Introduction
Sociocracy is a long-standing model of horizontal governance, and tools for collaboration. Last winter (2020) a working group within SourceCred (Sociocracy Working Group aka SWG) started researching concepts and implementing select tools with the intention of setting the stage for a transition from the top-down benevolent dictatorship we previously utilized, to a form of governance more akin to Sociocracy.
The consent decision making model used to pass proposals in Core, the facilitation training sessions Thena and Jojo hosted, and using rounds as a discussion tool are a few examples of things that the SWG brought to our space in order to prepare us for that shift. However, I feel that the community as a whole missed out on a lot of the overall context that the SWG was intuitively metabolizing together. I think the combination of missing this larger picture, the SWG needing to morph its purpose to deal with internal community conflict, and having the implicit hold-over of Dandelionās TBD power inhibiting our ability to view ourselves as a horizontal power-structure rather than a hierarchical one all created a series of road blocks that kept us from moving forward with Sociocracy together. As a result I think weāve semi-instituted elements of Sociocracy but are missing a lot of the power Sociocracy has to offer when it comes to the more efficient and transparent decision-making we are trying to achieve.
The purpose of this series of topics is to metabolize some of that larger context for the community and present it in a way that hopefully is easier to consume, thereby increasing the likelihood that weāll continue incorporating the aspects of Sociocracy that could help us. This topic specifically focuses on the basic structure and definitions that make up Sociocracy as defined by Sociocracy For All (SoFA). And while itās my personal opinion that following these structures more closely will benefit us, we do not necessarily have to do governance in exactly the way that SoFA defines.
Definitions:
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Sociocracy: A system of governance with hundreds of years of lineage that emphasizes bottom-up decision making and top-down feedback, as well as a blending of the efficiency of Hierarchy and the agency of Egalitarianism. Sociocracy organizes decision-making bodies called Circles based on expertise/domain of labor.
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Circle: A self-governing and semi-autonomous team of equivalent people who collaborate on a specific domain of labor and make decisions relating to that domain. A Circle must have an Aim, Domain, and a method of defined membership. A Circle is expected to maintain its own daily operations and is accountable to the rest of the organization through trust and transparency.
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Circles start large at a department level, and grow āsmallerā and more specific sub-circles that split the domains as needed to keep teams small enough to be efficient. Another way to think of this is larger āparentā circles and smaller āchildā circles.
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Domain: What a Circle has the authority to make decisions about. Domains should be unique to each circle and not be shared between different circles so that there is clarity around who can decide and make policy about what.
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Aim: What labor the circle is actively doing. What the circle wants to achieve.
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Operations: Decisions that are made or actions that are taken in the moment by someone who has the authority to do so because they are the one present in the moment where itās needed, and because there is no guiding policy already made.
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Policy: An over-arching rule on a specific topic that has been explicitly put into place by the circle that has authority in that domain.
- Learn more about the difference between policy and operations
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Role: A specific set of responsibilities within a given circle, executed by one person for as long as they hold that role (the method of how we choose people for most Roles and how long they hold them is up to us to define).
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Note that in particularly small teams, multiple roles can be held by one person but I think itās useful to at least acknowledge the different roles a person is taking on; both for seeing the multitude of their labor and to make it easier to decentralize their responsibilities in the future. (Eg: Thena frequently blends being a Leader and being a Facilitator in the same meeting beautifully because of their unique mix of talents). The SoFA resources say itās okay to create/disregard/blend Roles based on the needs and talents of the group, but itās good to name - in the spirit of self-awareness and transparency - if and when we see this happening.
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Itās worth noting that SoFA recommends that within a circle, a role is held by the same person always until they step out of that role. This is very different from our current practice where people spontaneously volunteer to fill a role on a per-meeting basis instead, and our tendency to neglect roles outside of meetings.
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Basic Sociocratic Concepts:
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Sociocracy is a decision-making mechanism that lets the people doing the work make the decisions in their specific and agreed-upon domain of the project, while also creating channels for input (aka feedback or opinion) to come through from the rest of the project. When implemented well, itās a blend of the efficiency of hierarchy and the broader empowerment and transparency of egalitarianism. A balance weāve struggled to find though the two extremes of a dictatorship model and an undefined decentralized model weāve experienced so far.
