Consent is secured privately before the meeting that ratifies it, so the meeting decides nothing and settles everything.
Named from the gardener's practice of preparing a tree's roots before transplanting it. Objections are collected and answered one at a time, in private, where a dissenter can move without losing face. The meeting is then a ceremony, which is why decisions taken this way rarely unravel afterwards.
In practice
- A proposal that has been shown to all nine directors individually passes in four minutes.
- A proposal sprung on the same nine collectively is referred to a subcommittee and dies there.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Organizations & Bureaucracy
- Essay
- Rules for running organisations, and for pressing them