The Nominal Group Technique

When a group meets, it's often the case that
people who shout loudest, or those with higher status in the organization,
get their ideas heard more than others.
So when it comes to gaining
consensus on important decisions or priorities, how do you make
sure you get true consensus and a fair decision for the group?

One technique to help with this is the Nominal Group Technique, a
face-to-face process for gaining consensus.
A
typical application is in organizational planning, when a group
needs to agree priorities in order to assign resources and funds.

The benefit of the technique is that the group shares and
discusses all issues before evaluation, with each group member
participating equally in evaluation. The evaluation works with
each participant "nominating" his or her priority issues, and then
ranking them on a scale of, say, 1 to 10.

Nominal Group Technique is just one group process for achieving
consensus. Another group consensus technique is the Delphi Method,
which is used among groups of experts to make complex decisions,
usually without face-to-face meetings.
How to Use the Tool
To use the Nominal Group Technique, use the following steps:

Select a group leader and group participants. (The rest of the
steps assume you are the group leader.)
Present the topic and objectives, usually ahead of the group
meeting. Typically the objective will be to identify issues or
projects that are most important to the group or your
organization.
Ask the group members to discuss the topic, ask questions and seek
clarifications.
Allow participants time to consider the issues and projects they
believe are the most important.
Ask each participant to write down his or her priority issues or
projects. If useful to do so, ask each group member to read aloud
his or her responses, and give time to explain and elaborate on
written responses.
Record all the group's responses on a master list or a flipchart
for the group to view.
After all responses have been recorded, work through the responses
together as a group and eliminate duplicates.
Now ask participants to choose their top priorities: say 5 to 10,
depending on the number of issues and projects that the group
needs to agree on.
Ask each participant to rank these in priority order.
Collect the group members' rankings and combine these to form a
collective response – this is the group's consensus on the ranking
of important issues or projects.

Example
In its annual planning meeting, a parents' group must reach
consensus on which school projects to support in the coming year.
With limited time and resources, the group must choose just 5
projects.

The group's planning meeting follows the Nominal Group Technique
process to ensure a fair selection of priorities. The group
members are asked to nominate and rank their 5 top projects. After
de-duplicating the group members' responses, there are nine
projects to rank. The highest priority is assigned "5" and the
lowest is "1". The ranking grid below shows the projects that the
group submitted and each member's priority ranking. The final
column shows the group consensus on priorities, with the "Family
Link" program being the highest priority.

Tip:
By using the numbered ranking system with "5" high and "1" low,
the group consensus can easily be found by adding up the rank
scores of each group member. The highest score is the highest priority.




Project
Jay
Sue
Rik
Jina
Will
Score
Group consensus
priorities




Family link program
5
3

3
5
16
5 (high)


Literacy program
2
4
2
1
4
13
4


Community program

5



5
 


Annual fund raiser
1

4
2
3
10
2


Summer camp project


5


5
 


School bus
fund raiser
3



2
5
 


Book fund

2
1

1
4
 


After school
club

1

5

6
1


Work experience program
4

3
4

11
3