Good decision-making seeks to have the widest amount of input possible.
This is a ideological statement based on numerous, unstated suppositions. Through most of human history, and in many cultures today, it would be deemed nonsense -- as it is by those who have researched decision-making. In fact, too much input makes it more difficult to make any decision, good or bad.
Democracy is a very inefficient way of making decisions.
In MBTI research, studies show that committees with a broad range of type preferences do better than those of people with all the same type preference.
I have no idea what sort of response this is to what I have written, Brian.
Through much of history - especially that of the church - decision-making by the people would have been seen as nonsense. Even today, Roman Catholics will state: "the church is not a democracy." They don't (nor in the past) tried to have a representative group of laity and clergy to make decisions on behalf of the Church. The ELCA is not structured like that. We seek to have a representative group of laity and clergy to make decisions on behalf of the whole church body (or whole synod).
Those who study decision-making and personality types most certainly have concluded that a broad spectrum of types leads to better decisions by a group.
However, there are different types of decisions. A technical decision, e.g., to buy a new sound system, can probably be better made by an expert on sound systems than by a group of people who have little or no interest and knowledge in sound systems. Experts, on their own, can make high
quality decisions. An airline pilot doesn't take a vote of the passengers when there's a problem. A surgeon doesn't poll everyone in the room before making a decision.
However, I've worked with two congregations in putting in new sound systems. In one, I talked with eight different companies. I did research on the internet. The council discussed it with a couple representatives from different companies. They got a system that met their needs - and learned a bit about systems. They've since upgraded what they had.
At another congregation, I had visited with one company; but a member of the council took it upon himself to contact a local guy, got his opinion and wouldn't even listen to anything that I might have offered - even though I was the one, both as the pastor and the musical director who would be most involved with the system. He went with everything this man recommended (which made it easy for the salesman to install the system) - and it was quite inadequate for the needs of the congregation at the time. Some of the things he bought we never used. If one doesn't have complete information about a problem or what is needed, even an expert can make poor decisions.
Ronald Heifetz, in
Leadership Without Easy Answers, which our synod's Missional Leadership Academy requires participants to read, talks about adaptive decisions - where the people need to adapt themselves to a changing situation. The more people involved in making such decisions, the more likely that the people of a congregation will be able to make the changes necessary to carry out such a decisions.
Thus, there are people who study decision-making process who do agree with what I've said: more diversity of input leads to better decisions. (More specifically, more
acceptable decisions, which means that those who have to carry out the decision like the decision.) More decisions fail because they are not accepted then because they weren't quality decisions. Acceptance usually requires a group process (and interpersonal skills).