Learning & practising Sociocracy

Thanks for the invite. From the reading, workshoping I've done and small attempts to begin using the methods it seems like an invaluable piece of governance technology. It has certain caused me to observe and reflect on how the organisations I belong to go about their business - and they are pretty awful! My initial thoughts have been that sociocracy is an invitation - like cooperation - to unlearn a lot of dominant organisational decision-making behaviour that we think is natural: such as deference to authority/hierarchy/leadership and win/lose "debates" around problems/decisions. Sociocracy offers, it seems to me, not just different organisational structure but different techniques for developing shared understanding about a problem (tension) and discovery of a shared way forward both strategically and operationally. It ought to be a natural fit with cooperation.

Very nice - that's a great way to understand Sociocracy - as an invitation to enquire how things are done and open up a possibility of doing them differently.

yes please. I had sociocracy3.0 described to me by a soc3 trainer and it sounded really useful. people and relations based. the system being the people participating and not a preconceived set up (like old skool sociocracy). But I havnt managed to get thru the online resources, boring, abstruse, prescriptive. Something got lost writing it down. I couldnt advise coops to wade thru it. So yes we need to learn about it and maybe do a One Minute Soc3 or Soc3 for Dummies.

4 minute intro @bobcan https://youtu.be/l3zFWpntExg

That's why I really like the writing of Jennifer Rau. I was really put off when I first came across Sociocracy a few years ago, by the abstruse language, but she makes it all so crystal clear!

ok mark simmonds has guven me a YouTube 4min video hesays is also concise. i have read some Rau yes it's good.im just holding inmy headthe image ofa worker coop in chaos and thinking how do we get them as in dividuals to accept simple 'common sense' steps towards order using sociocracy.

We're definitely not in chaos at Unicorn so it's not quite the same, but so far people are responding really well to some of the small common sense steps, e.g. being intentional about what you're bringing to a meeting and the desired outcome of bringing it. We waste loads of meeting hours going round the houses with stuff, so being a little more focused on whether something is for information (which means there's no open invite to talk about it randomly), for exploration (actively seeking some ideas, opinions, feedback) or for decision is pretty exciting. Also talking in rounds is really liberating - difficult for some admittedly, but already making a difference to participation and enthusiasm.

Certainly not thinking about Unicorn and chaos. Thinking of some smaller worker coops where individuals benefit from disrupting structured communication (to preserve their freedom of action). And attack/undermine attempts to agree 'rules'. Need a starting point which is such common sense they cant kill it at the start.

It sounds like there is energy for this - thanks for initiating it Kate. I feel a mixture of excited - that people are so open. And trepidation - because I am also very busy, and wouldn't really want to get involved in anything else until after the summer.

A simple participative format, if this does go ahead, would be to spend a small amount of time (10 mins?) sharing what people know about the practice of Sociocracy. Then to spend the bulk of the time practising - ie doing some consent decision-making, shaping proposals etc. Followed by a brief reflection (10 minutes) on what people experienced. Top and tailed by a check-in/check-out 75-90 minutes might work well?

Personally I would prefer this to more 'abstract' discussions about what structures might look like, how Sociocracy might be implemented, etc but others might have different views? If people want that it could be a useful spin-off later on?

I find it far more useful to deal with real world scenarios rather than abstract because it forces us to understand the real world practices/culture that make or break theoretical approaches. A pre-designed theoretical model based on an ideal world (and often even the governing document) can be circumvented or sacrificed by a co-op's members if it doesn't fit with their day to day reality. it's one of the reasons why co-op start-ups sometimes change radically the week after they start trading. But happy to talk abstract if that is what the bulk of the group want

I support a practice-based approach. Are we thinking about doing this in a Zoom-type session? Anyone aware of any text-based digital tools out there that build on sociocratic methods/models? As the bulk of my interaction with the cooperatives that I'm involved in is digitally mediated, and this is likely to be a growing feature, it strikes me as a critical piece of the jigsaw if sociocracy is going to gain traction.

Hi Graham. Have done some of this kind of work before online, using both Zoom and Gdocs - the latter for shaping proposals in real time. Any text tool that allows synchronous updates should work though...

I'm happy to be involved but have limited time at the mo, so I might be more of an observer at times, but I'll definitely contribute when I have time. I can see the value in using sociocracy in co-ops, we recently used it with a client in a five day workshop and it was really valuable.
Thanks for initiating this @katewhittle and happy to see enthusiasm from lots of people.

I support the zoom idea. I find it's much easier to engage face-to-face than contributing to loomio discussions - it takes so long to read it all and reflect properly on what people are adding. Or some sort of mixture of the two perhaps? I guess the tricky bit will be finding a time everyone can make for an online meeting.

There is a scheduling tool in Loomio and we can use the Development Co-op Zoom account so we're not limited in numbers and time. I suppose a simple exercise in that Zoom to begin this (building on Pete's suggestion around sharing where we are) might be to agree the purpose of the circle.

Yes I think a practice based approach using Zoom would be great & as @graham2 says, if we can find some text-based digital tools all the better. BUT how can we build an action learning resource based on real life models? Any thoughts @peteburden ? :slight_smile:

Oh and P.S. i don't know if it came across in my post, but my idea was to kill two birds with one stone: (a) resolve or minimise the SolidFund Loomio DDD & (b) get some practical experience of using Sociocracy tools & methods. Is that too ambitious? Should we instead focus only on (b) ?? :thinking:

Can you explain DDD @katewhittle ? I would definitely like to get some hands-on experience of using tools and principles in a real situation.

I think focus on b) first. a) requires investigation IMO. DDD is @katewhittle short-handing what I called Digital Democratic Deficit. i.e. an some members in an organisation have less access to democratic participation by virtue of differing levels of access (for whatever reasons) to the digital tools by which decisions are made.

We need ADD then, Analogue Democratic Deficit, only those who make it to the pub at 7.30 on Thursday get to decide!

b) I can certainly contribute to, a) I think is an interesting question but I have very little experience of loomio so probably can't bring much to the (zoom) table

Best way to learn is by doing, how would sociocracy be used to govern social fund, which is a disteibuted virtual community and overcome both DDD and ADD?

Attention Deficit Disorder? Loomio can resolve that? Hallelujah.

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Yes, completely agree the best way to learn is by doing. And I agree those goals are great @bob5. I think it is also a matter of timing - meaning we may not get to all that straight away :) So I'd suggest starting small - with baby steps - and maybe starting with some practice around something a bit more trivial, then move to the purpose of the group (as @marksimmonds suggested), then start to work on the challenge/opportunity of using sociocratic type approaches to govern Solidfund.

@katewhittle can you say a little more about what you mean by an "action learning 'resource'" - the first two words make a lot of sense to me. But I am not so sure what you mean by 'resource' in this context? Thx

Dunno! Can't see where i said it. :thinking: But I presume I meant that in doing action learning we will be creating a resource that will be useful in the future, for worker co-ops and in the Solidfund?

Would everyone here be ok with Kiri Langmead from Nottingham Trent Uni being involved with this? She's a lecturer and currently researching HR in worker co-ops and was at the worker co-op weekend this year. I think it would be good if she could at least observe so that she can help spread the word about this, and offer back any observations.

