Back when I was in college, the TV in my hostel lounge always ran Channel V. No it wasn’t the most popular channel. Everyone had his own preference. Some liked Star TV, others liked Star World. A few serious ones would have liked to watch news channels, and there were also a few weird characters who followed serials on Zee.
But the everyone had a violent dislike for everyone else’s first preference. The Star Plus guys hated ‘The Bold and Beautiful’ on Star World, Star World guys were supremely uninterested in current affairs, and so on. <\/p>\n
But it turned out that no one minded<\/i> Channel V. It was everyone’s second preference. So V it was all the way.<\/p>\n
This is how people ‘come to a consensus’. This is also why the quality of a decision invariably suffers when taken by consensus. When large numbers of people are involved, every alternative has at least a few opponents, so the only thing that people can agree on is to maintain the status quo. Because no one is happy with the status quo, a ‘consensus decision’ ends up dissatisfying everybody.<\/p>\n