Elusive Consensus in International Teams

Our team of Regional Executive Directors (RED) is trying to launch X-Culture Kids (X-Culture Academy). An annoying but a necessary task is to prepare materials REDs need when they meet with school principles and teachers to talk about X-Culture.

Specifically, we need: business cards, informational pamphlets, other promotional materials.

Also, we need to decide on the pricing of the project for individual participants and for schools.

Our designers have created several versions of the business cards, pamphlets, web pages, and applications forms. As it often happens, no one design is a clear winner.

So I thought the right thing to do is to ask the REDs to vote and just go with the most popular designs.

Turns out, reaching a consensus is basically impossible.

Here are the results of the first 20 RED votes on the individual pricing. The votes are almost randomly distributed among the four options. It looks like Option 2 is less popular, but every option is “best” for some and “worst” for others.

The story is the same with the design of the business cards and pamphlets. Some like “classic”, some like “hybrid” and some love a lot the “modern green” design.

It’s so much easier to be a professor. You do your lectures, grade the exams, and answer an occasional email.
Managing a team of 40 very talented regional managers is so much harder.

I guess I either have to make an executive decision, choose what I like most and close the topic, or let each RED select the design they like most.

Probably not a good idea to have different pricing policy for different regions though.

By Vas Taras