The Sticky Decision - Straw Poll Vote

How to take decisions in an unnatural but efficient way

Situation:

Your team has collected concepts, initiatives, or any ideas they want to decide on. You can create criteria or relate the decision to a specific goal, there are many ways how to do this.

This post will be focusing on how to take a decision using the Straw Poll Voting method.

How do we take decisions?

We have 2 decision-making systems: conscious and unconscious

We use our unconscious system most of the time to take decisions, after which our conscious mind makes up a rational explanation to justify the decision.

If you wish to know more about the neuroscience of decision making stay tuned for the next newsletter!

Why is it called Straw Poll?

It is like holding up pieces of straw and dropping them and seeing which way the wind is blowing them. This metaphor relates to this exercise which is a quick way for the whole team to express their opinions. These votes are not binding.

The next step after the Straw Poll is the Decider Vote. Who is the Decider? It is a leader, someone who is invited to your session in order to avoid the team taking a decision and then someone else overruling the outcome. In some companies, this role is the manager or even the board member, in some companies the team has the autonomy to decide. Depends on the setup and environment of your team.

The Straw Poll is about informing the Decider (Leader) of the group’s opinions.

Which are the steps to follow?

🎲 Read - Ask everyone to read in silence all the concepts, initiatives, ideas, or any topic they need to decide on, to choose. Give them 7-10 minutes, depending on the complexity of the topics and the number of topics to vote on.

🎲 Self-decision: Ask them to decide for themselves (without sharing with anyone for the moment).

🎲 Write down: Ask them to write down on a big dot (I like to use green ones but everyone has their favorite) their initials and be prepared to vote.

🎲 Wait: Ask them to wait until you as a facilitator indicate the next step (after everyone completed all steps). It is important to tell them to keep their decision secret until your signal.

🎲 Dot voting: Ask them to synchronously put their dots on the topics they decided on.

🎲 Pitch: Everyone will share their “why”, and the arguments behind choosing one specific topic and the facilitator takes care of the order of who talks when and for how long. (give each 3 minutes for example). The Decider (leader) does not express an opinion in this step.

🎲 Decider vote: The Decider (Leader) has 2 voting dots, one to choose a main concept and one for another little idea from another concept (the facilitator decides how many dots the Decider gets depending on the context).

🎲 Explain: The Decider(Leader) explains their choice to the team.

Facilitator hints:

• In case the Decider (Leader) does not want to take decisions or you cannot have a Decider role in your organization/team (you can try to vote for one at the start of the session, I personally do not recommend working without one, but there are cases when it is better without), then split the group into small teams if possible and ask them to do the straw poll and then vote again deciding after hearing each other argument.

• If the case, you can also insert an additional step of questions and answers after each pitch and argument so that it is clear for everyone the “why” behind someone’s perspective.

One-phrase summary:

When you want to choose a concept, take a decision by voting from a collection of ideas, initiatives, and so on then Straw Poll voting together with a Decider vote is a quick way for the whole team to express their opinion and give the Decider base of information so that he can take the final decision.

Resources:

• Sprint book by J.Knapp

• The NeuroMindfulness Institute

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