British government used a democratic process to name a $300 million research vessel. Results came in, guess what name won in a landslide...



Then the back-tracking, quarrels, finger pointing and negative press began.  Sad state, they meant well but did not do well.

In the end, the government has now cancelled the democratic process and assigned a name (using a process that is unknown and was not shared to the public).  Government released a story on what happened, using a deflective and smoothing strategy, and has since focused on moving forward and trying to sweep it under the carpet   lol.

It is a reminder about the power of social media - they get more votes then city elections!!!

It is also a reminder, you cannot take things on without having a project plan.  The plan has to take into consideration the process of planning, monitoring, execution and play out multiple scenarios based on risks.

A key thing they mis-understood was the decision process that was selected.

There is such a high variance and set of risks when going to such a large group. They could have selected a Consultive decision making process, as per definitions below:

Decision Making Process Tools:
1) Autocratic - one person makes the deicsion, take it or leave it
2) Consultive - get collective feedback from the group, however, then one person makes the deicsion based on taking into consideration the feedback that was provided by the stakeholders invited
3) Democratic - openly ask the group and majority rules
4) Consultive - must have 100% agreement by the entire group

They all have their strengths but also their weaknesses, leverage each one strategically.

A couple other links that touch on decision making process are below:

http://articles.extension.org/pages/70474/making-group-decisions-six-options



If you wanted to get more formalized, technical and systematic, below is a link that also has a ton of other good sub-links:

http://www.decision-making-confidence.com/decision-making-tools.html