Beyond Conflict to Consensus—
Addressing the Social ‘Weak Link’
by Jeff Goebel
While overseeing the Texas and Hawaii ranching operations for a large family corporation, I encountered a broad range of challenges, some more interesting and resistant to change than others. The thorniest involved three ranch managers who were unwilling to consider holistic decision-making. Their distrust infected the union employees under their supervision, so that the initial stages of the project consumed valuable months in struggle and negotiations before we could turn to doing the job I had been hired to do. Eventually, we did manage to achieve some striking results by using the Holistic Management decision-making framework, but, once I left, the management slipped back into old patterns of doing business.
This was not an isolated case. Checking with my colleagues in the field, I found them grappling with the same frustratingly long start up period, and the same shockingly frequent “recidivism” once consultants had delivered their services in complex organizational settings.
My holistic expertise had run into a snag: the “weak link” and, in particular, the human element as the weak link. We had achieved much during the three years. We had effectively stopped superficial erosion after storms, so that the ocean around the extensive Hawaiian property was no longer red with soil runoff. We made significant cuts in costs of production and actually doubled revenues. Using biological processes, we reduced pests and we increased productive, more valuable, “higher” successional species. We also improved relations among management, owners, employees, and neighbors, shifting them to a respectful footing.
Even with this impressive list of successes, however, I was convinced that much more could have been done—and that our successes could have been better anchored in the past and the future. On the one hand, in the process of transitioning from the “old” way of doing business to the new, we lost a number of key players. This, I realized, translated into a loss of historical memory, critical in “reading” and diagnosing current conditions. We also lost the valuable experience of old hands, who often had a storehouse of skills, practical wisdom, and traditional lore acquired through generations of tilling and grazing and foresting a particular segment of land. On the other hand, although our new holistic protocols delivered concrete, positive results, these did not systemically graft into existing attitudes, prejudices, and the powerful force of “human inertia.” One consequence of this was that the gains we had achieved were not secured for the long run for complex organizational settings.
Finally, because it lacked a specific protocol for anticipating the “human variable” of distrust of innovation, fear of outsiders, and attachment to territoriality (interest in maintaining the existing power hierarchy among the players), the holistic process required a disproportionate amount of time and energy be invested in building trust, and inculcating accountability once my direct participation ended. The painful and disappointing experiences of those years set me on a search for a more effective set of tools. Could I come up with a set of tools and protocols that would reduce the start up process to a matter of days, and that would simultaneously “lock into place” the successful behaviors and outcomes for significant extents of time – decades rather than years? Could these skills be replicated by the members of the groups and communities working independently of the consultant? Could they be taught to newcomers into the system?
Integrating Holistic Decision Making
I turned first to the work of Don and Betty Green. The Greens, family business consultants, had been affiliated with the Center for Holistic Management in the early days of its existence and had explored many of its conflict resolution strategies. They opened my eyes to the potential productivity of non-conventional protocols. I embarked on an ambitious research program to learn about both traditional and scientific methods, on the premise that what is new that is good is always, in some way, also old. My anthropological studies spanned native Hawaiian Hoo’ponopono, Native American intra- and inter-tribal protocols; traditional African approaches to reconciliation and conflict; and Aboriginal intercultural dispute resolution. Among contemporary, Western models, I explored the work and experience of the very best theoreticians, and sought out formal training.
As my theoretical knowledge grew, I took advantage of every consulting project to apply, test, and refine my protocols. My most productive experiences included work in northern California with Frances Moore Lappe and in north central Washington State, with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. At the Colville Reservation, I was given the authority and scope to fully integrate holistic decision-making into the tribal government, which comprised 250 programs and a budget of $55 million. In the course of my first year with the Tribes, I trained 200 people in holistic decision-making. However, as far as Holistic Management was concerned, we were making little headway. The community was consumed with talk, with endless discussions that seemed to only augment anxiety and demoralize, demonstrating a reluctance to embrace systematic problem solving. There was positive interest in holistic solutions, but a resistance to take action.
Creating Commitment
It happened that just about that time, in 1993, I traveled to a workshop in Burns, Oregon, with Bob Chadwick, an old family friend, who had made his reputation as a specialist in conflict resolution. Bob was meeting with a group of ranchers, government employees, and environmentalists, who were poised for conflict. Instead of the confrontational atmosphere I had come to expect in such multi-agenda groups, Bob had created what seemed a remarkably “happy” and respectful rapport among the participants. Yet, oddly enough, nothing concrete seemed to come of the session. When Bob asked my opinion of the process, I remember suggesting he try adopting a more holistic decision-making model. He agreed that I might be right, and we left it at that.
Back at the Colville Reservation, however, I just could not put Bob’s process aside. I decided to invite him to help me resolve an ugly conflict over clear-cutting that was building up between the elders and the foresters. The unresolved question of whether or not to remove all the trees from the multiple sites was paralyzing timber sales, shrinking revenues, and threatening jobs. The session was marked by genuine and deep sharing of feelings, thoughts, and perceptions. The foresters expressed pride in filling up logging trucks and seeing them moving timber to the mills to create jobs that supported the community. The elders, on the other hand, decried the abuse wreaked on “Mother Earth” and compared the loggers’ projects to “raping their mother.”
