I Once Heard

That a camel, is a horse designed by a committee. 

One summer, I took a simple sounding class "small group communications theory."  The first thing we learned, is that true consensus, where everyone agrees either exists on the first call, or it is a myth.  Even if everyone seems to be in agreement, some of them are compromising to agree and that is not true consensus. There is a difference between agreeing to a common set of ideas or principles and being in consensus. One of the keys is to focus on what people agree on, and promote compromise to common ground on the rest.  

With the camel, there are obvious compromises, but overall it works, it does well for what it is intended to do.