What on earth does cricket have to do with consensus?!? In many parts of the world they share a common reputation as being minority activities, that are confusing and take way too long to complete. By way of reputation cricket and consensus have a lot in common in the USA, South America, parts of Asia and Europe.
“Popular” sports aren’t popular everywhere
I’m asking all you people from countries that don’t understand cricket to show a little humility here. Cricket is consistently judged as one of the most popular sports in the world (#2 actually) with a fan base of about 2.5 billion. In Australia alone over 1.4 million people play cricket on a regular basis. That’s about 5% of the country’s population! I guess that it is possible that a sport that is strange to some makes perfect sense to others and is something that they value a great deal.
Consensus based decision making is unfamiliar to many people around the world. Sadly, some think that because it isn’t popular in their country that somehow it isn’t popular elsewhere. However that is far from true. Consensus based decision making is incredibly popular in a lot of cultures and groups around the world. I encourage people from societies that are far more combative in their business meetings to take pause and not negatively judge consensus discernment just because it is unfamiliar.
Just because something is strange or unfamiliar to us doesn’t mean that other people find it wierd.
Cricket and consensus are different to their peers
If you are not familiar with cricket then it can certainly take a while to understand the rules. Once you understand the rules, it can take longer to understand the field placings and the strategies of the teams. Certainly there is no other sport that in any way looks like cricket. But that doesn’t make it wrong.
Baseball, a less popular game than cricket, has its rules. It has some similarities with cricket – people on a field, a bat and ball, places to run, etc. Comparing baseball and cricket has been likened to comparing checkers (drafts) to chess. There are some familiar elements in the two games but they are as different as chalk and cheese.
So it is with parliamentary procedures and consensus discernment. They both involve people in a room, talking with each other and trying to come to a decision. But after that they start to lose their similarity! If we are going to make consensus discernment work then we have to accept that it has different rules.
A big mistake that some adopters of consensus make is trying to keep too many of the rules from the old game. Rather, you should learn the new rules of the new game. Yes it can take a bit of time but you just have to do it. Afterall it’s a different game.
Consensus and cricket are complicated
A major objection to introducing consensus discernment is that it is very hard to understand. The argument goes that its rules are complicated and hard to explain. There is another thing that consensus and cricket have in common – bad press about how complicated the rules are. For the record there are 42 laws of cricket. The rules of baseball don’t look any easier to me!
I don’t know how anyone can say that Roberts Rules of Order are easy to follow. In many regional and international meetings there is a “Parliamentarian” appointed to provide guidance on the rules to the Chairperson of the meeting.
If a meeting process is so complicated that you need a specialist to interpret the rules then that is a very complex set of rules. In contrast I have never seen a consensus discernment process that needs an expert to provide rulings for the Chairperson. Sure, when a system is new there may be a mentor to help. However once it becomes familiar there is no need for a consensus process adjudicator on the stage. The reason for this is that the rules are really simple – work together to find a solution!
Conclusion
As the cricket season gets underway in the Southern Hemisphere I am looking forward to a summer of long (five day / 30 hours) and short (3 hour) versions of cricket. Many of you will think it is a novelty, strange and complicated. It isn’t if you come from the sub continent, Australasia, South Africa or England!
Next time you are tempted to consider that consensus discernment is novel, strange or complicated just remember – if you come from another place it may be normal, familiar and simple.
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