Operationalizing Consent Management

Besides the basic operating rules, the Consent Management system ultimately needs to be operationalized through formal inclusion in a company's bylaws, so that the guarantees are meaningful, and there should be an annual audit that Consent procedure is being followed.

The most important thing is that ALL (strategy and policy) decisions, as well as job assignments, should be made ONLY in meetings, and that all meetings should be properly organized and run, with calendars posted to the members no later than a week before. To keep it efficient, consent allows the members to delegate their vote for a given meeting, and conversely as a protection anyone can withdraw their consent from a decision, if they see a new problem crop up, thus forcing it onto the agenda for the next meeting.

The rest is simple, at the board level, you set strategy, while at lower levels you make more policy decisions and at all levels people are chosen for jobs by consent. Jobs and tasks are assigned through the meetings as well, including clearly defined limits of authority, so that in the field people are free to carry out their duties, and the only rationale for recourse to a meeting is really if a person is confronted with something that exceeds their authority, in which case they need either approval, or an expansion of such authority.

Following these guidelines and making them part of the company's operating rules makes backroom dealing, hidden motives, and cloak and dagger operations impossible, and thus provides essential rights to all participants which ensure the integrity of the process.

From a practical point of view implementation begina with an simple agreement to begin using the consent rules, but maturity means that the rules are embedded in the bylaws, and become a right. This will ensure a trust in the integrity of the organization which is not otherwise possible, the process itself guarantees that objections are flushed out at the outset, and don't remain hidden for long, thus resulting in a better quality of decisions.

(c) 2008, Rogier Fentener van Vlissingen