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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Better facilitation: How (not) to side-track a meeting
Here’s how not to side-track a meeting, or at least how to find your way back pretty fast with better facilitation!
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Aligned and alive. Strategy in decentralized organizations
How does strategy work in sociocracy? How does strategy work in a horizontal or decentralized organization? Read about a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches that make a strategy aligned and alive.
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Taster of Advocates for Socioracy in Community
Audrée Morin, Kathleen Walsh, Pati Beaudoin, Hope Horton and Stefani Danes | 18:00 UTC
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Conflict as a tension to steer by
Language: EspañolConflict as a tension to steer by The unwritten rules in many groups are clear: Be nice, avoid conflict at all costs and, if a conflict arises, see it […]
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Monday Homeschool Co-operative – Story of a Sociocratic Homeschool cooperative
Language: EspañolAre you part of a volunteer organization with very flat hierarchy at the risk of burn out? The Monday Homeschool Co-operative is a self proclaimed eclectic group of secular […]
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A cooperatively-owned theatre company: Will Kempe’s Players
A worker-owned theater company in New York state.
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The Ostrom Principles and Sociocracy
This blog post connects sociocracy, a participatory governance system, to the Ostrom principles for sustainable governance of CPR (common-pool resources). Sociocracy and Ostrom’s principles share very basic values and observations, which makes sociocratic governance a perfect fit for CPR governance.
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Ups and downs of Sociocracy
Juliette Corazón | 20:00 UTC
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Change from Within: Participatory Budgeting in Organizations
Ingrid Haftel & Shari Davis | Sep 28th, 16:45-17:10 UTC.
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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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Could sociocracy be used to self-govern a country?
Sociocracy is a way to govern organizations in a way so everyone’s voices are valued and heard, while still moving forward together. Given the divisiveness and bipartisanship in our societies, doesn’t that sound desirable?