Before having kids, my wife and I decided that we couldn't possibly settle down to a life of changing diapers without having been to Australia. One last amazing trip and then we would become real grown-ups. Of course, after watching an intriguing episode of The Bachelor in which women threw themselves at the eponymous man on a picturesque Kiwi farm, we swapped Australia for New Zealand. That spring, we spent almost two weeks in New Zealand drinking some of the best Sauvignon Blanc in the world, seeing the Hobbiton set from Lord of the Rings, attending cultural demonstrations by the local Māori, and generally having a great time. Oh, and about twelve months after we flew home, she gave birth to a wonderful baby boy and we couldn't be happier.
All that is to say I have a tiny bit of personal experience with New Zealand (also I have no idea how to start blog posts in an engaging way). During my time there, I saw the above fern logo in every single store in the entire country. It was on hats, shirts, underwear, pins, and posters. It was even the livery on one of the Air New Zealand planes that we took. Turns out that it is the logo of the All Blacks, which is the national rugby team of New Zealand. I was shocked when I found out that it wasn't the official country flag, given the ubiquity.
It turns out that I'm not the only one thinking the actual New Zealand flag needs changing, as the country is currently going through the process of selecting a new official flag. I think this is generally a good idea; the current flag doesn't seem to represent the New Zealand as much as it represents the United Kingdom. It is also virtually indistinguishable from the Australian flag, and anyone who has seen Flight of the Conchords knows that Kiwis are a little touchy about being confused with Aussies. Unfortunately, New Zealand has gone about changing the flag in the worst way possible. Fortunately, there are a lot of lessons to be learned that are applicable in any situation where consensus is required.
The first step of the process of changing the flag was issuing an open call for designs. Over 10,000 entries were submitted. Some were good, and others had kiwi birds with lasers coming out of their eyes. From this, a government-appointed panel of 12 selected the "long list" of 40 flags that were to be considered. Already, many people were upset that their favorite design (or the design they submitted) was not in consideration. However, many presumably were able to find an agreeable design among the 40 selected, and became attached to one of the long list flags. Three weeks later, without any official consultation with the public, the panel reduced the list of 40 down to 4. Already there are Kiwis petitioning to add their favorite designs back to the list of 4. Essentially, the government has assured that everyone has now been spurned at least once, and many have been twice. This brings us to the first lesson: engagement decreases each time stakeholders feel their opinions are not taken into consideration, so minimize the number of times that this occurs. All this does is create animosity and a feeling of betrayal. These individuals then remove themselves from the process completely or, even worse, protest. The New Zealand flag process feels like it was designed to give the impression of popular vote without the messiness of actually needing to abide by popular opinion. By conducting the search under the guise of popular opinion, but reducing the choices to the ones the government deems acceptable, all they have done is get the hopes up of everyone in the country multiple times, only to have them dashed.
Unsurprisingly, a very high percentage of the proposed flags featured the silver fern design. However, the official silver fern logo is a registered trademark of the NZ Rugby Union. All those shirts and hats that I saw containing the design? All licensed (for a fee) from this group. If this design was selected as the national flag, the NZ Rugby Union would have to sign over all rights to the design, without charge, to the government of New Zealand. Needless to say, the union is not eager to do this. As an intellectual property lawyer from New Zealand commented: "It's almost like handing over the crown jewels, so to speak, of their business to someone for no commercial gain." So any design with the silver fern had to be removed from contention. The government should have known: never present a group with a popular option unless you know it is viable. The fact that nobody in the government checked about the feasibility of this logo prior to the initial design submission is honestly shocking. Everyone in the entire country knew this would be the design to beat. Giving the citizens false hope that the logo could be the selected design ensured a lack of commitment to the process.
Though the official fern from the All Blacks has been disqualified, other fern logos are still allowed. In fact, all four of the final designs feature a fern in some way. Two of these designs are literally identical except for the coloring, and both look somewhat like they were designed by committee by incorporating the four stars from the current flag. The fourth flag is a Māori design, which technically represents a fern as well. Now there is no doubt in my mind that the committee wanted to make sure that one Māori design made the final four, as about 15% of the population identifies as Māori and the group tends to be very protective of their culture and traditions. However, with the incredible variety of original submissions, how did the final four all end up with variations of a fern? New Zealand officials should have known that if you're presenting a group with a choice between multiple options, make sure there is a real choice. Allowing the country to choose between option 1 or option 1a doesn't truly provide much of a selection for the citizens, especially when it isn't representative of the breadth of options that truly existed. The way the final four has played out gives the appearance that the government wanted to ensure that there would be a fern on the flag and wasn't going to take any chances at letting the public screw that up.
Now that the final four designs have been selected, the citizens (through postal referendum) will vote for their favorite of those four. The winning design will then go against the current flag in a second referendum in March 2016, with the winner of that becoming (or remaining) the official flag of New Zealand.
In the end, I think this process will end right where it started: with New Zealand's flag having a small Union Jack next to some stars. The government has done such a poor job of building consensus that I think the majority of Kiwis will vote to retain the current flag either out of spite or in the hope that there will be another chance to change the flag soon. It is a shame, because the current flag of New Zealand truly should be changed, and New Zealand's half-hearted reliance on popular democracy has hindered progress. If the government had merely picked a design without any input from the citizens, at least those citizens would not have felt as deceived as they currently do. By providing multiple instances for the citizens to provide input, then disregarding that input, the government has created a public relations nightmare that has overshadowed the entire process.
Think about these lessons next time you try to build consensus in a group. If you ask for input, make sure you genuinely take that input into consideration. Don't let the group get carried away with options that have no chance of being implemented. And give the group real choice, or none at all. If there truly is only one possible right decision, realize that you may be better off just making the decision yourself. In the long run, your co-workers may be happier and more engaged if you do.
