There are also decision-making tools to support moderately to highly complex decision-making that can be adapted easily for use in remote meetings. You may already use some of these tools during in-person meetings, and they will also work well in remote meetings.

Fist to 5 combines simple voting and the Consensus Model, with people indicating a level of agreement with the decision or solution options by the number of fingers they show — from a closed fist (no agreement) to all five fingers (complete agreement). You can do this visually (onscreen) in a videoconference or participants can use numbers 0 to 5 in a Chat, Poll, or Survey.

If the vote is dominated by 4s and 5s, it is safe to move forward. If voting is highly mixed, you need further discussion. If 1s and 2s dominate the vote, it may be time to create new solution possibilities.

Multi-voting enables teams to narrow down a long list of options and create a more manageable list. It also ensures a majority of people support the final decision and therefore are more likely to implement and support it.

To execute multi-voting, you count how many options you have and give all participants two thirds the number of options as votes.

Verbally, each person casts their votes as they wish, for example they can put:

• All their votes on one option
• One vote on each of multiple options (spreading them around)
• Or any combination, say 3 votes on one option and 4 on another

You can either go with the option that has the most votes or do multiple rounds of voting after eliminating the options that get no or few votes.

If you do multiple rounds of voting, you would adjust the number of votes each participant gets based on the number of options left (participants get 2/3s the number of items on the list).

Even when a participant’s initial choice is eliminated in the first or second round, they continue to vote and must choose a different option, which tends create a greater sense of ownership of the end result.

You can collect votes from participants via Verbal Round Robin, group or private Chat, or the Raise Your Hand feature.

Typically, Polls can only accommodate 4-5 options, so they may only be useful in multi-voting in the final round(s) of voting.

Don’t forget you can use Breakout Rooms to group specific participants to discuss the ideas and/or look for a compromise or new solution. Once their time limit is complete, have the teams pick a presenter to share what they’ve concluded.

Adaptive decision-making requires flexibility and on-going analysis of the changing environment. This process is especially effective during times of great change.

It is an iterative process, similar to the Agile software development model: make incremental changes, test them, and adapt the strategy as you go.

This approach allows you to move forward even when you don’t have all the information you’d prefer to have, or when the future is uncertain — which is most of the time!

Collaboration, information sharing, and communication are essential in adaptive remote meeting decision-making. Platforms like Slack, Trello and Google Workspace are ideal for the decision-making model in the virtual world.

Frequent virtual meetings can be used to analyze which parts of the process are working and which aren’t. Adjustments and corrections can be identified via remote brainstorms and analyzed through many of the tools we’ve shared or with a Cause and Effect Diagram.

Solution analysis aids decision-making by defining the conditions and capabilities a solution needs to solve a problem or achieve a goal. It allows a team to compare multiple existing and/or proposed solutions, considering each solution’s impact on cost, process, staffing and other pre-determined factors.

This process involves research and analysis, which enables the team to rank options and evaluate components of a solution. Using online tools such as Chat and Surveys can facilitate information gathering and evaluation at multiple stages, and it may also be helpful to use Verbal Round Robins to collect votes for the various options.