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Comment by kvark | Hacker News Reader

So this behavior has a name... I'm sick of this nemawashi thing used by people as an instrument (in the context of cross-company working groups).

It's not about building consensus together, it's about sneaking your "consensus" into the group by the means of divide-and-conquire. It's very hard to build a solid alternative consensus (or a defense strategy) if all the opposing points have been voiced independently, and whatever one you can think of ends up with "oh, we discussed this with the other party, and it wouldn't work".

Please respect your team and don't use nemawashi. If you are on the other side, learn to recognize it and call it out.

TL;DR: nemawashi considered harmful

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I think, as with anything, it can be used in bad faith. By taking advantage of the fact that many of the stakeholders are only able to give an idea some basic consideration due to time constraints, it's often possible to build consensus around an idea that isn't actually the best one. And by the time someone with a better idea comes around, the idea that has already built consensus can use that power to squash it.

But that assumes the person using this process is acting in bad faith to begin with (they're not pursuing the best idea, but rather their idea). If this technique is used in good faith with an open mind, it's one of the most effective ways to deal with large organizations.

Whenever I think I'm making an arbitrary decision that isn't necessarily the obvious best one, I try to explicitly point that out to my coworkers. "I really like this idea over the others, but I am definitely biased for x, y, z reasons. Since I'll likely be the one doing the work, I'd obviously prefer to do it that way. Is that foolish in this case, or would folk generally be okay with it? I'd love it if somebody tried to change my mind."

Half the time I end up getting mind changed, and the final result, while still arbitrary, is better than any of the original plans would have been.

Good faith is hard to define. If I genuinely think my proposal is the way to go, hence I use this technique to push it through, is this good faith? Or if I'm tired of discussions on a difficult topic and just want to move forward with anything, does this count as good faith?

It would be nice to have a workflow for group discussions that is robust against the faith differences. Just like we have specific workflow on voting in politics, doing it independently and resisting some of the human crowd instincts.

Thanks for calling this out. It's good to be able to spot this tactic and when you are on the wrong side of it. It's emotionally difficult for someone who cares about the craft to engage in good faith working groups, only to realize that no one takes you seriously and that their actions are diversionary and performative while the decisions get made elsewhere.

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