Language: Español
Sociocracy combines consent decision-making, a decentralized system of authority and intentional processes to improve our decisions and processes over time into a governance system that supports effective and efficient process while increasing connection, listening and co-creation among members.
Sociocracy is used in businesses, communities, nonprofits, cooperatives, grassroots groups and in education.
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Books from Sociocracy for All
Many Voices One Song
The practical sociocracy handbook written by the co-founders of Sociocracy For All. 300 pages full of real-life support!
Let’s Decide Together
The definitive guidebook for practicing sociocracy with children. Children can decide with sociocracy too!
Sociocracy topics
More: Selection process | Writing proposals | Implementation
Making group decisions: consent
Consent is the default decision-making method in sociocracy. In consent, a decision is made when no circle member has an objection. Every person will consent if they can accept the proposal, and object if the proposal has negative implications with respect to the circle’s shared aim.
A group moves to consent in the consent process: presenting the proposal and clarifying questions, quick reactions and a round of consent/objections.
Different from blocking a proposal in consensus decision-making, objections are welcomed as valuable information and they can be integrated by modifying the proposal, its term or its measurements.
Circles and roles: who decides what?
Decisions are made in circles, a defined team of people working together towards their circle’s aim. Circle members make collective policy decisions in their domain and they define operational roles to empower individuals to take on responsibility and circle roles to self-manage their circle.
Circles are connected through parent circle/sub-circle relationships of nested domains, leading to a system where everything can be decided locally in the system, without centralizing power at the center. To make sure two circles are connected, we double-link them with two people as members in both circles.
Meetings with sociocracy
Sociocratic meetings are inclusive and efficient with a clear format:
- Opening: check-in and ADMIN
- Content of the meeting
- Consent to agenda
- Agenda items
- Review
- Check-out (meeting evaluation)
Facilitation is a focus of sociocracy. Rounds – the practice of speaking one by one – are commonly used in meetings to keep equivalence and focus. Rounds also make it easy to run virtual meetings in video calls.
Performance
All sociocratic processes are built on the basic idea of continuous improvement. Feedback is a way to improve what we do, both by creating feedback-rich organizations, a commitment to interpersonal feedback and formal, peer-oriented performance reviews. Other practices are: meeting evaluations in meetings, reviews for all policy decisions and for role selections.
Leadership in sociocracy is peer-oriented and based on accountability to own commitments and to the circle. Many people also combine sociocracy with restorative justice or Nonviolent Communication to align their practice with their values and to improve their effectiveness and communication.
More concepts
Selection process
A sociocratic circle chooses together who will fill an operational or circle role. The most common process to choose that person is the selection process with nominations, change round and consent.
More concepts
See it done
Cheatsheet
Writing proposals together
Policy proposals are always approved by a circle, but they can even be written together using the process of picture forming and proposal shaping.
More concepts
See it done
Implementation
How hard or easy it is to implement sociocracy in your organization highly depends on your size, culture, current set-up and commitment.
One distinction you need to know. While training talks about sociocracy, an implementation changes the power structure of the organization.
- Training is about knowledge of how sociocracy works in general, potentially with practice on examples.
- Implementation is the application of sociocracy to a specific organization
Do you need a consultant to implement sociocracy? It depends!
- SoFA supports “self-implementations” without external help, for example through organizational membership with groups of peer support and discounts on training.
- But we also offer coaching and consulting for any desired level of hand-holding through the process. The help of a consultant is only useful when you already know that you want to implement and all decision-makers are on board.
More sociocracy resources: articles and videos
Sociocracy and Anarchism: Neither Gods nor Masters, but Systems and Structures
Language: EspañolA little anecdoteSome time ago, I was strolling down the park with a friend of mine and had briefly explained to her about sociocracy, a governance system that distributes […]
Sociocracy – basic concepts and principles
Brief overview of sociocracy: basic concepts and principles, history, its use in organizations, its limits and differences to voting, consensus and hierarchical forms of organizing.
The tragedy of the meeting: Meeting time as an example of a common pool resource
Meeting time is lifetime shared with others. How do we share these resources well? This article highlights Prosocial’s Core Design Principles with the example of meeting time as a common pool resource and shows how tools from sociocracy help share time in a collaborative way.
How to implement sociocracy – a roadmap
Language: EspañolSo, you want to implement sociocracy, but don’t know where to start? After gaining some basic knowledge, the next steps aren’t always clear. We’re here to help you out.First […]
Performance reviews
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by
Performance reviews (or “Role Improvement”) are a way to give feedback to one person or each other in a space of psychological safety.
Strategies for integrating objections
Language: EspañolIn this article:How to deal with objectionsIntegrating objections is one of the core pieces of sociocracy. By integrating objections skillfully, concerns turn into a constructive force to improve your […]
Weaving Global Governance from Below: Neighbourocracy and Children’s Parliaments in India
Language: EspañolA Case StudyThe Dream, the Web“Imagine a [… ] spider’s web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other […]
The Full Circle Problem
Jerry Koch-Gonzalez | 16:00 UTC
Self-determination – only with co-determination
Language: Español(By Simona Zäh, Switzerland. Translated from German original) In my last blog entry, I pleaded for more self-determination in schools – and only in passing did I mention that […]
A cooperatively-owned theatre company: Will Kempe’s Players
A worker-owned theater company in New York state.
Representation of those most impacted by decisions: Tools for when impact exceeds circle roles (Deborah Chang, Sofie Malm, Hanna Fischer)
Are we making decisions that are affecting more people than are in the room? How can we be more careful about representation? In this session, we will give examples of situations where decisions are affecting a broader group of people. We will offer tools to support us being more inclusive in the decision-making process.
NVC Feelings and Needs List
Language: EspañolWhat are nonviolent communication’s universal feelings and needs?Everyone experiences similar basic human feelings and needs. Nonviolent Communication (also known as NVC or compassionate communication) centers around identifying our feelings […]
