From time to time, we will be faced with the need to make a decision in a single meeting, without taking it to several meetings before falling back to a vote [1]. This policy is intended to be used only for those time-critical decisions.

Any of our professionals may designate a decision as time critical. When dealing with a time critical decision, at the beginning of the meeting we will call for consensus on falling back to a vote after a certain deadline time. If we do not reach consensus on the decision in question by that time, we will follow our voting procedure to decide the question at that meeting. The facilitators may decide that we are close to consensus on an issue, and may push back the deadline to accommodate that, before falling back to a vote.

If we fail to consense on falling back to a vote, do not have a quorum, or for any other reason fail to make the decision, we will accept any and all impact of the lack of a decision, and not hold our professionals responsible for it.

There may also be times when the group, rather than a professional, determines that a question is time critical. In these cases, the team or presenter for a given item should make an announcement to the Coordinating Team in response to the call for agenda items preceding that meeting. The group will be asked to consense on the time critical nature of the decision and a discussion deadline time at that meeting.