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. See the sociocracy resources on this page to get started.
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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.
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
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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.
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.
- We also offer classes, and we are accredited by the International Certification Board.
More sociocracy resources: articles and videos
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Clarity and empowerment: What is a domain?
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in Audience, Articles, Business, Community, Coop, Delivery element, Education, NGO, Permaculture, TopicLanguage: Español Domains in sociocracy – while they are innocent-looking, they are the foundation that makes sociocracy so transformative – with empowerment, and clarity! So what are domains? Each circle […]
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Working with Conflict
Karen Gimnig | 17:00 UTC
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The Difference Between Whole-Group Consensus and Dynamic Governance/Sociocracy
Language: Español A recurring question in our teaching is to describe the difference between consensus and consent, and between whole-group consensus and Dynamic Governance (sociocracy) used in a community or […]
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What can sociocracy learn about best practices from research on self-management?
Sociocracy is one form of self-management that can be used in the workplace to implement collaborative decision-making and worker voice.
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Benefits of feedback processes and employee voice in sociocracy
Creating psychological safety is important to ensuring a safe environment for employees to voice concerns without fear of negative consequences. Read this article about how check-ins and shared leadership lead to more psychological safety.
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You only need _________ to fix how organizations are run
What do new organizations need? Better structure, better mindset, better communication?
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Sociocracy a la carte?
Can one just pick and choose from sociocracy and build your own governance system? Or is it a package deal and one has to use ALL the tools?
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There is no hierarchy in sociocracy…right?
Language: Español “Is there hierarchy in sociocracy?” is a fairly common question. And since people expect me to say no, I always say yes. Why? Because that’s the best way […]
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The liberating effect of “good enough for now”
“Good enough” sounds like a low-level decision-making method. And yet, for some people, that’s not how they experience it. “Only” aiming for good enough can be a matter of respect and
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Selection process
Language: Español In this article: What is the selection process? One of the richest processes in sociocracy, the selection process is sociocracy’s tool for electing people into leadership and other […]