Hi, thanks for inviting Becks from Seeds for Change, she's off work for a few months, so I'm picking up the SolidFund from here. I'd be very interested in learning more about sociocracry, particularly on a practical level. I'd be interested in trying it out myself also learning from co-ops who are already experimenting with it.

Yay, consider every single commented liked, hearted and clapped. I'm up for it, excited, no time, just like everyone else ;-)

Something to talk about with Scorcher and feed back to us certainly @cathcornerstone

If people want a room at Holyoake House to do something or we can do it linked to another events (practitioners Forum in November)? Then very happy to host something and be involved. I'm currently avidly reading http://www.sociocracyforall.org/book/

Yes, in theory. Not til September though. And not if a big time commitment is needed. But I'm definitely interested. J

I can see that George is going to be barrel of laughs in this thread. Roll on August 22nd I say. :-)

I'm up for this too. Agree with @peteburden that we should take it slowly. While we're on it, I'd like to challenge the idea that there's a particular democratic deficit in SolidFund, in terms of the participation level (there may well be other types of deficit!) It's true that what enables a dispersed membership to collaborate effectively (Loomio) is also presents barriers in itself, which may account for so many members not being signed up to the Loomio group - along with the serious point about 85% of the early members having been 'mass enrolled' by their coops, half of them by Suma alone, on the back of general meeting decisions. We may also need to improve the member engagement process and @johnatherton is looking at this. On the other hand, most of the 155 Loomio group have engaged at one point or another, and votes now regularly get 30-40 people engaging. To me this means SolidFund has a 'rolling board' of that many people, which ain't bad. I think it's important to identify and counter barriers to participation (which is what I think Sociocracy does), without fetishising any particular modailty of participation. SolidFund isn't a tight little worker coop and it isn't the Coop Group either. The law of two feet also applies!

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@sionwhellens my observation was particularly about decisions being brought up with short timescales. I agree that the general engagement is fairly good, but accelerating decision making will exclude people and shrink the already small proportion. I'm a fan of the law of 2 feet but not the law of too rushed a decision

I'm not familiar with this 'law of two feet' that you speak of?

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@graham2 As George tried to say, the law of 2 feet comes from Open Space for organising events. There are a few underlying rules: whoever is there is the right people, whatever happens is meant to happen and the law of 2 feet. The latter means if you don't like a session get up and leave.

Nathan can I ask for clarification please? Surely in a Open Space meeting there may be many sessions running concurrently and there is sense in moving to one that is important to you. But surely this is not the same as leaving a group because you disagree with others shouting the loudest and proposing changes to the group? I would hope that ownership plays a part and differences between people fighting their corner are worked upon by reconciliation.

admins please remove George from the group, at least until 22 aug.

Thanks @kayleighwalsh for inviting me to the group (and sorry for the stupidly long post).

I have just be catching up on the conversation so far – really great to see such enthusiasm and thanks @peteburden for introducing me to Sociocracy at the Worker Cooperative Away Weekend 2018.

In terms of ‘doing’ Sociocracy online, has anyone come across this: https://evolvingcollaboration.com/s3-with-trello/? Trello was developed as a tool for enabling online Socioacratic decision-making practices. I wouldn’t for a minute suggest introducing another platform into the decision-making mix but it is interesting to see how others have/are addressing similar challenges. It isn’t the easiest read (or at least I didn’t think so!) – I found it helped to scroll down to the diagrams and then read the text above them. The visual really help to make sense of the text.

In terms of the democratic deficit, does the existence of this depend of the reasons underlying non-participation? I.e. if people are not interested in a particular discussion and choose not to get involved this can’t be counted as a deficit. If on the other hand people can’t get involved because they don’t have the time, technology, confidence etc, this is a deficit issue. In this latter case the democratic deficit is the symptom of another problem rather than a problem in and of itself (e.g. if people don’t participate because they have no time is this a symptom of the undervaluing of time spent in discussion groups on Loomio?). Just thinking out loud here. I have been in and observed cooperatives changing the mode of participation (or introducing another mode) to address a deficit without addressing the underlying problem - the deficit remained.

I really like @bob5 description of Sociocracy as an invitation to change the way we think. This resonates really well with some of my own, and colleagues, observations of broader practices of direct democracy. I think it provides a nice starting point for addressing challenges associated with the adoption of non-hierarchical structures; i.e. it doesn’t necessarily give all the answers but it does provide a framework, and both practical and thinking tools that direct how challenges could be addressed

As far as short introductions to sociocracy go, this one made me smile:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHp5tIQzy9o.

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Thanks Kiri, In my practical experience the minimum a group has to do is nominate a facilitator chair and secretary. Having a facilitator chair and secretary transformed Suma managemenet committee meetings in 2000. Significantly the chair was not a member of the MC, had no vote and was not allowed to voice opinion on the issues. They were simply functional. Before this a member of the MC took the chair but people foind it difficult to not get sucked into the vortex amd the meeting lost direction.
Sociocracy does assume people behave rationally and altruistically. We often/mostly dont. It also privileges people! who are confident and articulate and of the dominant culture.
I think we try to introduce/adopt elements to improve our collective decisionmaking without obsessing about getting the full package. Be pragmatic.

What the new Many Voices One song book has to say on roles within a circle:

"Circle roles
• In order to stay in touch with where we want to be heading in the future, we need leadership.
A circle leader (also called top down link) is paying attention to the circle’s operations in relation to the circle’s aim. What needs to be done, who agreed to do it. What is in the future to decide? The leader also serves as a top-down link, bringing information from the parent circle into their circle.
• In order to be present with each other, we need a good facilitator. Facilitators run meetings according to the format of meetings and decision making adopted by the group. Leader and facilitator are separate roles because facilitation and overseeing operations are different skill sets. They can be held by the same individual.
• In order to manage continuity with the circle’s past, we need to have written records. The secretary manages the notes during the meeting, makes sure the minutes are distributed and accessible. The secretary also manages the records of the circle and is the interpreter of policies. Bigger organizations may choose to have a logbook keeper who keeps the records and the current policies in one central place so they are accessible.
• The delegate (also known as the bottom-up link, or representative or rep) is selected from within the circle to represent the circle in the next-“higher” circle. This creates a double-link between two circles. The leader and delegate carry information into the circle and out of the circle, a feature we call double-linking."

Thanks, nice @marksimmonds

@bobcan - you're saying that the minimum a group has to do is have a chair and secretary and that this was transformative at Suma? And that at Suma the chair and secretary weren't allowed to vote or voice their opinions.

This might be a difference from how Sociocracy is sometimes practised, but as you say, there's no need to obsess about getting the 'whole package'. The aim is to improve collective decision-making and being pragmatic is best way to do this, not sticking to a rule about the 'best way'.

You're also saying Sociocracy assumes people behave rationally and altruistically. And that we often/mostly don't.

I agree that we don't. I think Sociocracy was designed to try to take this into account. The difficulty is that we are often unaware of what is happening 'below the surface' - in attitudes, beliefs, and around issues of 'identity' - so people sometimes unconsciously try to subvert Sociocracy. And they sometimes succeed, at least for a while.

I think one way to try to avoid this is for the group to try to stay aware of this risk. Sociocracy also offer a means to correct this - because there is always scope to make proposals about the process itself.

