Voting and Consensus

During my time at Amazon I got to work with a number of fantastic software engineers and all around great people. I had a senior manager who booked time off to travel to Ukraine to help provide relief to refugees. I had managers who were into all sorts of different hobbies: short and long wave radio, music, art, electronics, or even good ol’ fashion whittling. And it wasn’t just managers, my peers and fellow engineers were always reading interesting books or learning new things and inspiring me to be a better more rounded person. Part of what makes me want to write is because of the people around me and their influence.

I mention this because one particular engineer made a comment in a meeting that I’ll never forget. It was one of those typical design review meetings. Someone had written a document outlining several solutions to a problem and the tradeoffs between the solutions. I don’t even remember the problem we were trying to solve. Despite the effort and all the team discussion around it, there was no clear winning solution. The team manager looked at the clock and wanted to get us moving so he said “Let’s have a vote” but our senior engineer quietly responded with, and I’ll never forget, “Can we solve this without a vote?”

Why Voting Fails

The problem with a vote is that only some of the people are happy with the outcome. Even if you get a big majority, like 8 out of 10, you get 2 people who don’t agree but somehow have to make themselves fall in line and support the initiative. Or those 2 people decide their voice isn’t being heard and they take their talent somewhere else. Losing people costs everyone.

Another problem with voting is that a vote can happen too early. It can happen before everyone has asked questions or understood the problem. We all understand the simplicity of a yes/no vote so the mechanism is appealing however we don’t always understand the complexity of the question we are being asked or the answers we have. Sometimes we need time to digest information before we can make informed decisions.

I’ll admit that sometimes a vote is necessary. If a discussion is stalled or if some toxic individual is holding out for whatever toxic reason then sometimes you need a vote to keep moving. Making the toxic person unhappy may be inevitable, or if they leave, perhaps even beneficial. You may not be able to answer all the questions but sometimes you have answered enough to still move forward. If the team has truly explored the options and asked “the right” questions but still can’t agree, then a vote prevents you from being stalled indefinitely which has it’s own costs and risks.

I see a vote as a kind of last resort. Maybe this section is really about voting too early. Like calling a vote without giving an opportunity to reach consensus. A vote represents a failure to reach consensus and we should aim for consensus.

Consensus instead of Voting

Consensus is defined as “general agreement”. Simple. It doesn’t mean everyone understands the data the same way and arrives at the same conclusions. Consensus means that the group is in “general agreement” and willing to move forward. In my opinion, this is what we should aim for in all our decisions. That’s likely too idealistic, but why not aim high in our ideal world?

I wish I could recall the details of the problems we were discussing in that team meeting. I do recall that after that comment, we took another look at the document and asked more questions and I remember that we did not, in the end, vote. We reached a consensus. I don’t think anyone walked away unhappy and it only cost us a little extra time.

To me, that phrase, “Can we solve this without a vote?” was deeply impactful and it’s something I take with me everywhere I go.

Stray Thought on Democracy

We see our politicians arguing and voting all the time. It does make me wonder sometimes if our politicians vote too soon and don’t give enough opportunity for consensus. I know that’s simplistic, the world is much more complex than that and people’s motives and a group’s motives are also very complex. Also we like to complain that politicians move to slow so it may not be a matter of voting too early. Still, an interesting thought.

The Star Wars prequels are a mixed bag but I do think the exchange between Anakin and Padme on Naboo very simply lays out the ideals and complexities of democracy:

PADME: You really don’t like politicians, do you?

ANAKIN: I like two or three, but I’m not really sure about one of them. (smiling) I don’t think the system works.

PADME: How would you have it work?

ANAKIN: We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problems, agree what’s in the best interests of all the people, and then do it.

PADME: That is exactly what we do. The trouble is that people don’t always agree. In fact, they hardly ever do.