Like the Senate, you often need someone who can break ties. A team with an even number of technical people can get deadlocked on a decision. If the boss can’t or won’t step in, it can make for a miserable experience.
If I've learned anything from watching the Senate, it's that 51/49 doesn't drive forward progress. Those 49 will do everything in their power to undermine the 51.
If you find your team deadlocked on decisions and you think the way forward is to find a tie-breaking vote, I have bad news for you.
Work is not a democracy but some difficult decisions have to be. I think a lot of the time the arrow points the other way. A boss who can’t or won’t make decisions when pushed to do so also creates an environment where deciding is difficult.
Often all it takes is a qualitative comment that one could mistake for leadership, and the guy who won’t be accountable for any decisions is not leading anybody.
Yeah. Making a decision is the first step, but the life of the decision after it's made is vitally important. You can look at Congress getting stuff passed with split votes, but you can also see the other side digging in to undermine the decision. The Affordable Care Act is an example; it passed, it was implemented, but the Republicans are in court every month with a new challenge.
I think you want to aim for consensus building that doesn't have half of the stakeholders spending 100% of their time to get your decision reversed, basically. Maybe it's impossible to build a consensus, and you have to act. That's the value in the tie-breaking vote, and that's what Congress does. But we shouldn't try to model getting things done at work as an epic battle between Blue and Red. That level of polarization is toxic. Maybe Congress can't fix that problem, because they represent 328,000,000 people, but we can aim for something better in a smaller group.
