Consent as a decision-making process
Consent decision-making is a way of making decisions that ensures that all relevant perspectives are included, without ending up in what are often sluggish and action-lacking consensus processes. Consent decisions can be made after everyone has had a chance to offer their perspectives, which informs the decision, and provided no one has a valid objection to the decision, the decision is made. The fact that a team has reached consent does not mean that everyone is happy with the proposal, but simply that everyone can live with it. Unlike the consensus-based process, not everyone has to agree. However, you can block a proposal with a valid objection. This requires that you can argue that the proposal will harm or impede your own work, or the shared tasks and organisational progress. The consent-based process is democratic, but unlike many other democratic decision-making processes, the process is often very fast.
If a proposal is objected to in the consent process, the person who proposed the decision, in cooperation with the objector, must help moderate the proposal and devise a solution so that the proposer's need for a solution is met without causing problems in the areas identified by the objector.
It is important to remember that the consent-based decision-making process is not an anarchic free-for-all in which team-members may refuse to take part in certain tasks, decisions, etc. A proposal cannot simply be blocked without further ado - the objection to the proposal must be substantial and of a valid nature. As a general rule, blocking a proposal is only valid when the consequences of ignoring it could potentially be detrimental to the company. For example, an employee cannot block a proposal simply because the employee thinks he or she has a better idea, or because the employee finds the proposal boring.
The value of using the consent-based decision-making process lies in the fact that a single employee may occasionally spot a problematic element in the proposal - an element that no one else may have spotted. Moving to the consent-based process democratises the decision-making process, but not to the extent that it affects the agility of the team and/or organisation.
