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I'm smiling...you brought up the dreaded "c" word.  Let's see what I can add to the story--this won't be an exhaustive answer or the answer you will necessarily get from every Quaker--this is just my response, today.

There are many Quakers who will tell you that Quaker process does not include consensus---and they might explain it like this: consensus is about the members making a decision---reaching a consensus is thought to be a secular process. These Friends might go on to explain that instead Friends must be willing to turn decisions over to God/Light/Spirit, allow time and space through worship and meetings for worship with a concern for business---so that they may seek the sense of the Meeting. It is usually a clerk or "weighty" Quaker's role to listen to all spirit led voices and attempt to articulate the sense of the group. It is each members responsibility to engage in the process in a manner that ensures that they both speak their own truth and are open to ongoing revelation--either through their own worship or through the words of another as they share their truth.

There are many Quakers and Quaker orgs that use the "c" word. And Quaker process in our schools is very different from Quaker process in our Meetings, because the schools do have a heirarchy of responsibility.

Visit any historically Quaker institution, like Haverford, and you'll find that most members of the community are not Quaker by birth or practice. Visit any area Meeting and you will find a mix of birthright Quakers, convinced Friends, social/political/secular Quakers, cultural Quakers, Christocentric Quakers, Buddhist Quakers, generally religious Quakers, Universalist Quakers...I could go on. What makes eastcoast Quaker process both challenging and exciting is that in the absence of a clergy, all of these different world views come together in one school or one Meeting to imagine and live in a community that none of them could have imagined alone.

And yes, the process is sometimes messy and time consuming. But it is emergent! Quakers will never be accused of being in a race to "get it right"---our emphasis on ongoing revelation offers a way for us to keep trying to "get it less wrong". I guess that is why the emergence pedagogy resonates so much for me.