How Great Decisions Get Made: 10 Easy Steps for Reaching Agreement on Even the Toughest Issues

It's not enough just to break out of an old cycle—that merely gets people to stop digging themselves into a deeper rut. In order to move on, participants need a vision for improvement—how working together can achieve far more than they ever imagined.

In the depths of the despair and frustration with the impasse their group has reached, some stakeholders may have a difficult time even considering such hope. The process and examples presented so far in this book may not be enough for them. However, there is an exercise that may help when confronted with such a situation.

Balance Nails

Just as the Weapons and Shields exercise helps people break out of old patterns, simple games can help as well, even in the most difficult situations. Among the rain forest people of Borneo, games have a special purpose and a long history. As a tribal elder described it, "We give games to visitors when they arrive. If they play them well, we know that they visit with good intent. If they are distracted or don't play, we are wary that they've come to do mischief."

Similarly, you and your group can learn together in the games you play. One game that many business and community groups have enjoyed and found inspiring is Balance Nails, which business coach, Jeff Raim, taught me. Each participant gets ten nails to balance on the head of one nail that's driven upright into a small block of wood. The rules are simple: the nail driven into the block of wood must stay upright, all nails must balance on it at one time without any of them touching the wood block or other surface, and you can't use anything else (no glue, tape, plastic bag, or other means of holding the nails together). See Figure 18.

Figure 18: Balance Nails game.

Most players have difficulty getting more than one nail to balance on the head of the upright nail. At best, players think they might be able to balance two or three. So how do you get all ten nails to balance? The clues given in Figure 18, which also relate directly to the key themes of the ten-step process, will help. When you fill in the missing letters, you'll have the information you need to get all ten nails balancing on the upright nail at once. You can Find the missing letters to the clues in the footnote at the end of the chapter. If the solution eludes you, go to the Web site for this book at www.howgreatdecisionsgetmade.com. Anyone can do this—as in making great decisions together, you just need the right process.

After you've found the solution, discuss how it relates to resolving tough issues in your group. What messages does it offer about the possibilities of working together? What's similar about the solution to this game and the ten-step process? In the same way that people are surprised when they discover they can balance all ten nails, participants in the ten-step process invariably express amazement that they have accomplished something they never thought possible. They even enjoy it.