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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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.
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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Dividing Up Work and Decision-Making for Effective Teams
Language: Español The question of group size With the world’s issues and complexity rising, the number of people who need to collaborate to address an issue gets bigger and bigger. […]
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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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Rocky Corner cohousing
Rocky Corner is a cohousing community being built in Bethany, Connecticut in the USA.
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Six Tips to Facilitate a Meeting Like a Pro
Do you remember being confused about the purpose of a meeting? Facilitate a meeting like a pro today with these tips.
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Sociocracy or Holacracy?
We are observers and participants of a paradigm shift in management. More and more attention is focused on dynamic governance, which slowly, but inevitably replaces the so-called traditional management, hierarchical in the power-over meaning of the word. Different names are being used to describe organizations operating under the new model.
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Pittsfield Listens!
Language: Español Pittsfield Listens Pittsfield Listens is an organization in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, that works to build community, inform on civic issues, solve problems through community conversations, and to award […]
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What is a Help Desk?
After using sociocracy “by the book” for years and very successfully, we have started to introduce a new concept: a Help Desk circle. It introduces a small but extremely powerful nuance in what circles are and how we can decentralize decisions and operations while empowering everyone in the organization in moving things forward that they…
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How to have quick meetings that don’t waste time
Meeting time is precious, so it’s a matter of respect to be clear about our intentions first. And the good news is there’s a framework that makes this easy.
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A time bank using sociocracy: Valley Time Trade
Valley Time Trade is a volunteer organization that tracks hours of service offered by members to other members, referred to as a time bank. It is located in the north-central part of the Pioneer Valley, a western region in the state of Massachusetts.
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Facilitation Sheet for Better Meetings
Have you ever felt stuck in a meeting? This downloadable cheat sheet for facilitators has all of the key components of sociocratic facilitation on one page!
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The Legal Documentation of Sociocracy
Language: Español The Three Essential Documents To start a legal entity using sociocracy, it is essential to understand legal documentation. In creating an organization there are three foundational and inseparable […]
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Strategies for integrating objections
Language: Español In this article: How to deal with objections Integrating objections is one of the core pieces of sociocracy. By integrating objections skillfully, concerns turn into a constructive force […]
