Title: Pros and Cons of Consensus Decision Making
Headings: 
Consensus Decision-Making Pros and Cons
Consider These Significant Issues Before You Make Consensus Decisions
Group Agrees to Support the Decision
Involved Employees See a Benefits
You Present a Unified Front
Collaborative Spirit of the Team
Agreeing to Bad Decisions
Groupthink Is Real
Compromise Solutions
Business Is Hierarchical
Making the Best Decision

Content: This sounds great and is what you'd expect from your HR team. But, by not cutting labor costs, you have to cut costs in another area. The consensus decision is to cut manufacturing costs and not do employee layoffs, but the result is a shoddy product that eventually causes the company to lose market share. Ultimately, all the employees are worse off. Perhaps the disaster could have been avoided by not treating every department or concern as of equal worth. Business Is Hierarchical
Sure, organizations such as Zappos run on this “holacracy” theory, in which the hierarchy is very flat, but even then you only see CEO Tony Hsieh speaking to the press, and not John in customer service. Regardless of what your formal structure looks like, some people have power and other people do not have power. If your goal is consensus decision-making, this power differential allows the powerful to heavily influence the less powerful to reach “consensus.” Then, if the decision made is a failure, the powerful can point out that “everyone agreed to this solution.” In other words, the aura of consensus decision-making allows the powerful to avoid responsibility.