This blog post pulls together some resources that I shared at a workshop last week, for people in community organisations wanting to make clear decisions that stick. Groups of volunteers can't be 'managed' in the same that a team in an organisation is managed: consensus and willingness to agree in order to move forward are more precious. Sometimes, however, that means that decisions aren't clear or don't 'stick' - people come away with different understandings of the decision, or don't think a 'real' decision has been made (just a recommendation, or a nice conversation without a conclusion). And so it's hard to move things forward.

I flagged up a number of resources that I think groups like this will find useful:

Descriptive agendas - that give people a much clearer idea of what to expect from a meeting;
Using decision / action grids to record the outputs from a meeting unambiguously;
Be clear about the decision-making method (e.g. will it be by consensus, by some voting and majority margin, or one person making the decision following consultation?) and criteria.
Understanding who needs to be involved in the run-up to a decision.
Taking time to explore options and their pros and cons before asking people to plump for a 'position'.