This, as you say, is easier for people who are articulate and confident, and of the dominant culture. But if the larger group recognises that there is always a 'silent sub-group' who find it difficult to speak up, then the whole group can make space for this kind of correction.

Not saying it is easy, but it can work well.

I certainly agree that we don’t often (if ever) act rationally. Like @peteburden I think the danger comes from thinking or claiming that we are acting rationally and failing to acknowledge all the stuff that is going on under the surface. One of the roles of democratic organising may be to challenge the notion of the rational being (and certainly the economic rational being) and open opportunities to express and acknowledge the different (non-logical) things that come into play when we make decision.

In terms privileging those who are confident and dominant cultures – absolutely! This is a risk and challenge in any form of organisation. In organisations seeking to work democratically it really contribute to the democratic deficit @katewhittle highlighted right at the start of this debate. Again, I agree with @peteburden that the danger of relations of power, inequality and informal hierarchies comes, not so much from their (inevitable) existence, but from failing to recognise they exist and/or from not having the processes and cultures in place that allow them to be called out and challenged.

For me there are 3 exciting things about Sociocracy (discovered through the workshop at the Worker Cooperative Away Weekend) that have the potential to help with these issues; none of which are about circles, or double-linking or any of the other structural stuff.

1. It pushes participants to distinguish between a feeling, a need, and an observation. This is, I think, key to acknowledging the non/irrational part of ourselves that will come into play in any decision.
2. It pushes participants to distinguish between preferred and tolerable options. Aside from making decision-making potentially faster I think this plays a really important role in acknowledging the complexity and non-rational nature of our decision, i.e. that we always have a spectrum of wants, needs, feeling, values etc.
3. It explicitly creates opportunities for us to change our mind in light of new evidence. This is the case throughout the process but also after a ‘final’ decision has been made. Again this recognises the existence of a spectrum that we can shift along in response to hearing other peoples’ ideas and views.

None of these take away the very real risks and challenges @bobcan describes but they can help to make us aware of them.

Final thought, I totally agree that the ability to challenge the system itself is crucial to any democracy – which is exactly what we are doing here :). @bobcan comment about not obsessing over adopting the full package is certainly part of this.

@bobcan, it would be interesting to hear more about what the chair and secretary do in management committee meetings at Suma. What is their functional role and remit (e.g. in relation to calling out informal hierarchies, ensuring equivalence, identifying irrational decision-making). What was it, do you think, that made them so transformational to these meetings? It would be interesting to see how this compares to the roles @marksimmonds summarised (a potential opportunity for some shared learning and for me to deepen my understanding of how things work in large coops!!)

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Beautifully put @kirilangmead3

I especially like the idea that sociocracy encourages us to seize those three opportunities. Opportunities which have little to do with organisational structure: circles, double-linking etc.

Of the three you name the first - which I call FONT (feelings, observations, needs and thoughts) - has many other names, and a long history. It's not, as far as I know, formally part of Sociocracy (including 3.0), although many Sociocracy trainers encourage similar approaches. I think it's a great way to become aware of what is going on for us by monitoring what we are saying! And the different 'modes' have very different characteristics, which influence how we make meaning together.

I think the second and third are more commonly associated with Sociocracy and Holacracy, or let's just say the consent process commonly gives people the experiences you describe: noticing the difference between preferred and tolerable options, and noticing how our minds change as more information is brought in.

Two other opportunities spring to mind. One is that the shift from 'being right' and finding 'the truth' can create more of a focus on making decisions that build relationships, which I believe is better for the long-term health and effectiveness of an organisation.

Another is encouraging the development of emotional intelligence. I can't remember if there was to time to mention it at the WCW. But I find that if people first learn to distinguish simple categories of feelings (anxiety, happiness, anger, sadness, hurt/sickness) this can, with practice, lead to much greater discrimination around the many nuanced feelings we all feel.

Our culture (including at work) is usually dominated by an emphasis on rationality. And yet we are all emotional beings. So, in my book, anything that redresses that balance is a good thing!

I also would be interested to hear more about Suma @bobcan.

The management of anxiety is the priority concern for managers said RDStacey prof of management at HertsBusSchool. Anxiety prevents communication, blocks change, makes people stressed and unhappy and distrustful. I say that hierarchy is the enemy of cooperation and anxiety is the tool used by hierarchy to create submission.

Im writing a brief history of governance at suma which i will post up ( hopefully before it gets too long to read).

bob

Re: your brief history of governance at Suma - sounds great.

Re: anxiety/Stacey - yes. EI helps hold and manage anxiety.

Re: hierarchy. I think you mean power imbalances? Sociocracy has hierarchy eg functions are often hierarchically distributed.

Flatter structures like those in Sociocracy can, like hierarchy, also reduce anxiety. And they can also hide imbalances of power. IMHO it's awareness not structure that helps address this risk.

I think @bobcan insight about the role of anxiety in maintaining hierarchy and the presence of hierarchy in Sociocracy pointed out by @peteburden highlights that the problem with hierarchy (and power and leadership for that matter) is not the existence of it per se but how it is developed, attributed (or taken), used and maintained. I think there is also an issue around how hierarchy, power and leadership are understood. If we see them as inherently bad, and at the same time identify as a flat organisation, are we more like to either be blind to, or less likely to acknowledge, their emergence? - 'we are a flat organisation, there is no hierarchy here'. Conversely, if see wee hierarchy, power and leadership as both potentially good and potentially bad (which requires a reframing of the terms e.g. so we don't necessarily understand hierarchy as synonymous with individual power, power connected to negative outcomes and leadership as synonymous with certain individual positions and attributes but rather see all three as temporary and situational), will this make us more open to utilising hierarchy, power and leadership when it is agreed to be of use to the collective and calling them out when they are having negative impacts?

I would be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on this and look forward to @bobcan summary of Suma's governance journey.

for me and many worker cooperators of my era, hierarchy is political power over other people such that they must obey or be sanctioned/excluded. Where someone is dependent on someone else eg their output is my input , is not political hierarchy per se, but can be.

Hierarchy is a tool used in patriarchal societies to impose subservience and preserve the privilege of the elite. Male privilege but also class privilege, race privilege, whatever binary divisions can be exploited. Pre patriarchal societies eg hunter gatherers had/have division of roles and inter dependence, not privileged elites. Chiefs are facilitators not dictators. Coops can be modelled on such societies. See papers by David Erdal.

This obviously has big implications for how people behave and see themselves as individuals in the group. And on our models and thinking about organisations.

Bob

if you dont know it (im sure you do) Google The Tyranny of Structurelessness. worker coops have been through that 'all forms of structure are oppression' thing. of course many individuals in collectives fight any attempt to create structured agreements eg on acceptable behaviour, citing this argument (all structure is oppression) because they want to preserve their personal freedom of action (and usually privilege - some of the most persuasive such people i have encountered are public school men trained to behave in that way).

