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One more re-run – a piece that completes some of the thinking in last week’s re-run. I think you’ll find it’s worth your time. Also the time of colleagues who don’t yet know about KJR. (Was that a strong enough hint?)

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As I get older, science fiction seems to have less science, which is too bad. Science is the hard work of figuring out how the universe works. It’s been replaced with swords and sorcery, which is simply wishful thinking, and as David Brin has pointed out, part of “wishful” is the assumption that in a feudal society you’d end up as something other than one of the peons who made up 90% of the population.

And so, while I wait for the next Discworld novel to appear each year, I’ve been reading more history. Regrettably, not quite enough, as several subscribers pointed out in response to last week’s column: Well before the Revolutionary War, England largely rejected the idea of the divine right of kings, replacing it with the inherent right of the aristocracy. Not that this was much better, nor do I know whether the English of the time claimed God wanted those with titles to be entitled.

People being what they are, I’d bet that they did.

Much of the rest of my correspondence had to do with the role of consensus in corporate decision-making. One source told me that a number of large corporations teach decision-making in their leadership training programs. Their programs (which, unlike the leadership seminars we provide, apparently require lexicographical activism) define both consensus and collaboration as conflict resolution processes, and then explain that consensus is bad while collaboration is good.

And if I define black as a shade of lavender, and white as a shade of tan, I can easily make the case that white suits make a better fashion statement for male business executives than black ones. “Collaborate” is widely understood (and defined in dictionaries) to refer to all situations in which people work together in a cooperative fashion. It’s a process. Not only is it not limited to conflict resolution, but it’s unlikely to resolve serious conflicts, since serious conflicts generally arise when people lose their ability to cooperate.

Consensus isn’t a process. It’s a result — general agreement, or more formally, a state of being in which everyone involved agrees to support a decision, regardless of what they personally would consider to have been ideal. The best consensus decisions start with collaboration, but collaboration isn’t required.

What is required is a shared desire to find some way to move forward.

Consensus isn’t the only way to make business decisions. It isn’t suited to all situations, or even most situations. It’s time-consuming, and is in consequence expensive. For engineering situations it’s risky, because the process of compromise required for consensus easily leads to design inconsistencies, and those, in turn, lead to kludges, deep in the heart of the architecture.

Use consensus when what matters, more than anything else, is buy-in — commitment to the course of action chosen by the organization. Use other methods for other circumstances.

Take product design as an example. A very good way to design products is to put a product manager in charge of a small team, consisting of experts from marketing, design, engineering, manufacturing, and cost-accounting. This gives you your best shot at creating a well-built product that’s easy to manufacture and appealing to customers.

Except that it’s never that easy. The most marketable product might be hard to manufacture. The best engineering might have too little market appeal, or be too hard to manufacture as well. What’s easiest to manufacture could require the elimination of highly desirable product features.

And what everyone else wants to build might end up costing too much, thinning margins to unacceptable levels.

Every member of the design team will have to make … that’s right … compromises. Which means that with all the best of intentions, your attempt to avoid the expense of consensus has simply shifted the responsibility for arriving at consensus to a different group of people. You don’t seriously think that having everyone make their case to the product manager, who then makes all of the decisions, will work, do you?

So here’s your guideline when it comes to design decisions of any kind: Unless one person knows enough to design the entire entity, whatever it is, charter a design team. Keep it small — no more than five people; three is better. Choose people who already know and trust each other’s judgment. Failing that, choose people who you know can work well with others.

Who can, that is, collaborate to arrive at consensus.

Don’t worry. This isn’t a partisan political column, nor is it irrelevant to your corporate role. We’ll get there — be patient. You can learn a lot from current events if you know where to look. For example:

Let’s imagine you’re disturbed by current events. Perhaps you’re reacting to the recently passed laws allowing “harsh interrogation” and the suspension of habeas corpus, or judicial activism, or environmental and energy issues, or the war in Iraq, or illegal immigration, or the bipartisan gerrymandering of districts to make as many incumbents as possible safe, or taxing and spending, or not taxing and spending anyway, or Roe vs Wade, or the growing influence of religious groups vs Roe vs Wade, or the ownership of both major political parties by big business. What should you do about it?

A peculiarity of American politics is the persistence of third parties (and fourth, and fifth, and so on).

To the extent third party candidates have any impact at all, it’s usually to help elect whichever major party candidates hold the views least compatible with their own. And that’s in a good year. Mostly, third parties provide an outlet for those who want to participate in the political process without having to experience the sausage-factory ugliness of the political process itself. They provide an opportunity to say, “I told you so.”

Imagine that Perot, Nader, or both had spent all of their energy and influence working to modify the electoral process to allow “instant run-offs,” where voters list candidates in order of preference. Instant run-off would mean that Texans who like Kinky Friedman best for governor, but still would prefer Chris Bell over Rick Perry could vote their preference. If the Kinkster came in third, their votes would automatically shift to Bell.

Instant run-off would instantly remove the single biggest barrier to any third-party candidate — the perception that voting for one is a wasted vote. Had Perot lobbied for instant run-off in Texas in 1992, it very well might have happened, and having happened in Texas it very well might have spread — an enduring change that would have fostered the Independence Party he founded.

It’s worth asking why he and Nader decided to lead third parties instead of infiltrating the Democrats or Republicans, and why, having formed new parties, they chose to squander their time, energy and resources running for president instead of for instant run-off or some other tactic that would have had laid a strong foundation to build on. Three factors probably played important roles: An unwillingness to dirty their hands; a preference for being the big frog in a small pond instead of just one big frog among many in a lake; and a desire for the limelight.

The result: Their hands remained clean, they became big frogs in small ponds, they got the limelight … and they had little or no impact, other than as spoilers.

Which brings us to you and your role in corporate America.

Corporate politics, like national politics, is a multi-player chess game. The higher you rise, the more your personal effectiveness depends on your political skills. You choose tactics that can win given the situation as it is, not as you wish it was. While corporate politics rarely descends to the kinds of tactics used in national politics, on an average day you still find yourself faced with choices that are morally ambiguous at best.

Politics means getting your hands dirty, trading your support on one issue for someone else’s on another; building alliances with people you don’t necessarily admire or like; flattering, cajoling, and at times threatening. It isn’t a game for the finicky, and as a general rule, the nastiness of the tactics needed to win correlate with the size of the lake you’re ribbetting in.

Your choices are the same as those that were available to Ross Perot and Ralph Nader. If you find politics distasteful or lack the aptitude for it, but still want to play a leadership role, choose a smaller pond … a small-to-mid-size company.

But don’t turn up your nose at those who swim in the big lakes. They are the same as you and me. They just play the game better. Many are very ethical people, too. In their code of ethics, unlike the code of third-party candidates, achieving the least of the available evils counts as a moral victory.

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Speaking of politics, election day is approaching. Given the issues at stake it’s as important a mid-term election as any of us have seen in decades. One of the candidates that’s running for each office and has a chance of being elected is a better choice than the others who also have a chance, even if you don’t much like any of them. Your vote is your influence, and even if you’re just choosing the lesser of two or three evils, you’re responsible for doing so.

Many disagree. To me, that says it’s just fine to allow the greater of two evils when you could prevent it, so long as you are able to wash your hands of the responsibility.