The session, like the Burns workshop, concluded on a note of solid respect and the participants were deeply satisfied. But once again, no concrete actions had taken place and I again thought to myself, “What a waste of time and opportunity.”
On the other hand, I had a deep trust in Bob, so that I did not hesitate when, two months later, he had me bring together the elders, foresters, biologists, and the logger on a gravel road next to a proposed clear-cut. We walked the forest and came back to a circle of folding chairs set up on the road to talk about how we felt about the future outcome of the forest and what we could learn from the experience we had just had to help us be successful.
To my utter astonishment, after listening to the foresters and the elders, the logger said, “I would be fine with cutting the forest to meet the silvicultural prescription and leave five to seven big pumpkin pine trees for the benefit of the elders.” That’s all it took! The result was a consensus of agreement with behaviors that worked for everyone!
Immediately, the timber sales stalemate ended and a solution was put in place that met the needs of all parties. The three-day workshop, which in my view, had ended inconclusively, turned out to have been the pivot point, the dealmaker, in shifting the participants. In the interim between the harmonious, respectful listening and talking that had gone on in the workshop, and the meeting in the forest, the participants had processed the lessons they had learned. The results of this shift were dramatically manifested in the meeting in the forest. All the parties in the conflict had witnessed the powerful change: shift happens!
Moreover, from this moment on, the entire community of diverse interests and backgrounds manifested a unanimous “consensual” commitment into the process and the work. Holistic decision-making took a strong hold at the Tribes. By the end of another year, we had succeeded in doubling land treatment while voluntarily cutting the budget in the Natural Resource Department. It turned out that we actually did not need all that money to do a better job! When the Tribal Council heard this, they asked if I could apply the same approach to the entire Tribal government. Six months later, we significantly reduced the tribal budget without losing any jobs, passing the budget three months early with 100% agreement at the Department and Council levels. This vote of confidence soon took on a concrete reality in the land, the forests, the water, the natural resources, and the cultural and material wellbeing of the Tribes.
Concrete Results
This “experiment” proved to me that the combination of holistic decision-making and consensus building tools allowed us to move rapidly, confidently, and respectfully toward the Tribe’s holistic goal that had been developed using the consensus process and had involved over 700 tribal members. The Tribe continues to move toward their “living holisticgoal,” to this day. The rigor of practicing the formal holistic decision-making through the testing guidelines has long been dropped. Even though power struggles periodically surfaced within the leadership of the group and the original training team was dismantled, a practice of self-government that combined traditional values with the new protocols remained in place. The changes which the original members had implemented – including preservation of three native languages; Washington state accreditation of elders as certified teachers; acquisition of over 100,000 acres of new tribal lands; adoption of international legislation in U.S. environmental law to enforce pollution controls in Canadian factories—all these changes were part of the living reality of the Tribes and served as daily reinforcements for the validity and efficacy of the methods that had been adopted nearly two decades earlier.
Since that time, I have refined my combination of tools to accomplish enduring, seemingly impossible, outcomes. In a West African project, I helped villagers significantly increase food production with their own resources following a workshop that asked them to address the question, “How to increase food production 50 percent without Western technology?”
In another context, I was able to help a lagging national forest end the year attaining 126 percent of the annual objectives. The key component in my success is addressing the social and psychological weak links through an array of exercises in respectful listening; diagnostic tools for identifying, mapping, and defusing unresolved and often repressed conflict; and activities centering on expressing fears that paralyze action.
I use a Five-Module Paradigm for the Consensus Process. These modules include: an introduction to conflict resolution; managing change; overcoming scarcity; harmonizing diversity; and mediating power. With a diverse group, I often use this approach to help the participants develop a consensual holisticgoal, and to generate the motivation to take action to overcome obstacles in achieving their holisticgoal. I have incorporated elements of the consensus building process into the introduction to Holistic Management (change issues), financial planning process (scarcity issues), and policy analysis (power issues).
I have taught the full series of five three-day workshops numerous times. My own observations of results and the feedback of participants, have confirmed that the process is best learned through experience and that it is highly transferable. A learning manual is available for each independent module. I have found this approach to be the most effective and efficient method for overcoming a variety of social “weak links” — including unresolved conflicts, lack of committed goal, scarcity issues, fear of transition, power imbalances and fear of losing control, or lack of knowledge.
Using the new beliefs and behaviors that are identified, defined, and designed to be responsive to the specific issues, the specific context, and the specific strengths, weaknesses, fears, and aspirations of the participants, the individuals, groups, and communities with whom I have worked have found their way to make conflict an opportunity for productive, harmonious, and sustained growth.
Jeff Goebel of Goebel and Associates, the trainer of the Five-Module Paradigm for the Consensus Process, is a facilitator offering training and consulting services nationally and internationally, and can be contacted at goebel@aboutlistening.com or 541/610-7084. For more information, see his website at www.aboutlistening.com
