process.
I would add that there are many techniques available to move beyond gridlock or the seeming impossibility of producing agreement from a large number of groups represented around a single table. Mediators and facilitators typically describe a collaborative process as consensus-seeking precisely because they understand that a complicated process shouldn’t be held hostage to the demand of one or two groups. To deal with that problem, they have devised alternative decision strategies when unanimity is not possible. One of the most authoritative references which closely examines this issue is The Consensus Building Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Reaching Agreement.
Design: Once the proposal got to the Legislature, the Governor and leaders of the Assembly and Senate maintained a pragmatic approach to produce a final package that represented a balancing of the different interests. As a Republican Governor with only a small base in the Legislature, Romney had to work collaboratively with the Democratic leadership, and they responded in the same spirit.
Adoption: As a result of this collaborative work, the Legislature adopted a bill that had included them as partners in its design. Every agreement, whatever the form it takes, faces this test of formal adoption, often in a political forum. Success requires the satisfaction of major interests in order to prevent or minimize significant opposition that can kill the whole thing.

It’s important that following such an achievement there be a public celebration of some sort that recognizes the leaders and the groups they represent for their ability to work collaboratively. In the case of major legislation, like this one, that usually means a formal signing ceremony. This reaffirms and publicly demonstrates the shared credit for the result of the process as well as the collaborative commitment that made the agreement possible.
Implementation:

Since the program includes major changes in the health care system, it will be a long time before its full impact will become clear. Doubtless, that process has been greatly complicated by the recent storm of controversy over national health care reform and the sharp ideological divisions it brought to the forefront of policy debate.

Changing political attitudes and electoral trends, however, are always a factor in implementing any new collaborative agreement over the long-term. Whether collaborative approaches can survive the present atmosphere of sharp ideological division is an open question. That is also the crucial question in the case of Massachusetts health care reform.

The collaborative model that emerges from Eggers and O’Leary’s accounts of numerous examples follows most of the steps defined in the practice and writings of professional mediators and facilitators. These steps include the roles and functions that need to be carried out by collaborative leaders and those who serve as technical experts and facilitators.

While many practitioners in the collaborative public policy field like to point out their unique expertise in helping leaders convene and manage these processes, the fact is that public officials with the skills of collaborative leaders most often carry them out. They may use outside expertise to gain a fresh perspective, as Romney did in this case, or they may assemble a collaborative working group that draws together the key players and interest groups. There are many ways to get the job done, but the principles remain the same.

Moving Toward Agreement from the Extremes

John Folk-Williams — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 08:16:13 +0000

Image courtesy of Nihat Dursun – Fotolia.com

In the last post, I summarized different ways of thinking about the effect of extreme beliefs on efforts to resolve conflict and solve problems. Elizabeth Bader approaches the mediation context in terms of personality and psychoanalytic theory, while Eggers and O’Leary describe how government solutions to major issues can be derailed, in part, by the distorting influence of existing beliefs.

In this post, I want to review studies that extend this discussion to other frames of reference. Cass Sunstein, a prominent law professor, addresses the role of deliberation as it relates to the formation of extremist groups and the larger political institutions that control extremism through the system of checks and balances. Though these books address different types of policy discussions, they agree that fruitful dialogue can occur among people holding extreme and opposing views but only if they are willing to consider new ideas and possible changes to their positions.

Cass Sunstein’s Going to Extremes explains the ways extremist groups form and the effect of deliberation in their resistance to moderation. His frame of reference is the role of the political system of checks and balances in managing the impact of extremism rather than the use of ad hoc collaborative deliberation.

James Fishkin’s When the People Speak combines theory and empirical evidence to establish the effectiveness of the Deliberative Polling technique to help citizens of differing views move closer to shared positions on controversial policy issues. His basic concern is the use of deliberative process involving ordinary citizens to influence the formation of public policy by government. His work has become a cornerstone of practice in the emerging field of Deliberative Democracy.

The experience gained from these approaches helps to sharpen the picture of group decision-making and to identify the most favorable conditions for building agreement when major differences divide participants.

Deliberating toward Extremes

Sunstein’s study of extremism argues that, under certain conditions, dialogue between groups of sharply opposing views can increase polarization rather than reduce it. However, he also identifies conditions favoring the depolarization of groups through deliberation. Here’s a quick summary of a few of his leading ideas:

One of his most important and startling conclusions is that extremists move the most as a result of open-minded deliberation among themselves, but the direction of change is to become more extreme rather than to find a middle ground. This tendency isn’t limited to extremist groups.