In the discussion so far on Sociocracy the question of "ownership" has not arisen. Surely this is central to any idea of a worker cooperative? I am reminded of Dee Hock who wrote in his book “One from Many”
"In time we came to believe that the essence of community, its very heart and soul, is the nonmonetary exchange of value. The things we do and the things we share because we care for others, and for the good of the place. Community is composed of things that we cannot measure, for which we keep no record and ask no recompense. Since they can’t be measured, they can’t be denominated in dollars, or barrels of oil, or bushels of corn—such things as respect, tolerance, love, trust, generosity, and care, the supply of which is unbounded and unlimited.
The non monetary exchange of value does not arise solely from altruistic motives, it arises from deep intuitive understanding that self interest is inseparable from community interest". It is my understanding that the Viable Systems Model ( VSM) as a confederate model, embodies this sense of commitment to community. A realisation by the members that for the system to be viable, self interest has to be satisfied but not by threatening the existence of the whole. The glue being the non monetary value. Of course dissonance plays a big part and McKinseys 7 S framework must be satisfied from the outset. As for leadership, surely in such a model it is nurtured in every member? Research gate offers an interesting view on "The role of leadership in emergent, self-organization" https://www.researchgate.net/requests/r49336757. Alistair McIntosh wrote in his book Soil and soul "You can have wealth if you honour Mammon, and you can keep Mammon only if you worship Moloch."
"and they say, ‘Who’s Moloch? Never heard of him’ as out in the dark Moloch belches
and grows redder and redder
and fatter and fatter
as he eats the children"
Whether we take the Christian meaning or metaphysical, of a dysfunctional grasping economic man, then surely hierarchy unchallenged is a hiding place for Moloch? I believe that only in the VSM, exercising ownership, responsibility, accountability and self willpower, will members have the courage to stand and say "not in my name". Can we say the same for Sociocracy, can Moloch hide within?

Looking 4wRd to exoloring Sociocracy in a Greencity context . Some of wir young team encountered it at Worker Co-op Camp - been spreadin the gospel since. B x

Hi all, only quickly scanned the posts here but just thought I'd mention that I've got a Sociocracy 'shelf' in the United Diversity library that some might find useful :)

Hiya - lots of cool stuff and resources here. I'd be interested in being part of a discussion. I'm a trustee at Transition Network and we've been developing our own 'shared governance' model over the last 3 years drawing on sociocracy/holacracy (which we've been running the whole organisation with since April).

In my work (at The Community Action Group Project in Oxfordshire) I'm supporting a worker (bike) co-op in Oxford to develop governance along sociocratic/self-management lines. Would be great to know of any particular workshops/trainings/resource I could draw upon with them?

I'm also, for work, looking for a good trainer to do an introduction to sociocracy workshop in Oxford in the autumn (some budget, but fairly small). Any recommendations?

Henry

Henry, I am a member of Transition Hexham a Conservative town yet to be blessed with any "Sociocracy" beamed down from Totnes. I attended our AGM last Wednesday and got quite dismayed by some member looking to "Extinction Rebellion" to some how mitigate CC. I believe many TT members are loosing all hope causing great anxiety. I do not believe the UN or any other Government body will miraculously turn the system around in the next 10 years as Sir David Attenborough so emphatically asked of our "leaders"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/03/david-attenborough-collapse-civilisation-on-horizon-un-climate-summit
It is my understanding the answer lies, not in waiting for some one to save us but within each one of us to self organise, starting with our inner self. It boils down to each of us choosing for example, what to put in our mouths. Can Sociocracy deliver that capability of individual choice, or is the VSM more likely to bring about the frequent exercise of choice and in so doing release those levers ( behavioral psychology) that bind us all?

This all sounds great Henry.

Radical Routes and Seeds For Change have some great resources on setting up worker cooperatives and on broader decision-making processes. There are a number of resources here: https://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/resources
Radical Route's 'How to set up a workers' coop' might be a good one for the bike coop: https://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/workersco-ops.pdf (also attached)
Seeds for Change 'A consensus handbook' is also good: https://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/handbookweb.pdf (also attached)

There are lots of people involved in this discussion who deliver great training and support so I will that question to them....

Thanks! They're already all set up and running for 5 years, but looking to develop/shift their governance. great resources though!

Given the fun we had with the famous George over the last few days I hesitate to post a vacation autoresponder on kate@cooperantics.coop but so people know I am very interested in this discussion but will be on hols from now till 3rd September. I will pick up messages then and happy to do all I can to help get this action learning group up and running. Cheers.

Re @peteburden post on 8th, really enjoyed your insight re. not seeking the 'truth' having positive impacts on the development of relationships - thanks. In relation to developing emotional intelligence (we touched on it briefly at WCAW but only to highlight that it is a challenge and something we need to think about), I totally agree but am a little lost on how you do this! And how to overcome the cultural barriers to doing it. Any thoughts/resources/ideas on this would be great.

Actually breaking through into peoples emotional responses is pretty difficult and dangerous for 'employers' to try and do. Of course many do it by a reign of threats and insecurity, the emotional relationship created is bad but functional in an effective dictatorship, Sports Direct, Amazon.

How then do you try to create a positive emotional relationship? We create our emotional 'selves' by doing emotional labour. The more emotional labour we do (or emotional energy expend), the stronger the emotional attachment, even to bad things (abusers) or irrational things (football and sports).

So at Suma drops recruits in at the deep end, three months basic probation doing hard physical work(if they can) in the warehouse against performance objectives. Followed by six months of intensive trial membership trying to work out WTF is going on and how do you get into this organisation where most of the 'rules' seem to be unspoken? Because its largely about inter personal relations between self actuating adults, not transactional relationships between wave slaves acting out restricted job descriptions. It's all pretty basic HR procedures actually with a big reward at the end, well paid permanent membership.

Recruits either do so much emotional labour adjusting to this they spend years recouping it before getting used to it and maybe jaded or they dont fit in and 'go away' to be polite.

And the levels of 'engagement' (to use a current HR idea) resulting are astonishing. I spent much more time advising suma people to tone down their emotional engagement than trying to fire them up.

Coops in which members just 'slide' into membership dont get this effect. If it's too easy they get a pile of semi-detached members with little emotional loyalty to the co-op and no boss to whip them into line. In those coops, 'that'll do and good enough' rule workplace culture.

ciao

Bob

Re EI - that's a great question @kirilangmead3 - how to increase it? I would love to hear others views on this.

Personally, I have found that giving people a simple way to distinguish thoughts, observations and needs from emotions/feelings is helpful - in language, for one thing. So learning to say 'I feel xxx', and know that refers to a bodily sensation as opposed to a thought.

Secondly, having simple linguistic categories for feelings - anxious, sad, happy, angry, hurt etc) - at hand also helps.

Language is helpful, but really it is practice - repeatedly experiencing emotions and noticing and naming them - that really makes the difference.

Unfortunately, organisational culture and climate often work against this kind of reflection - it is not 'normal' to talk about what we are feeling, only what we think.

This is one reason, I think, that Action Learning is so powerful - by allowing a legitimate space for (emotional) reflection.

Again Sociocracy does not my view specifically promote the development of EI. But done well it can provide a space for it. For example, when I show people consent-based decision-making I always suggest that consent can be withheld based on a feeling. And that it is the group's, rather than the individual's, responsibility to produce a rational explanation for this, if one is required.

That plays to my experience that sometimes we feel something quite a while before we have a rational explanation.

