Decision-making Protocol

ODFL’s Decision-making Foundations

1. Centring relationships Decision-making is an opportunity to deepen and strengthen relationships within ODFL and with ecosystem partners and communities we collaborate with. When centering relationships, decision-making is a practice ground for listening well, holding differences, being in conflict, and nurturing thoughtful, effective, efficient working relationships. How we make a decision is as important as the decision itself.

2. Living system response-ability Decision-making is an opportunity to practise our individual and collective abilities to be responsive to the signals, movements, needs, and patterns within a living system (like an organisation). Caring about the living system is as important as caring about its members.

3. Supporting cohesive disruption Decision-making is an opportunity to balance organisational stability and emergence. We aim for enough cohesion to stay effective as a community, while allowing space for the new or unexpected to surface, disrupt patterns, or take us in unexpected but fruitful directions. Supporting cohesive disruption avoids both rigidity and chaos.

4. Good enough for now, safe enough to try Decision-making is an opportunity to practise flexibility and imperfect experiments. We encourage small, learnable, ‘good enough for now, safe enough to try’ experiments more than large, pre-designed changes (unless there’s strong evidence for taking bigger steps). When practising flexible and experimental decision-making, we balance the intelligence of theory, factual knowledge, and lived experience.

Decision-making Steps

When someone has an idea for a new way of doing things, we invite them to first clarify the impact of the decision.

If the impact of a decision is small, this is a local decision and ODFL members are invited to make this decision in whatever way makes sense to them. Examples of a local decision are posting on Mighty Networks or changing a meeting time for an action enquiry.

If the impact of a decision is broader, this is a global decision and ODFL members are required to follow our global decision-making protocol. Examples of global decisions include creating funding applications, making changes to protocols, or creating commitments on behalf of ODFL. ODFL’s global decision-making protocol

1. Check if existing roles or circles are accountable for these kinds of decisions. If you find that a role or circle is already accountable for these kinds of decisions, communicate with them. Together, you might decide that the role or circle is in the best place to make the decision, you will work on the idea collaboratively, or you seek advice from the role or circle due to their previous experience.

2. If a circle or role isn’t already accountable:

   1. Prepare a short and concise overview of the decision being considered, the likely impact of the decision, and why it would be a useful change, thinking about who might have information that would help you make this decision (we call this seeking advice), who needs to know that this decision is being made, and who this decision affects.

   2. Clarify if you are seeking consent or consensus. We generally utilise consent decision-making, where we seek objections and look to move forwards with a ‘good enough for now, safe enough to try approach’, because this stops us from seeking perfection and the full agreement of everyone. But sometimes a decision does require consensus of a certain group of members or the entire community.

   3. Communicate with those that might have information to help you make this decision, the members that need to know this decision is being made, and the members that will be affected by this decision. The emphasis is on you to communicate in a way that reaches the above. It might be enough to create a post in Mighty Network and tag people in it, or you might need to follow this up with direct messages or an email. It might mean reaching out individually to those you’re seeking advice from. It might also be setting up a call so you can chat about it. (No online essays please!).

   4. Decide what kind of input you’re needing and communicate that clearly, such as checking for objections, asking for advice, asking for feedback.

   5. Decide the appropriate timescales for responding to a request for advice, raising objections, or sharing feedback, and communicate these clearly.

   6. If the outcome of this process brings you to an approach that is 'good enough for now, safe enough to try', move forwards. Otherwise, consider another approach.