People sharing the same general orientation, such as liberal or conservative, but having a wide range of views on a particular issue, also tend to move to a more extreme position after deliberation within their groups. This happens if members of the group are willing to listen to each other and are open to change. The discussions also tend to make their views more homogeneous than at the outset.

Even more surprising is evidence showing that this tendency also occurs in diverse groups, like a civil jury considering a damage award. Deliberation may move the participants farther toward an extreme rather than pull the extremes closer to the center. This happens if there is a well-defined predeliberation tendency in one direction and if people are willing to listen to each other and remain open-minded.

That “predeliberation tendency” is the result of purely individual preferences uninfluenced by any group discussion. In a truly diverse group – especially one like a jury drawn from a random pool and screened to exclude people biased in one direction or another – it is probably more likely than not that participants will have a tendency favoring one side or another. But moderation can occur if they are split evenly.

Groups consisting of equally opposed subgroups may move toward the middle ground but only if they are willing to listen to each other and to modify their thinking about an issue. Not surprisingly, subgroups that are passionately and rigidly attached to predeliberation positions will not move at all.

Sunstein offers several explanations for the tendency toward extremism. One is what he calls rhetorical advantage. There are certain issues that may stir feelings of fairness or justice or personal welfare, like civil rights or punishment of an offender or health care. The proposed actions or policies with this advantage appeal to people on a deeper level and may be more readily accepted than proposals that don’t satisfy that sense of rightness.

Also, people who are more confident tend to pull toward their point of view those who are uncertain about what to think. They don’t achieve this by dominating discussion or shutting out other ideas but simply by the sureness of their considered judgment. A third phenomenon is called the “eureka moment.” If an idea or new information is introduced that suddenly strikes everyone as the true answer, then groups will converge on that.

Deliberating Away from Extremes

James Fishkin’s study rejects the idea that diverse groups generally move toward extremes and offers more than a decade of Deliberative Polling projects to prove the point. This method, one of the most influential in the field of Deliberative Democracy, draws together a group of citizens from a randomized sample of the general population. These candidates are screened for their willingness to participate in a policy discussion and – as in jury selection – screened for exclusion due to existing bias or advocacy of a particular position. The point is to assemble a group of ordinary citizens who may have existing preferences about important public problems but remain completely open-minded.

In a structured process, participants record their initial views in questionnaires prior to the first meeting, and they receive background information that objectively presents the full range of policy options and relevant data. Then the participants meet and deliberate with the aid of an independent facilitator. At the end of the process, their views are polled once again to measure changes in the policies they favor. In most cases, there are significant changes that often surprise public officials and can directly influence their formal decisions. Results show that groups do not move toward the extreme of the “well-defined predeliberation tendency”, as Sunstein claims, and may wind up favoring a position that started out as the minority preference. In these projects, deliberation results in modification of views but not in the direction of extremism or polarization.

Sunstein attributes these findings to the special conditions of the Deliberative Polling process. The influence of a facilitator, he believes, may well alter the dynamics of discussion. Furthermore, the polling process Fishkin uses does not require that groups reach a decision either by majority or consensus. The changes in preferences are determined entirely through pre- and post-deliberation questionnaires. Sunstein sees these differences as crucial to results that vary from other empirical evidence about group decisions. The unique method of Deliberative Polling, he believes, makes it quite different from most policy discussions.

These two activist thinkers come together, though, on one of the key questions. Under what conditions can strongly opposed groups use deliberation to moderate their positions and come to agreement? Fishkin presents one example of a Catholic-Protestant dialogue group in Northern Ireland in which the participants did move closer together on education issues. However, he points out that success depended on selecting a subject for deliberation that was not the focus of intense partisan battling. In other words, on that issue the participants were not inflexible about their preferences and could remain open-minded.

Sunstein has found the same thing. There won’t be any change in position between opposing groups that are passionately attached to predeliberation positions. In that frame of mind, they’re likely to ignore or distort new information and distrust anything their opponents might offer.

Participants have to be open-minded and able to detach their judgment about the issues from emotional commitment and other non-rational factors that block the mind from considering new ideas. Whether looking at this problem from the perspective of mediation, governmental problem-solving, the dynamics of extremism, the influence of citizens on public policy or interest-based negotiation, the process of bringing opposing groups closer to agreement depends on rational thinking and objective analysis.

Nevertheless, as earlier posts like this one discussed, non-rational elements pervade every deliberative or collaborative process. The next post in this series will pull together ideas from all these frames of reference about the specific methods collaborative leaders and practitioners can use to manage the influence of extreme thinking and non-rational attitudes.

