Use flags to build consensus
Marhofer has developed a system to make
sure the lessons learned in their off-site activities transfer to the workplace. During the
exercises, each employee is given three flags
— one red, one yellow and one green.
Marhofer explains that the red flag means
you do not support an idea, the yellow flag
means that you could be supportive of it
with minor modifications, and the green
flag means you are 70 percent comfortable
and 100 percent committed to implementing the decision.
Whenever a decision is needed, Marhofer
asks each member of a team to raise the
flag corresponding to their feelings about
the issue at hand.
“I can ask, ‘So, what’s everybody think of
Joe’s idea?’ and boom — the flags come up,” he says.
So when Marhofer calls a meeting, the
employees who will be in attendance get a
simple reminder: Bring your flags.
Even if a decision is met with all green
flags, it may not be unanimous. Marhofer
says it is quite difficult to get even a small
group of people to completely agree with a
plan. Although everyone has to be on
board and fully committed to supporting
the final decision, Marhofer says if you
waited until your team was 100 percent in
agreement, nothing would ever get done.
“If we’re 70 percent comfortable with it,
that means it’s a go-forward, because we
can always go back and change it,” he says.
“But we’ve at least agreed to go forward in
the essence of practicality and timeliness.
We need to make a decision; we can’t just
table everything.”
If Marhofer says, “Flags up,” and he sees
a bunch of green flags and one solitary red
flag, the dissenting voice gets a chance to
be heard. Many times, after that person
articulates his or her concerns, several
other people will change their vote, swinging over to the dissenting side.
It can be a long process, but that’s the
price you pay to ensure complete consensus. When Marhofer opened his first Saturn
dealership, he let the team that was going
to run the store set the rules. His only
guidelines were that the final decisions had
to be completely supported and they had
to be conducive to creating an environment where customers feel comfortable
doing business with the company.
“It took a full day to make a decision on
the uniform, because one guy wanted suits
and ties and another guy wanted jeans and
t-shirts,” he says.
Although the decisions may take awhile to
get made, Marhofer says the wait is worth it
because you unearth any reservations or concerns before rushing full-steam ahead with a
plan that your team may not fully support.
“We don’t have the meeting after the
meeting,” he says. “If we do, it’s because
somebody lied in the meeting. When you
get a decision made, it gets implemented
because everybody agreed to it. If they
agree and then after the meeting (they have
reservations), they become the outcast of
the group. People ask, ‘Why did you mis-represent yourself in the meeting?’”
Marhofer says the flag system has helped
hold employees accountable for their decisions, which has helped the organization
run smoothly in one direction.
