My experience is that sometimes this can backfire in horrible ways, because it moves the decision-making process from some group to some other mechanism, and in

My experience is that sometimes this can backfire in horrible ways, because it moves the decision-making process from some group to some other mechanism, and in doing so reduces the ability to provide feedback during the process. If a group is "deciding how to decide" it implies at some level that the group is behaving democratically or collectively in some way enough to make a meta-decision of some sort. Let's say, though, just for an example, that they decide to appoint someone as the decider. If this works, all is fine, no problem. But it's also possible that it becomes abundantly clear this person is really making poor decisions, or going about the decision-making process poorly. Decisions aren't always a one-shot thing; often there are a series of smaller steps with information that's fed back as things move along. If the group has committed to a decision-making process, they can get into a position where no longer really have any kind of mechanism for pulling back on the decision even when it's obvious that things aren't going well. Or the "meta-decision" is leveraged by one group to push through some changes that benefit them personally to the detriment of everyone as a whole. Sometimes you don't really want to "decide how a decision is made", what you really want is to retain that decision making power within the group doing that, and to delegate some of the work of the decision to some subgroup or something. It's fine to say something like "well the decision czar can always be fired by the group if it's obvious they're messing up" but then at some level doesn't that suggest the "real" decision making is happening at a different level? I guess it's still deciding how to decide, but I think that decision can have unintended consequences that aren't always recognized.