Collaborative decision making (CDM) is a key component to successfully adapt to emerging, rapid patterns in the business environment. From a people perspective, CDM builds buy-in and accountability through a process of ensuring everyone understands the problem, works on it, develops alternative solutions, and contributes to the final resolution.

It would seem that collaboration and consensus are one and the same, but that is not the case. Collaboration is about sharing information in decision-making, while consensus is about coming to a general agreement. Collaboration, therefore, fits these times of open information.