I've found consensus decision making to be frustrating in the environments I've encountered it.
A lot of flip flopping and lack of follow through.
Who made that decision? We did. Can we give up on that and try something else? Of course.
I kinda like to have at least a shepherd for the day to day decisions, if not a commander.
In practice in my current environment it's been the occasional PM that takes some ownership that fills that role, but in many groups I see the floundering without leadership.
Internally I think they think they're making progress because everyone on the team is always happy with their decisions, I may just be the old curmudgeon that's frustrated with what I see as wasted effort.
While I've always thought that essay made good points, it's somewhat dangerous to overinterpret the thoughts of a Stalinist on groups without structure. Her solution is (obviously) to just have hierarchical structure, but this leaves you with the same problems as structureless, there's now just a channel by which people who play the game well can pretend to be accountable. Stalin himself proves that hierarchical groups aren't more accountable, even if they nominally have mechanisms to be so.
A lot of flip flopping and lack of follow through.
Who made that decision? We did. Can we give up on that and try something else? Of course.
I kinda like to have at least a shepherd for the day to day decisions, if not a commander.
In practice in my current environment it's been the occasional PM that takes some ownership that fills that role, but in many groups I see the floundering without leadership.
Internally I think they think they're making progress because everyone on the team is always happy with their decisions, I may just be the old curmudgeon that's frustrated with what I see as wasted effort.