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
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Sociocracy with Children and Other People
Language: Español Lessons Learned about Effective Meetings and Community Building I deeply believe that children deserve the same respect as adults, and to that end, I started a learning community […]
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Sociocracy 3.0 with Children
James Priest
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A cohousing using sociocracy: Pioneer Valley
A sociocratic community in Massachusetts that switched over after almost 20 years of consensus.
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Portuguese language meet up
Sanket | May 5th 14:00 – 15:00 UTC
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Case study: Prairie Hill Cohousing
Prairie Hill is a cohousing community on an 8-acre site in Iowa City, Iowa. It got its start in 2009, and they started construction in 2017. At this time (spring, 2020) they have built their common house and about 30 of their 36 units.
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Slime Mold Intelligence, Open Source, and Self-Organization
Slime mold may not be good at staying put, but it sure has one thing going for it – it doesn’t get stuck! You can learn secrets of self-organizing from this ultimate innovator
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Sociocracy and Nonviolent Communication (NVC)
Language: Español Sociocracy and Nonviolent Communication (NVC) are often used together. For a good reason! The essence of Nonviolent Communication is “Everyone’s needs matter”. The essence of sociocracy is “Every […]
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The ABCDE of culture change
“I remember the first time I noticed meetings there were different. It was one of those moments when you say something and then notice it is true when I heard myself say: “I am leaving the meeting more refreshed than I came, more inspired and feeling more connected to everyone in this group.” That was…
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Lessons Learned on Conflict in a Sociocratic School Plus Best Practices from Restorative Justice
Conflict is hard, can lead to rifts in relationships, and also make an organization crash and burn. It can be all too easy to push disagreements under the rug, ignore intense feelings in order to keep going with running the business and accomplishing the goals of an organization.
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Roles, jobs and salaries in sociocracy
On what basis do we decide salaries in sociocracy? Is it based on the sum of all roles? But how does that work? Or are there traditional “positions” in sociocracy too?