@babcannell and I have a shorthand for some of this: 'leadership as function, not as a status'. But when talking about 'hierarchy' in relation to coops, I mean hierarchy of vested or implicit power over others, rather than hierarchy of tasks. I agree with @peteburden and others that EI and behaviours reveal the truth about what's actually going on, but I don't think you can insulate behaviours from the formal structures that frame them, or privilege one over the other. An unincorporated collective, for instance, may be able to work closer to the grain of individuals' needs/desires than a limited company or society. These are 'legal persons' even they are not actual people, so they set up a tension around working for/appealing to the good of 'the coop', or the tendency to project attributes and imperatives - even personality - to 'the coop' that transcends the natural people who are its members. They also have to have legally responsible Directors, and you can't get round that by saying 'the Board is just another circle like the others'.

Thanks @bobcan and @sionwhellens. Loads of interesting points that I will mull over when my brain is working again! In terms of the Tyranny of Structurelessness, yes, I am aware of it and concluded that what Jo Freeman is perhaps referring to is the 'tyranny of thinking that you are structureless' ... but that is a discussion for another time!

Hi all

To try to summarise recent posts:

@kirilangmead3 you're aware of Freeman's 'Tyranny of Structurelessness' and you want to continue to draw our attention to how we think about, or are aware of, these things and the effect this can have, rather than the structure/structureless nature of organising itself.

@sionwhellens your shorthand is 'leadership as function, not as status' - meaning a focus on the responsibilities and actions people take on, not their position.

For you and @bobcan hierarchy means power over others. You think EI and behaviours can reveal the truth about what's actually going on. You also think that structures and behaviours are intertwined - they can't be insulated from one another.

You also think that an incorporated structure is different from an unincorporated one, in that there is a tendency for those involved to psychologically project attributes, imperatives and even personality onto the 'legal person' that is created (ie the limited company or society).

This last point brings to mind interesting questions about how Sociocracy maps on to legal structures. As you say, you can't just get around legal responsibilities by saying the Board is like any other circle.

@bobcan you're saying that worker coops have been through the 'all forms of structure are opression' thing. And that many individuals fight attempts to create structure - because they want to preserve their personal freedom - and privilege.

You also say that it is difficult and dangerous for 'employers' to try to break into people's emotional responses. And that many do it through a reign of threats and insecurity.

At Suma you have done it differently. Recognising the importance of emotional labour in forming attachment, at Suma recruits are dropped in at the deep end - and given the chance to work out for themselves what is going on, what the unwritten rules are, and how to form good interpersonal relationships.

Some don't fit in and go away. In other cases the level of 'engagement' is astonishing. This process is very different from just allowing people to 'slide into' membership.

Personally I think those are all great and very useful points.

Do you, and others of course, think it is valid or helpful to encourage the development of emotional intelligence in worker coops, given what @bobcan said about the dangers and difficulties when 'employers' try to do this?

Do you think it is reasonable to link this to Sociocracy? Is it part of the reason for introducing Sociocracy?

Thanks for the very useful summary and questions @peteburden. It pushed me to write a response I have been pondering for some days!

In response to your question: Do you, and others of course, think it is valid or helpful to encourage the development of emotional intelligence in worker coops, given what @bobcan said about the dangers and difficulties when ‘employers’ try to do this?
From my perspective/understanding, what @bobcan is referring to in his post is emotional labour (EL) rather than emotional intelligence (EI). EL is the management of emotions - the suppression of certain emotions and the heightening of others - traditionally (i.e. drawing on its roots in the service industry) for commercial gain. In my view, this can be extended to the management and utilisation of emotions for individual or collective gain, for both positive and negative reasons and with both positive and negative outcomes. There was much discussion at Open2018 for example about the benefit of emotional labour in relation to the development of networks, the danger of failing to acknowledge who is making the emotional investment, and the risks of burnout associated with it.

As @bobcan recognised, tapping into this emotional labour can be (and often is) done to meet the needs, and reinforce the position, of those in power. This links nicely back to the issue of hierarchy – a link illustrated clearly in critiques of the Learning Organisation. A Learning Organisation is an organisation that maximises and utilises employee learning and innovation through the development of shared values (and therefore the input of emotional labour as I will return to below), and the promise of fulfilment and cooperation towards a common goal. The critique points out that, while masquerading as a form of democratisation, these shared values and promises, and the consequent development of a (seemingly) singular and united worldview, assert a form of social control that is far more powerful and exploitative than a traditional management hierarchy. Not least, they can discourage employees from disagree with and challenging the dominant position, and limit space for diversity. Of course, the extent to which this is true will depend upon who determines the values and goals that employees are aligning with. In the case of the Learning Organisation (or, for example, Sports Direct or Costa Coffee), these are often determined by those in positions of power with the aim to secure employee commitment and effort for profitable ends. In the case of cooperatives, values and shared goals may (/should) be developed and negotiated collectively for collective benefit, and will (/should) be open to challenge and renegotiation. As indicated by the addition of ‘(/should)’, I think that the risk of the former (as another means of creating hierarchy) should be acknowledge.

Linking back to the issues of EL, however shared values and goals are developed it will involve a significant input of emotional labour. Even in the absence of coercive intent the development of shared values is likely to (a) intrude into areas of an employee/members life that they may previously have positioned outside the workplace, (b) pose challenges to an employee/members existing worldview, beliefs, values, experiences etc, (c) demand that employees/members make some elements of their identity more salient than others in order to ‘fit-in’, and (d) require members/employees to work out whether they are happy to leave elements of themselves outside of the workplace in order to fit-in (and gain the rewards of doing so) or whether these elements make them incompatible with the organisation (the third option is of course to use lots of emotional energy trying to persuade other that these element should be incorporated into the collective values/norms – democracy should allow space for this energy). As @bobcan illustrated, these processes are present in the recruitment and selection process of members at Suma and other cooperatives, and extend beyond recruitment to the whole life of a member. My point here is that, while these processes draw on emotional labour in order to foreground and nurture inter-relational rather than a transactional member-cooperative relationships (and thus enable member participation and democracy), there is a danger that they can create hierarchies, exploit members and limit diversity and opportunities for members to challenge accepted norms and assumptions.
It is here that I think EI comes in. On the side of the potential/new member, EI can help them to explain how they feel to others, link this to the actions of the cooperative and then identify the source of any perceived (or real) misalignment of values/goals. One the side of existing member, EI will make them more able to make observations about the potential/new members’ behaviour, express empathy with how they might be feeling and how this relates to individual and collective values, and then respond in sensitive and productive way (perhaps recognising that the new members discomfort illustrates a need to reassess collective thinking rather than the misfitting of the new member).

So…. In response to the question, I think that it is important to encourage the development and application of EL as a means to enable democratic member participation BUT that this needs to be accompanied by the development of EI if we are to prevent the negative exploitation of emotional labour and the use of emotional labour to support unacknowledged hierarchies.

In response to the second question (Do you think it is reasonable to link this to Sociocracy? Is it part of the reason for introducing Sociocracy?), the need for EI was a big part of my attraction to Sociocracy but now I know that EI isn’t inherent to Sociocracy I am not so sure. The rejection of ‘truth’ and recognition that people (and the collective) can change their mind is relevant here – i.e. it can be extended from decisions to the identity and values of members and the collective, which as I have tried to explain above, need to be open to change if democracy is to be maintained.

Sorry for the very long post. Feel free to say if it makes no sense/is totally inaccessible!