Consensus Building: Changing Minds to Reach Agreement

John Folk-Williams — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:41:34 +0000

For a diverse group to reach consensus, at least some of the participants – perhaps all of them – have to change their minds. They come into the room with differing, often fundamentally conflicting ideas about the challenges they face. They likely disagree on how to define problems, technical methods that should be used to explore potential solutions and the options that might meet their needs for an acceptable solution.

Most also arrive fearful that change will mean loss for them – of property, influence or benefits they now possess. That fear often comes through as deep suspicion of the motives of those who propose changes while also promising to protect the interests of other stakeholders. That suspicion may have been supported by the experience of past conflict and has thus become well entrenched.

Fear and suspicion typify one dimension of resistance as a powerful non-rational factor. But there are many other types of resistance. Experts may resist because an apparently sound rational analysis isn’t supported by scientific evidence that meets their standards. Others may miss a way to relate technical conclusions to their everyday experience and won’t accept a new concept until it “clicks” in terms of their own work or community life.

There is often a tension between rational problem-solving methods and the many non-rational factors that can be just as powerful in influencing decisions. Mediators need to address both levels in order to facilitate agreement, but it is not enough to work one-on-one with resistant participants.

The group members have to face this challenge jointly and find ways to examine and present ideas that encourage a willingness to change. It’s not a matter of one side “selling” a proposal to the others. That’s the hallmark of a more adversarial negotiation in which competing proposals or offers of settlement are debated.

In a collaborative setting, all the stakeholders must respond not only to one another’s interests but also to the particular cognitive demands of each participant. To do that, the group needs some understanding of the varied ways in which people become convinced that it is safe to change their minds and adopt an approach they had never before been willing to consider.

In Changing Minds, the psychologist Howard Gardner has provided a useful outline of the different types of evidence and presentation people need before they come to a moment when thinking can change.

He identifies seven factors that influence people to adopt new ideas and beliefs. Since change comes with great difficulty, he includes resistance as one of these factors. The ability to overcome resistance usually depends on the effect of the other six, all of which should reinforce each other and make it possible for a diverse group to achieve consensus. Here is a a quick overview of Gardner’s seven factors.

Reason: The interest-based model of joint gains negotiation exemplifies the role of reasoning and rational analysis. A careful evaluation of options by use of objective criteria establishes a problem solution that is optimal. Those responsive to carefully constructed argument of this sort are likely to be persuaded to choose the highest scoring option, even if that contradicts earlier positions.
Research: Change can also occur on the basis of evidence that a group finds convincing. It might be formally gathered scientific data or informally reported experience. Research is a primary method of supporting rational analysis, and together these are the most common methods of persuasion used in collaborative policy processes.
Resonance: There are many times when rational analysis and supporting research don’t result in a change of thinking. The proposal “just doesn’t feel right.” In Gardener’s terms, it lacks resonance because it doesn’t touch a level of emotion that is usually necessary to win a commitment to change. Sometimes that feeling level is satisfied by reason and research, but it usually requires other elements too. Trust in an ally who accepts the idea could do it – or the change may occur in a way that is less conscious. The new idea seems to fit the situation or just “click” even if it goes against argument and data.
Redescriptions: This is Gardener’s term for the representation of an idea in many different formats – verbal description, numerical calculation in a spreadsheet, or picturing through a chart, diagram or visual imagery. The point is that all the different forms of representing the idea need to reinforce each other to be convincing.
Resources and Rewards: The availability of resources to carry out one alternative instead of another could tip the balance. Ideas that seem impractical because funding or staffing can’t be found may quickly lose their appeal, that is, be less convincing, less likely to change anyone’s mind.
Real World Events: An election that shifts the balance of political power, a natural disaster, a surge or crash in financial markets, or the arrival of a revolutionary technology – are all examples of events that can be decisive in changing minds. They can disrupt expectations about the future and shift thinking about plans and actions. That happens because events like these can register with people on multiple levels at once, rational and emotional, conscious and unconscious and open possibilities that had never before been considered.
Resistance: The refusal to consider a change is another critical factor. As people get older, they get attached to certain ideas and ways of doing things because they’ve been effective, or perhaps because no other alternative has ever come along. Personality or training may have instilled a certain mindset and method of approaching problems, and any idea that doesn’t agree with that way of thinking can be rejected out of hand.

Resistances can come from all sorts of life experiences and habits, but, as Gardener points out, their influence isn’t always negative. They can force a more rigorous testing and presentation of ideas until they make sense ito someone who’s been unresponsive.

These approaches usually have to work together to effect change and convince all members of a collaborative group that a particular solution is the right one.

Using all of them to organize and present new ideas helps ensure that no one will be regarded as the problem or isolated as the source of resistance simply because they are unconvinced by the methods that work well for others.

