{"id":783,"date":"2023-12-11T19:39:12","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T03:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.engineerssurvivalguide.com\/blog\/?p=783"},"modified":"2023-12-11T20:28:34","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T04:28:34","slug":"tiebreaker-how-to-reach-a-consensus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.engineerssurvivalguide.com\/blog\/tiebreaker-how-to-reach-a-consensus\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiebreaker &#8211; How to reach a consensus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Have you ever found yourself in arguments where no one wants to give in and you end up keep arguing over simplest things? You\u2019re not alone. Everyone has opinions as well as egos. Everyone likes to be right. When you argue over easily measurable things, it\u2019s easy to come to an agreement. At worst case, you spend a bit of an extra time to gather the data and you\u2019re golden. But if it\u2019s simply a preference without any measurable performance or some other metric implications, the discussions can go on forever.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Want to learn a simple trick? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Bring a tiebreaker. Make sure there are odd number of you and put it to a vote!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>If you notice you end up arguing with certain people, avoid one to one discussions. Invite them to a meeting and make sure there are odd number of people. Then you simply vote on the solutions and majority wins. The benefit of it? Egos won\u2019t be involved. When there\u2019s a majority, it doesn\u2019t mean your or other person\u2019s idea was worse. It just means there were more people in the meeting supporting one decision. If you had the voting done again with different people, it\u2019s as likely that other decision could have been taken. This prevents anyone feeling like their idea wasn\u2019t good enough and prevents any conflicts from arising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What if it wasn\u2019t a good decision and you soon realize some problems? That\u2019s great learning for the team. Next time, you\u2019ll all collectively make better decisions. And instead of wasting time arguing back and forth, you can spend that valuable time proving if it\u2019s a great idea or what could have been done better.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Give it a try. Invite more people and make sure there\u2019re odd number of people. Instead of focusing whose idea is better, focus on which idea got the most votes and move forward. Tiebreakers are the best way to move out of a conflict.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever found yourself in arguments where no one wants to give in and you end up keep arguing over simplest things? You\u2019re not alone. Everyone has opinions as well as egos. Everyone likes to be right. When you argue over easily measurable things, it\u2019s easy to come to an agreement. At worst case, you spend a bit of an extra time to gather the data and you\u2019re golden. But if it\u2019s simply a preference without any measurable performance or some other metric implications, the discussions can go on forever.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Want to learn a simple trick that took me a few years to learn? Bring a tiebreaker. Make sure there are odd number of you and put it to a vote!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":785,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineerssurvivalguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineerssurvivalguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineerssurvivalguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineerssurvivalguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineerssurvivalguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineerssurvivalguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":787,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineerssurvivalguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions\/787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineerssurvivalguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineerssurvivalguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineerssurvivalguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineerssurvivalguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}