Multi Voting

A pattern to help meetings move along. This is from TheTeamHandbook.

Problem

You have a bunch of things you want to prioritize, possibly because you were just BrainStorm-ing.

The number of things to prioritize exceeds the number of participants in the meeting.

Forces

• You want to get this meeting over with.
• People want to feel they took part in the decision.
• People want to feel that the priorities really reflect the group's priorities.

Solution

Do the following:

1. Assign each participant at least 1/3 as many votes as there are things to prioritize.

2. Have everyone vote. Voters can distribute their votes however they see fit.

3. Remove those items receiving few votes from the bottom. They are clearly "low-priority".

4. Repeat with the remaining items as necessary.

Resulting Context

Everything is now roughly prioritized. You might want to discuss the high-priority items individually if there is no clear top-priority item.

Rationale

The group should have consensus, which SingleVoting? does not really provide. By using MultiVoting, participants can indicate how important to them the various choices are.

See Also

VoteForHeadOfGeneralAssembly?, BrainStorm, NegativeConsensus, StoneSociety.

-- BillTrost, August 1998

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CategoryPattern