Learn this way to consult with people (without endless meetings)

Why you should develop an 'advice-giving' practice in your organisation to support decisions - and three technologies that will make it possible

 

Here’s where I think organisations have got it completely wrong when it comes to decisions making:

 

Small-ish decision? Invite EVERYONE to the meeting so no one feels excluded.

Big decision? Leaders make it in private, with little true advice seeking from the VERY people who understand the impact of the decision.

 

It should be the other way round.

Small decisions should be taken by individuals, seeking advice informally from those meaningful affected and those with expertise in the area.

Big decisions should have proper consultation to get advice from those meaningful affected and those with expertise in the area.

 

“The bigger decision, the more people need to be asked for advice.”

Laloux, Reinventing Organisations.

 

Systematic decisions are taken all the time - in large companies, in the National Health Service (here in the UK) and in other complex organisations.

But leaders face the dilemma of needing advice from a wide range of stakeholders without creating logistical bottlenecks or overwhelming their teams.

Many managers understand the value of consulting but just don’t believe that they have the time or resources to do it – because traditionally, it costs tens of £000s and takes months to complete.

A classic example is a healthcare trust redesigning patient pathways: they aim to involve frontline staff, patients, and managers but end up with large, unfocused meetings where a few voices dominate, and actionable insights are lost.

 

They need a consultation process, backed with technology, to:

1. Ask people to respond to a problem statement in a straightforward way, with full safety to disclose

2. Collate and use those responses in a meaningful and non-overwhelming way.

 

Tech 1: informal - use what you already have

In Frederic Laloux’s book, Reinventing Organistions (you can read the illustrated version for free here), he describes how the CEO of a healthcare firm would share context pose questions on their internal chat channel in the evening and give employees 24 hours to respond in the comments.

Though this worked very well, it’s easy to outgrow this method and for most large organisations, it just wouldn’t be logistically possible to consult the whole business.

My build on this is for individual teams and projects is to use an in-Channel poll plus comments (via MS Teams, Slack or another platform) to make it as easy and low friction as possible to get advice and perspectives from colleagues. In Microsoft, the add on 'Polls' app is what they are currently pushing people towards and it works pretty well.

If you need to go bigger and more formal, here are two higher tech ways to capture the spirit of that healthcare CEO's whole company consultation approach...

 

Tech 2: InsightGenie: consult and analyse at scale - very fast and for peanuts

Insight-Genie bridges the gap between decision-makers and the frontline by using a structured, logic-driven system that works due to the power of AI and its ability to make sense of vast quantities of qualitative data quickly and efficiently using AI. It enables organisations to:

 

- Gather insights: Invite a broad range of voices to contribute ideas and feedback through simple, accessible channels.

- Refine input: Process raw feedback into clear, actionable insights using automated logic (e.g., identifying recurring themes, surfacing root causes).

- Automatically create reports: Present findings in structured reports that guide small, effective meetings focused on action rather than analysis.


Crucially, as well as collecting data very rapidly, it can automatically generate detailed reports instantly ensuring no critical perspectives are lost and bringing consultation time down from weeks and months to hours and days.

Here's an example of the consultation template - there are lots in the system for different use cases and problem types.

A few examples of where InsightGenie has been used to gather crucial advice very rapidly

1. Policy redesign: e.g. A Chief Nurse can consult hundreds of nurses on systemic issues like patient care workflows while organising outputs for leadership teams to drive solutions for better patient outcomes.

2. Community engagement for local councils: Councils can gather input from diverse communities, streamline insights, and focus meetings on actionable priorities for urban planning or social initiatives.

3. Improving internal culture in large organisations: HR teams can collect anonymous feedback on challenges like meeting inefficiency or DEI initiatives, enabling targeted interventions.

 

You can talk to expert in strategic consultation and NHS improvement, Anthony Lawton here.

 

Tech 3: Loomio

This platform was developed specifically to automate the consultation process described in Reinventing Organisations (Laloux’s book) and to distribute decision making in self-managing organisations.

So Loomio is more about making a decision together, than consulting to inform a decision and provide advice to someone making a decision..

You can:

- Create a decision thread and make it public or private

- Invite people to contribute

- Discuss together in the thread

- And then each person can vote

- And you can leave a comment with your vote for the group to see

Here's a screenshot from Loomio:

Loomio is used for a lot of community initiatives and in many teams and smaller organisations. Unlike InsightGenie, it’s fully transparent. Others can see how you voted and why. And there are pros and cons to that!

 

Consultation - three ways

So there you have it.

 

Low tech - use a channel on your collaboration platform and pick a poll add on to establish a standard practice for gathering advice.

High tech - use InsightGenie for larger consultations in big complex organisations.

High tech - use Loomio for big decisions in smaller or community consultations.