Thanks this puts into words some of the things that go on at Suma (or used to). The Emotional Labour of getting potential new members to 'fit in' and the search for potential members who have Emotional Intelligence so they can take part in this process and contribute to the development of the group, not just be passive subjects. The Trial Membership period is largely about learning how to fit in somehow or not. Fit In or F*ck Off, as it used to be called :laughing:
I would say that some people have or have been trained or have learned to have high EI ability. Charming public school rogues. Passive (and active) aggressors. even psychopaths? etc. People who use their EI for their own benefit largely.
Such characters are very dangerous in a worker coop where there is no boss to 'cut through the crap'. I have seen many worker coops paralysed by such individuals.
Very interesting about Learning Organisation critiques, as put by one worker 'They used to just want my body and mind at work, now they want my soul as well'.
I know an Employee Ownership where dissidents are asked what is wrong with them and told to get on message or leave. This supposedly employee owned business has a very domineering chief executive. We certainly dont want that in worker coops (it also I think, ensures false engagement and the withdrawal of initiative

I'm finding this conversation really useful, even if - as @kirilangmead3 asks - it is getting slightly inaccessible! It seems to me that there's two broad levels of expertise here, and that for some of us we need to practice sociocracy before we can really contribute to theoretical discussions. (I'm thinking people who have maybe just started reading Many Voices One Song, or googling "Rau", or who have some experience with consensus decision making but none with sociocracy - people who too early in their journey to consider formal sociocracy training from Sociocracy For All, or similar).

@graham2 mentioned Zoom, and @peteburden mentioned supplementing that with Google Docs - I'd like to formally register interest on behalf of Greencity for something practical like that (and offer to set things up, if that would be helpful - though with the obvious caveat that it other people have far more experience than me with sociocracy, Zoom and probably Google Docs too!)

I think Zoom (or similar) would possibly be most useful, because it would help us build up experience we can apply in our own co-ops. But I'd like to think we could also develop non-visual experience that we could apply online, on Loomio, and - back to @katewhittle 's original point! - with Solidfund decision-making.

Thanks @john for bring the conversation back to practical issues and apologies for the inaccessible direction the posts have taken. I thought it might be helpful to briefly bring some of the discussion points together (please add if I have missed anything) and link them back to Sociocracy/online Sociocracy.

Two key issues have come up: (1) the desire to address the democratic deficit and maximise participation and (2) the desire to adopt a flat structure and a concern over the development of hierarchies. These are very closely linked – formal hierarchies (i.e. those embedded in the structure of an organisation) and informal hierarchies (i.e. those that emerge from e.g. personality types) can discourage or prevent people from having a say. So, what points have been made so far?
1. Hierarchies are part of certain legal structures, including those used by cooperatives. If you have an elected board, this creates a hierarchy that cannot be completely removed through the adoption of sociocracy. This creates questions over how legal structures and sociocracy relate. For the practical purpose of this discussion, it might be something to be aware/critical of.

2. Hierarchies can be created through personality types or levels of confidence – some people speak louder, and for longer (sorry!) and get listened to more. Sociocracy can be really great at addressing this but I think it is harder to ensure full participation online – e.g. how long do you wait for someone to respond? Do you have some kind of system that allows people to say that they don’t want to join in with the decision because it’s not something they are interested in?
3. Hierarchy can be created and reinforced through the established values and norms of a group. People can be made to feel that they need to agree with the dominant/existing values and goals in order to be considered part of the group. This can limit peoples’ ability to challenge values and goals that they don’t agree. Check-in rounds might help to identify when this is happening but again, it may be more difficult to identify and address this issue online.

4. To add a final one – hierarchies and democratic deficits can be created when conversation become inaccessible!! This is easier to assess offline because you can see when you are losing people and bring the conversation back round to the right level/issues. Online, this is more difficult so thinking how to address this might be helpful.

Thanks @kirilangmead3 for the summary.

To which I would add that the points you made about 'Learning Organisations' - that it all depends whose goals are being met - are really valid and echo @bobcan 's comments about the management and utilisation of emotions for individual or collective gain.

Your points about the emotional labour that people might not wish to offer, even in the most democratic organisations, are also valid, I think. Things like bringing ones 'whole self' to work, challenging one's existing worldview or identity, and making those decisions about 'commitment' that are much talked about in organisations of all types need, in my view to be optional. The decision-making structures and processes needs to allow an 'opt-out' of all of these.

I am glad that your conclusion is that it is important to encourage the development and application of EL provided this is accompanied by the development of EI. I share this view. I want to say again that while EI may not formally part of Sociocracy, all the practitioners I know do work with EI from early on, and as I have said it is central to my own work - for exactly the reasons you have given.

The other point I think we meet on is that that having an open mind (giving up the idea that there is one 'truth') and allowing it to change as new information arrives is critical to the process of democracy. And this is something I think Sociocracy can support.

Thanks also @johnn for bringing us back to the practical.

I really want to support that - and am happy to participate in and initially even lead a few sessions from September.

Are you able to offer access to a paid Zoom account? The free account is limited to 40 minute sessions I think. There are other video conferencing options, of course, which may not have this limitation (Appear.In, Hangouts etc).

I’d also like to build what @kirilangmead3 said last. I want to focus on the practice too, but I am also very curious about one thing - what is people's underlying attraction to Sociocracy?

In the case of Solidfund it sounds like there might - or might not be - a 'Digital Democratic Deficit'? If there’s not and it's working OK then why change things?

In the case of the rest of the people listening in on this conversation, I have gathered - from the Worker Coop Weekend and other places - that there is quite a lot of interest in using Sociocracy (or at least consent-based decision making). But it is much less clear to me how people imagine it will help.

Am I right in thinking that there are people here who work in and are members of worker coops, and people who advise coops? And several who are in both roles?

For the business advisers I can see that having some familiarity with an organisational design and development technique that is suddenly gaining popularity, after a long period in the doldrums, is useful.

But what about the people working in, and members of, work coops?
What is the fundamental problem that you want Sociocracy (including its formal and informal parts such as EI) to solve?

What is your dissatisfaction with current ways of organising, and/or making decisions in Worker Coops?

I think getting some clarity around that would make the practical sessions more useful.

I’ve only been with Greencity a year and half and this is my first experience of a worker co-op, or being involved in any type of co-op. The following is why I am keen on sociocracy but please be aware that none of this is based on practice – it is purely based on what I’ve been reading!

What initially attracted me to sociocracy following the WCW was the idea of rounds. I like that it offers a structure to allow all voices to be heard equally regardless of personality types (maybe not entirely but helps) and so maximising the potential of the group discussion. This also links to efficiency because often I see discussions going back and forward and jumping around with people forgetting where the discussion even started. It’s easy to say this is bad chairing but I think in a co-op where everyone is meant to be equal we need to offer whoever is chairing the best tools do so without fear of offending anyone. I think the structure of rounds does this and I like how in Holocracy it is really emphasised that the facilitator is there to ensure the group is playing by the rules of the game.

I think meetings being separated into specifically governance related meetings or operations/strategy meetings offers better clarity. I particularly like the idea of specifying governance issues to ensure everyone knows who is accountable for what. I think accountability is something people can be quite scared of in a co-op because there are often grey areas. I believe, the democratic process should come in when it is decided who does what and in maintaining feedback loops between circles. Endless voting takes away autonomy which obviously goes against co-operative values but it is also an incredibly inefficient way to run a business when it comes to larger sized co-ops. I also think sociocracy forces co-ops to be more disciplined in the maintenance of their governance, keeping it constantly under review and adapting to the present needs. I think it’s incredibly easy to let thing slip and then be completely blind to it.