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Sociocracy requires other participants in the project to trust those who are doing the work and making the decisions within a circle. It requires that those who do the work and make the decisions uphold the trust they receive from the other participants through transparency and accountability to outcomes. Something else weāve struggled with due to the ambiguity of domains/decision making in our space.
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Circles have the agency to make policy for their specific domain, even if it may affect other areas of the project. (Again, this is where trust and accountability are necessary to enable action.)
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Sociocracy intentionally creates decision making/labor circles that are smaller and more specialized as needed. āCan the four of us highest-context folks split off to discuss and make this decision?ā If decisions/consensus cannot be made within a smaller/more specific child circle, only then does that decision flow upwards to the larger/less specific parent circle.
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In the classic methodology of Sociocracy, decisions are sent āinwardā from the smaller specialized circles at the edges, and updates/input are sent āoutwardā from the larger, more generalized circles in/near the center.
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Each Circle is responsible for the goals, decisions, policies, operations, roles, timelines, and accountability to outcomes in its specific domain.
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Nearly every circle has at least a āLeaderā role nominated by its larger parent circle and a āDelegateā role nominated by the child circle. These nominations must be ratified and approved by both spaces.
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Operational tools weāve already learned from the SWG (like consent voting, facilitation, and rounds) can be extremely useful in all Circles for the purpose of sharing thoughts and making decisions but in the end, a Circleās operations are decided by the Circle itself.
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Circles can be changed to meet the needs of the organization as it changes. New child circles can be created as the needs of the parent circle expand over time.
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In the structure of Sociocracy defined by SoFA, the largest Department Circles are connected by the āGeneral Circleā in the center which is a council of Leaders and Delegates from each department and any other major players (eg: PL reps or consulting experts). This circle is less of a decision making body and more of a central space for information to flow in from the edges and re-disperse back out in order to keep the org informed and aligned. When there is major conflicts about decision making domains between departments, the General Circle supports the organization by deciding which department gets to make those decisions (not by making the decision in the General Circle).
Additional Resources:
Here are a few particularly useful pages Iāve found on the SoFA website, I encourage those who have also done extensive research to share their resources in the comments of this topic.
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Sociocracy Video Series - note that you will need to create an account on SoFAās website to access these, but itās completely free and very easy. I highly recommend this option for anyone who (like me) struggles with reading lots of articles.
See the other two topics in this seiries:
Please look for the next topic in this series: āSociocracy Explainer 2: Diving into Roles"
Conclusion:
Iād love to see us play and experiment with how the basic elements of a Sociocratic structure could serve us in SourceCred. If youāve also done research into Sociocracy and feel that I misrepresented some of these concepts factually, please feel free to share corrections in the comments for the benefit of all those reading this in order to learn about the classical elements of Sociocracy.
If you have ideas on how youād like to see these concepts implemented, not implemented, or partially implemented at SourceCred, share your thoughts in the comments!
Acknowledgements:
Iād like to thank the members of the Sociocracy Working Group for all of the ground work theyāve done to get us familiar with these concepts and the building blocks weāre already using which they spent time implementing in our space. Iād also like to specifically thank @Jolie_Ze for their time and effort in getting vulnerable with me around this topic. Theyāve helped push back on, sanity check, and bring light to the lineage of these concepts in our space and have impacted how Iāve written about them.
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It canāt handle everything obviously, but Iāve been impressed by its ability to make a large number of important decisions in the last few months. And itās been battle tested recently and passed (IMHO). Iām also having a little trouble imagining how it would handle disputes between domains. Does SoFA provide process/examples here that are relevant to us? I will say that one thing thatās naturally emerged, which I think is generative, is small groups of high context people that regularly discuss big issues generally, social dynamics, conflicts, etc. While this is more informal, and not terribly transparent, it seems a lot of context and trust is built. Which is then leveraged in all sorts of ways. I trust that Sociocracy has a lot of this figured out though, and I think sub-circles can take over decisions as they come online. Excited to keep experimenting in this direction.
are on us.