Jul 10, 2017
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Often when you are faced with several good ideas in a meeting, it is impossible or even undesirable to choose just one. Multi-voting is one way to poll the group about multiple options. To facilitate it, do the following:
- List the various choices on separate wall charts.
- Ask people to express their relative preferences by placing stickers or dots (hence “Dot-mocracy”) next to their preferred choices. Each person can choose to put all their votes on one option or spread their votes over several options.
- Tally the number of dots that each option received to get a sense of the group’s combined preferences.
Multi-voting is good for taking a “quick read” of where the group is at but take care to provide enough time for discussion in situations where understanding differences of opinion is important. Two further cautions:
- Pay careful attention to how many votes each person gets. Generally, the number of votes per person can be calculated by dividing the number of choices by 3 (n/3).
- Be careful not to assume that the “winning” option is automatically the group’s preference since the difference between two competing options may not be statistically significant. For example, if Option A received 39 votes and Option B received 37, for all intents and purposes, it is a tie, and the group should acknowledge that choosing one over the other only satisfies the vote of about half of the group.
Where/when may this technique be helpful?
Jeanette Romkema is a Global Learning Partners (GLP) co-owner and Managing Partner of Communications and Marketing, as well a Senior Consultant and Trainer with GLP.
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