I agree that objections should become the property of the whole group. There is truth to be found and it will show itself sooner or later. And regardless of that, we aren’t showing respect to colleagues by dismissing their comments and will only create more problems. There are people who will struggle more than others in articulating objections, and so, a supportive environment is needed to allow everyone to develop their skills.

I had, like others here, hoped it would help build EI and provide a balance for EL. Ideally, I’d like to see a balance of personalities within each circle to allow people to learn from each other through repeated practice. Given the wide range of abilities within EI, I really do think there are skills we all can learn from each other. However, at the end of the day, its mostly going to come down to luck whether or not a balance within the circle is found. The only option I can think of that has potential to help reach this goal is aiming for gender balance within each circle. Does anyone have any thoughts on, or experience of this?

I think it is a highly skilled job to develop a person's EI and so I wouldn’t be comfortable with actively pursuing this if the expertise is missing, which is likely to be the case. Therefore, I would want this to happen as organically as possible and maybe it would help just to bring more awareness of EI in the hope people would investigate further in their own time. However, I do realise this is somewhat wishful thinking! There is the option of group sessions with a trainer but this would require time away from the business. And, beyond the training, it would all come back to practice with the right balance of individuals for the training to truly take effect. Therefore, I think it’s important we get a structure in place first.

This might be going slightly off tangent but if we can provide a structure to develop EI (not necessarily fully), which I think sociocracy has some potential, we can expand on the social impact of co-ops. Particularly, if we were able to recruit more younger members and give them the experience of equal decision making before they learn defensiveness and too many bad habits from hierarchical organisations. This could have a startling impact on someone who hasn’t had much emotional support at home or in the education system. Particularly young boys who are more likely to not have been taught to engage in games etc that help them develop their emotional vocabulary the way girls have. What’s more, young people view things less black and white, and are more likely to ask questions, therefore, there’s much we could learn! I’m sure we can all agree that the more we strengthen the social impact of co-ops, the more we strengthen the co-op movement. It’s a long way off, and the option might not be in recruiting younger members, but I think there is plenty of potential there to be found just by providing a supportive space for personal development.

I realise I’ve gone on a bit, so in summary, I think sociocracy is much closer to democracy than structurelessness where natural hierarchies can easily form and where people don’t know what they are accountable for. Structurelessness removes autonomy and creates massive inefficiencies. I’m a believer of the idea that if a proposal doesn’t have the backing of everyone, in the end, it will never reach its full potential and so neither will the business. I don’t think we have the resources to fully develop EI within Greencity but I think we need to do our best to provide the best framework for some kind of organic development. It won’t be perfect but it’s better than doing nothing. I’m personally motivated by the social impact sociocracy could have on communities.

great contribution Kirsty. in my experience EI (emotional intelligence) is best developed in practice. at suma trial members have to interact wirh diffreent people and how they interact, what worked, what didnt, wht they are going to do aboit that, is discussed in their reviews. pitting people on the spot breaks through the defences.

Thank you @bobcan . I think it’s great Suma provide this level of guidance to trial members but I would worry that new members might feel older members aren’t taking the same approach or being actively encouraged to. With the best will in the world, if a new member is trying their hardest to work with others and be a supportive colleague, if older members don’t appear to be working with the same courtesy, a year down the line the new member will slowly develop the traits of the longer serving members or simply leave. More so an issue if the number of older members disproportionately outweighs the newer members.

Do you know of any co-ops who consciously strive to have a balance of newer & older members within their ‘management’ teams or working groups? I think this is essential to prevent the creation of a mono-culture. Having a group of people who have all worked within any business for a long period of time making the majority of collective decisions is completely devaluing the resources available. Creating circles with a balanced mix of older and newer members would, in my opinion, provide better experience/skill sharing to hopefully circumvent complacency and encourage those who are very comfortable in their surroundings to maintain a professional approach and not lapse into uncooperative behaviours. I think this is an issue we have to be very conscious of when designing our governance structures given the long service provided by so many co-op members.

That's a really good point and question Kirsty. I think getting a good balance of newer and older members is also important for making sure that established (or taken for granted) practices, behaviour and values can be challenged.

Outlandish has three concentric circles of participation: collaborator (freelancer), Outlander (freelancer but more committed and the step before membership) and member.
After a 10 day trial we do an onboarding session and invite the collaborator to join a circle of their choice if they wish. They're open for participation and we think it provides good insight of how we work and represents what we communicate to people: if you think something doesn't work well, please suggest and help us fix it (the caveat is that people don't always want to participate, whichhhnis fine, but at least we know we've encouraged it).
We used to have a weekly member meeting solely for members - l thought this was quite isolating and it's since changed to members and Outlanders, and any collaborators can join if they want to know more. It's important for Outlanders to know what we speak about/deal with before s/he becomes a member and owner of the business so this is a good opportunity. It's probably where most of our sociocracy takes place, so it also serves as training in a sense.

HEY GUYS!! It would help if we put a title on our contributions so its obvious what we are responding to or new topic starting, please

Balance of New and Old Members. reply to Kirsty
yes some new members LFA (learn from annie - an HR concept where newbies are buddied up with the oldest worker - annie- who teaches them the job and all the ways to evade and avoid 'the rules' too. But the Suma system is so flexible that 'If you can do it, you can do it'. Trial members are on the management committee or function coordinators or project coordinators before they are formally members, because they can do it and everyone can see that. Because inexperienced and qualified young people can be supported by experienced 'learned on the job' colleagues. eg a newly qualified logistics graduate who became the 'transport manager' before he was a member (because the old one left suddenly) because he was supported by massively experienced colleagues (who didnt know the new ways of doing logistics). In a cooperative team best of all worlds.

The circles etc are all very well but many people are super practical and want to learn on the job and we need to find ways to help them cooperate while they are doing that ( before their naive enthusiasm and motivation is worn down by the daily grind and workload). The transport manager situation was mutual dependence, the new guy needed his older buddies political pragmatism as much as they needed his technical knowledge. Im not sure they would have been prepared to sit in circles, well I know they wouldnt, I tried to get drivers and warehouse workers to 'think before they acted', total failure. 'Fluffy nonsense Bob! Work to be done!'

So in the wonderful world of sociocracy how can the activities of sociocracy be integrated into the work being done so it doesnt look like 'oh god, more work, this time its not even productive work!.

No apologies necessary, @kirilangmead3 , I've been enjoying the discussion even if it is slightly above my head because I hope very much to be able to contribute to the discussion once I've got some practical experience under my belt!

@peteburden , I think I could offer access to a paid Zoom account. I think the tier we'd need would only be £12 a month, so in the first instance I could pay that up front. In the longer term I think it might be a useful exercise to use Zoom+sociocracy to devise something more cooperative (I'm imagining something a bit like SolidFund, with participants chipping in a few pounds per session).

