While I have lauded consensus as one of the three composable building blocks of decision success, a recent podcast shifted my thinking on the topic.

One of my favorite podcast hosts, Daniel Thorson, conducted an interview with teacher and artist David Sauvage on a recent episode of his Emerge: Making Sense of What’s Next podcast. David was discussing decision making within political structures such as Occupy Wall Street, and it inspired the following thought.

In an Impact DAO, resonance with the adventure-vision is more important than group consensus.

Ideal decisions in an Impact DAO are those that best help bring the adventure-vision to life. A choice that does that, but that few people agree with, is better than one that does not that everyone agrees with. Thus, members should evaluate decisions based on how the choice resonates with their own understanding of the adventure-vision - even when it differs from what others are feeling.

Not all decisions, of course, will invoke a notion of resonance. “Should Lio or Tami record the meeting?” Pick one and move on.

But when the stakes are high, our goal should NOT be to find a compromise to get to a consensus. It should instead be to find a synthesis that resonates with the adventure-vision in the hearts of as many members as possible.

If a synthesis is not possible, what then? In a tradorg, we’d revert to some sort of “might makes right” decision process, but in Web3 we have an option that tradorgs do not - exit mechanisms.

If members do not feel a DAO is making the right decision to advance the adventure-vision, the ability to “rage quit” (as built into DAOhaus and other DAO structures) is vital to enabling the DAO to best make progress. While we’d prefer to avoid actual rage, it is far better to have 2, 3 or even more smaller DAOs that each have 100% resonance than 1 larger DAO with much lower commitment. DAOs with higher resonance will:

• Attract more member attention and energy towards the adventure-vision

• More easily recruit new members with whom its actions resonate

• Draw in more higher quality partners for coordination and collaboration

Given those benefits, Web3 must continue to establish a culture where we strive towards grand visions, seek out others desiring the same, and can diverge amicably when our hearts are being called differently in its service.