I just discovered the slightly quirky tool Waggl for making decisions in a group. You can ask a question to an audience that you define yourself. Members from the audience can type in their answers, after which they can start voting on the answers. Ideally, you end up with a number of well-argumented answers. It’s a bit like Quora for organisations.

The purpose of Waggl is to get information out of the heads of people. It does this in a more interactive way than a survey. Because it feels like a fun social networking activity, participation can indeed be higher.

There’s a disadvantage to Waggl. It can work in an organisation with a constructive atmosphere, and it can indeed get you a good overview of the various sentiments on certain topics. It won’t work, though, if the people in the organisation aren’t cooperative. You cannot force people to use a tool like this. To be effective, your organisation must be ready before implementing Waggl.