Making decisions efficiently: fist to five

Because no one likes long house meetings

From the editors: this is a post from Evy, who lives in the Village, a multigenerational co-living home in San Francisco. Making decisions on how a community works - from what collective money is spent on to who moves in and beyond - can be one of the harder things to get right in a coliving situation. We’ve explored this a bit in Phil’s post on Group Decision Making. In this post Evy shares another creative way to make decisions inclusive and efficient. 

At The Village, like in many community homes, we strive to be non-hierarchical in our decision-making. This means that we want every resident to get an equal say into how the house is run. Since there are 15 adults in the house, this can sometimes result in long and tedious debates about small things that prevent us from getting things done. We avoid some of this slow-down by using a system we call fist to five.

Here’s how it works: After a proposal is suggested, people vote on a scale of 0-5 that indicates their degree of agreement with the proposal. This can look like emoji reactions on Slack (we use a channel called #village-decisions) or an in-person meeting where people raise their hands high with the relevant number of fingers.

• 0️⃣(or a fist) means “I object and want to block this decision”. In consensus, this would be a block or a veto.

• 1️⃣means “I’ll just barely go along with this” or “I really don’t like this but I also don't want to block this decision if it's what the rest of the house wants” or “I want to talk about this a lot more before moving forward with this proposal." In consensus this indicates standing aside, which is not being in agreement but not blocking the consensus.

• 2️⃣ means “I don’t like this very much, but I’m not actively opposed to it. I will go along with it if it's what the house wants.”

• 3️⃣ means  “Sounds good", or for some groups this means feeling completely neutral.

• 4️⃣ means "I like this a lot!! Let's do it!"

• 5️⃣ means "I like this a lot and I’d be happy to be the one to make it happen"

This system is more complicated than a simple yes/no vote, but it provides a lot more information to help with decision-making. The votes can be used in a variety of ways, such as:

• simple consensus: anyone who voted a 0 or 1 shares their objections and possible solutions are brainstormed to better fit their needs, and then if there are no vetoes then the proposal is passed

• alignment: the proposal is passed only when all votes are over 3 or 4 (i.e. everyone is in complete affirmative agreement)

• majority: count all 3-5 votes as “yes” and all 0-2 votes as “no”, then majority  wins

Fist to five is great because it very quickly gives everyone a sense of how people feel about the proposal. If used early in the proposal dialogue, a group might find all 4s and 5s except for two 1s, which could mean the proposal is accepted, or perhaps the decision isn’t considered blocked but two people have needs to be met. Only those people would speak and have their objections addressed, which can save a lot of time.

I love decision-making models that are non-hierarchical and value each person’s opinion, but processes that guarantee this can sometimes feel slow or tedious. Voting with a fist to five lets a group build a somewhat nuanced understanding of where everyone is at, and it accomplishes this in under a minute. What’s not to love about that?

This post was modified from a write-up on ncfp.

Want to hear more from Evy? They’ve also written this great post on how to adapt a multi-unit building for coliving.

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