Systemic Consensing
A decision-making method that doesn’t ask “Who is in favour?” but “How much resistance do you feel?” – and thereby finds the solution that hurts the group least.
The idea
Systemic Consensing (German: Systemisches Konsensieren) was developed in the 2000s by Erich Visotschnig and Siegfried Schrotta in Graz, Austria. In classic majority votes, a narrow majority can overrule a large minority – conflicts are not resolved, only postponed.
Systemic Consensing flips the perspective: it looks for the proposal against which the group as a whole has the least resistance. That proposal is the closest to a true consensus.
Resistance instead of approval
Approval is often vague – you can “sort of” agree with many things. Resistance, on the other hand, is clearly felt and more honest: it shows what really bothers a person and where they expect problems in implementation.
- Every participant rates every proposal, not just their favourite.
- Tactical voting hardly pays off, because every rating carries the same weight.
- Compromises that are nobody’s favourite still get a fair chance.
The scale from 0 to 10
For every proposal, each person gives resistance points:
Values in between express slight concerns (1–3), clear objections (4–6) or strong rejection (7–9).
The passive option
Every poll includes a special proposal: the passive option – “everything stays as it is” or “we don’t decide anything now”. It is rated just like all other proposals.
Why does this matter? The passive option is the benchmark. A proposal that creates more resistance than “doing nothing” is clearly not an improvement. If the passive option wins, that’s a clear signal that better proposals are needed.
Evaluation
For each proposal, the resistance points of all participants are added up:
Group resistance = sum of all resistance points
To compare results independently of group size, RocketVote also calculates the acceptance. With n participants, the maximum possible resistance is n · 10:
Acceptance = 1 − group resistance / (n · 10)
The proposal with the lowest group resistance – i.e. the highest acceptance – wins.
An example
A team of four is planning its annual outing. There are two proposals plus the passive option:
| Proposal | Anna | Ben | Cem | Dana | Resistance Σ | Acceptance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A: Team barbecue | 2 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 85 % |
| B: Escape room | 0 | 8 | 1 | 6 | 15 | 62 % |
| Passive option: no outing | 6 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 22 | 45 % |
The escape room is Anna’s and Cem’s favourite – in a majority vote it would have had a good chance. But Ben and Dana have clear objections. The barbecue is a problem for nobody and reaches 85 % acceptance with only 6 resistance points. It’s the solution everyone can live with.
When is the method a good fit?
- Decisions in teams, associations, shared flats or families
- Prioritising projects, dates or budgets
- Workshops and retrospectives with many ideas on the table
- Anywhere implementation depends on everyone’s support
Try it yourself
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