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.
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 – see the typical steps to get there!
More sociocracy resources: articles and videos
Sociocracy: The Movement
Curious about one of the roots of Holacracy? This overview of past and current also conveys the values of sociocracy and the emotional flavor of these distributed-decision-making systems
Relationship magic
Language: EspañolSometimes people tell me that what sociocracy does to groups is “magic”. I agree that it’s not uncommon that people who had never met before create meaningful connection and […]
Family Heart Camp a Sociocracy case study
Language: Español[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.22.3″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.25.1″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”] Interested in Non-violent communication and building strong community structures? Family HEART […]
Sociocracy in Small Groups
Whether small groups can use sociocracy in a meaningful way in small organizations is a recurring topic with my clients and students. This article is an attempt to answer the most typical questions.
Case study: Our Journey Investigating Scalability in For-Profit Organisations
When the Swiss design and development agency Nothing AG spun-off one of their internal products into an independent business called Peerdom, the Peerdom team initially started by replicating their mother company’s implementation of sociocracy.
How to Survive Group Projects
Do you dread group projects? Learn how using sociocracy can create joyful collaboration and efficient decision making.
Redes de habla hispana (Meet-up for Spanish speakers)
Nora Plaza | 18:00 UTC
Enkindle Village School
Enkindle Village School is the first independent democratic school in North Queensland, Australia. Egalitarian in nature, the school is founded on democratic principles, with the belief that everyone affected by a decision should have a voice in that decision.
R:ekobyn i Röstånga – a forming community
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R:ekobyn is a forming ecovillage in rural Sweden. R:ekobyn encourages local businesses and plans to lease part of the land to new businesses to bring back daily social life to the village, reduce the need to commute.
3 common struggles in sociocratic organizations
Language: EspañolGovernance is never complete and “done”. It needs constant maintenance and fine-tuning. To help you prevent challenges or yo get you past them if you’re already experiencing them, I […]
Case study: 10pines
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10Pines is a 10-year-old software development company headquartered in Argentina with agile manifesto values and a peculiar way of working at its roots. With 85 employees, 10pines has more than $3M in sales and it serves both startups and large clients such as Starbucks, Burger King, Turner, Claro, Teespring in North and South America. Due to…
