confluence1 
Most groups that are brought together to solve a hard problem want to start negotiating immediately. That instinct is understandable. The people in the room are experienced. They have positions. They have organizational mandates and limited time. They are ready to get to work. The problem is that they are usually ready to get to the wrong work.
A 14-member committee convened to answer one of the harder questions in regional governance: what would it actually take to make a large, complex, and struggling regional transit agency work the way it needs to?
We are living in a moment defined by complexity, mistrust, and political gridlock. The stakes of public decisions are high, but so are the risks of inaction. Communities are polarized. Public confidence in institutions is low. The path forward is often unclear, and even when it is, leaders face enormous pressure from all sides.
If you want to be known for running processes that matter, end strong. Set the stage for action. Honor the people who participated. And make sure your CDMP leaves a legacy—not just a paper trail.
Without a clear plan to sustain engagement, even the most promising CDMPs risk losing credibility or collapsing into dysfunction. Here’s how to keep your process moving forward after the excitement of launch wears off.
If you skip the foundational steps to launching a work group or task force, your first session may feel more like a stumble than a start. A strong launch sets the tone, pace, and expectations for everything that follows.
The success of a collaborative decision making process (CDMP) is shaped not just by what’s discussed but by who’s in the room. And while it’s tempting to start with a stakeholder checklist or a list of usual suspects, effective CDMPs require more intention than inclusion alone.
Facilitation has become a catch-all term. Today, nearly anyone who hosts a meeting or runs a retreat might call themselves a facilitator. But CDMPs aren’t about hosting meetings. They’re about solving difficult problems in high-stakes environments. That calls for a very different kind of leadership.
Collaborative Decision Making Processes (CDMPs) require more than just participants. They require a support structure that is designed with the same intention and clarity as the process itself. In this post, we explore what it takes to assemble the team behind a CDMP: how to house it, staff it, and set it up for success.
On some of the most complex, contentious and critical issues facing government, communities and businesses, we’ve seen stakeholders with very different views come together to make meaningful progress where other efforts have stalled out or been unable to find common ground. We’ve written in previous posts in this series about the basics of Collaborative Decision Making Processes (CDMPs) and when or why to use such a process.