Power Differences, Consensus Building & Collaborative Networks

What Do You Do When Consensus Fails?

John Folk-Williams — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:18:29 +0000

This is the nightmare scenario for any consensus process: After months of hard work by 20 or 30 participants, one or two holdouts, perhaps representing narrow or personal interests, block agreement and frustrate the entire effort.

That is possible if the only route to agreement requires unanimous consent. There has to be a way to prevent the process from becoming the captive of a tiny minority. Otherwise, many conveners would hesitate to use a consensus-seeking process in the first place. The nightmare scenario seems all too plausible.

The answer is to have a backup method that would allow an overwhelming majority to conclude an agreement if full consensus could not be achieved. Defining such a method is thus one of the first steps the members of a collaborative group need to take.

The choice, though, is problematic because any alternative is a form of voting, and that seems to contradict the whole idea of consensus decision-making. The power of consensus, after all, is that it protects every interest represented in the process by requiring the agreement of all.

The danger of a voting alternative is the potential for changing the whole dynamic of the process. Instead of building consensus, the group may simply be counting votes. If that happens, participants would concentrate on satisfying the interests of their potential supporters and ignore the needs of the rest.

That is why the backup plan should serve only as a last resort after every effort has been made to meet the needs of all participants. This is a basic commitment that should be part of the group’s written groundrules both as a condition of membership and as guidance for the group’s deliberation.

Once that basic commitment is made, what would the alternative to a consensus decision look like? To figure that out, the group has to answer several questions.

What constitutes an overwhelming majority?

The decision of a group needs to represent “overwhelming” agreement by a super-majority. The specific percentage has to be large enough to be publicly convincing but not so large as to be unattainable in practice. It’s impossible to offer a fixed rule for all groups since much depends on the number of participants and complexity of the issues.

Who decides when it’s time to vote?

Commonly, either the facilitator/mediator or the group members themselves decide. If the facilitator makes the final call, he or she will do only after consulting the group to see if anyone feels that additional effort would be productive. If the group itself votes to use the backup plan, there is a further complication – which can stretch a group’s patience with procedural details to the breaking point – of determining how thatvoting would be defined. Many groups prefer to take the time for that step, however, because they want to keep all important decisions in their hands.

What if the minority includes an important constituency that can’t be left out?

Things get complicated here. The fact is that some groups are more important than others in securing formal adoption and effective implementation of an agreement. Sometimes, a group will agree that the majority must include certain organizations, such as the conveners of the process. In other cases, this issue may not be addressed at all. In effect, the need to prevent this possibility creates additional incentive to go the extra mile in trying to reach consensus.

What happens to the views and concerns of the minority?

It’s essential that members of the minority group have their views included in the final report or agreement text. They need the same opportunity as the others to explain their needs and the reasons why they could not be met by provisions of the final document. Further, the majority needs to spell out the good faith efforts they made to satisfy those interests. Without this careful presentation, the entire effort may come under attack as one that imposed its decision unfairly.

Other Strategies.

1. Political Consensus as the Goal.

It is possible to avoid the need for a specially defined voting alternative, however, by refocusing the initial definition of the goal of consensus. No one pursues consensus as an end in itself. In public policy, consensus is a means for demonstrating broad support for a proposed plan or agreement. By getting all the key interest groups to agree, the collaborative effort demonstrates to the formal public decision-maker that potential controversy, litigation and serious political dissent have been minimized beforehand. All the affected interests can present a united front and explain how the agreement addresses and resolves the major issues. That vastly increases the likelihood of formal adoption and subsequent implementation.

If the group considers consensus in this light, the goal could be defined as reaching the highest possible level of agreement in order to have a convincing and decisive impact on the formal adoption process. This is much closer to the what everyone understands as political consensus – broad public support that gives clear direction to public officials.

The commitment is made to work as hard as possible to address all the represented interests, but if that is not possible the full range of views on each issue will be presented in the final product of the group. This approach avoids the complexity and potential problems of voting procedures.

2. Consensus through Interest Groups.

There is another alternative that provides a more structured approach to achieve the same purpose. This requires agreement of the collaborative group to organize itself into interest groups (environment, business, community etc) and to rely on them to express agreement. The interest group voice speaks for each of its individual organizations.

Within each interest, the members make their decisions about what is acceptable to meet their needs. These decisions require a specified majority of the members rather than unanimity. It is thus up to each interest to deal with dissent within its own ranks. An agreement is reached by consensus among the interest groups, and there is no backup voting procedure.

Whichever method a collaborative group might adopt, it is essential that the rule be clearly defined at the outset. There is no room for confusion about so basic a matter as how a final decision will be reached.