Turning to your questions... I'm a (fairly recent) member of a worker co-op (Greencity). Over the past few years we've doubled in size, to around 50 members, and are finding that meetings with 50 participants are less effective than smaller meetings! Decisions seem to take "too long" and tend to be quite heated. My feeling is that plain old consensus decision making doesn't scale too well, and there comes a point where the tyranny of structurelessness definitely comes into play. I'm all too aware of my loud, male voice and mindful that if left unchecked a few voices like mine will come to dominate decision making.

At the Worker Co-op Weekend two colleagues ( @natalyanicol and @kirstywarren ) attended sessions on sociocracy and have been staunch advocates for learning more about it. I don't know if sociocracy is the best possible solution to Greencity's decision making needs, but I do know we need to start thinking about solutions rather than complaining about problems! I believe practicing sociocracy with other worker co-operators, in a setting that's removed from day-to-day business, will give us the best chance to (a) learn sociocracy, (b) decide whether it's a good fit for our co-op, and (c) give us a good foundation for improving our decision-making processes. I think this will be the case for a number of worker co-ops - @abbiekempson , for example, mentioned that Unicorn is seriously looking at sociocracy, and I imagine as Unicorn increasingly adopts sociocracy there'll be a need for members to practice it outside work. And, of course, the more of us who have some experience with sociocracy, the better to understand how or if we could apply it to SolidFund!

Apologies I haven't had time to read the full thread (combination of annual leave and not much desk time). Hopefully not misunderstanding and jumping in at the wrong moment, but @johnn, I would very much like to set up / join in a zoom meeting with worker coop members interested in exploring sociocracy at a practical "what it could look like for us" level, and share Unicorn's journey with it so far. I'm lucky enough to have completed Sociocracy for All's introductory ELC curriculum with a group here (we're now the sociocracy implementation group), and I've taken part in SoFA's leadership training programme (SoLT), so feel reasonably well-versed in theory and practice. It's their version of classical sociocracy that we're exploring at Unicorn. We are planning on creating a zoom account anyway (it's been on my to do list for a little while!), so I could host if that helps.

I'm also keen to join @katewhittle 's initial suggestion of an online practice group, which as you say would be a very good method for gaining understanding and experience. I'm not sure if this is one and the same thing, or if there's appetite for a separate meeting to talk practicalities for how to start the process of exploring implementation in a worker coop? I mentioned to a few people at the Worker Co-op Weekend that I planned to do one or more zoom meetings for the latter. at some point this year.

Hi @abbiekempson - glad you're here :) Also sounds like you enjoyed the ELC and SoLT programmes?

Re: the online practice group,, I think it is the same thing, at least at the moment.

Offers of (paid) Zoom accounts are also very helpful. Thank you both.

@johnn re your reasons for wanting to explore Sociocracy that is really helpful. Particularly the points about scale, speed, things becoming 'heated', and the risk of some voices dominating - when trying to make decisions.

Can you perhaps say a little bit more about how you currently try to reach consensus? What's the process you normally use?

@peteburden - It's worth mentioning that at Greencity (and, I imagine, most other co-ops) decision-making takes place at more than one level - at Greencity the two tiers are (1) "Full members"/"General meetings" - ad-hoc and scheduled, respectively - consisting of most co-op members, probationers and staff, and (2) working groups, consisting of typically no more than 10 people.

For larger ("tier 1") meetings we have a chair (who largely has the role because they were the slowest to decline the position), usually a minute-taker, a rule that any proposal should have at least 75% support, and - and beyond that it's largely a bun-fight!

For smaller meetings there may not be a formal chair or minute-taker, but increasingly we're realising that there should be.

I'd describe our process as informal, structureless, loud, messy. I was surprised at first that we didn't use rounds, that people would talk over each other, etc. The current chair, however, does an amazing job of keeping some semblance of order and extracting consensus where possible out of competing voices.

However, as @kirstywarren mentions, it often feels that voting never ends. Instead of consensus being arrived at during the course of a meeting we'll have a heated debate, take a vote, arrive at no clear decision, then revisit the topic a week or two later. And this process directly involves a relatively small (loud, vocal) amount of the co-op, while other members get increasingly frustrated that they're being dragged away from their work to listen to us argue.

I don't mean this to sound too negative or overly critical - I honestly feel that this very informal approach may have worked very well in the past - when the co-op was smaller, and more people knew each other. It still works reasonably well for working groups. It seems to me to be a scaling problem - we've grown beyond the point where this approach works. We need to think about more moving to more structured forms of decision-making, and sociocracy seems like a good place to start on this journey.

@abbiekempson - I think I was thinking of a Zoom (or similar) to practice sociocracy, but the more I think about it the more I think it might be - for me at least - too soon, and that there would be very real value in exploring what sociocracy could look like, and hearing more about Unicorn's journey so far. Perhaps the best thing would simply be to schedule a meeting and see where it takes us?!

Thanks @peteburden I have really enjoyed both - the ELC programme gave us lots to think about and was really useful for learning by doing as we worked through the sociocratic tools / techniques it covered. We're still learning and trying things out in our implementation group. I very much enjoyed SoLT - definitely learned a lot, but more than anything it was fantastic being part of an online learning community of lovely people from all around the world!

@johnn I'd be very happy to do that - whether that's just a small number of us having an informal chat about how it's going here, or a more structured session with a bit of background on Unicorn's structure and decision-making, what we hope sociocracy will offer us in solving co-op communication / participation / engagement issues in a growing co-op, and some of our key learnings so far.

@johnn, Development Co-operative has a paid for Zoom account which members like Co-operative Business Consultants can use - so @bobcan might be able to arrange use by this group?

@martinmeteyard , many thanks - that's good to know. I think initially we'd be looking for a discussion with @abbiekempson about Unicorn's sociocracy journey, and Abbey's kindly offered Unicorn's Zoom account. But hopefully things will progress beyond that - I'm keen to see @katewhittle 's original suggestion of online practicing of sociocracy develop - and at that point if @bobcan could arrange for the "sociocracy practice group" to use the Development Co-op's Zoom account that would be really helpful.

I've been catching up on this thread this morning, really good to read it and see the mix of academic, theoretical and practical approaches :)
I wanted to share some learnings and thoughts about sociocracy because we've been using it for a number of years. I think it's amazing at facilitating decision making and it has brought so much to Outlandish, but there is a lot of ground work that needs to be considered alongside it. Other skills such as facilitation, listening, feeling empowered to speak up and being open to hearing a different point of view from your own are all fundamental. The key is mutual understanding that you have your co-op's best interest at heart (sometimes l think this can get a bit buried when there is a indepth discussion going on).
A lot of this echoes what @peteburden has said, which is no coincidence because he's taught me a lot. I think it's valuable to recognise that sociocracy plays a specific role in something much bigger. I was very glad to see people speaking about emotional intelligence :) l think there's an unspoken decision that each indivual takes, sometimes unconsciously, that s/he is going to get stuck in and participate.
Now and again there is what l call a 'militant sociocracy round' where we follow the process but not the theory. This is where the training and groundwork come in useful - speaking up and saying 'hey, this isn't how we do this' (with a smile).

Re: Titling conversations - yes, much-needed - I am finding the sub-threads easy to miss.

Re: Balance of New and Old Members, the context for Sociocracy

@kayleighwalsh that's great - I love the point about the unspoken decision to get stuck in and participate - plays beautifully to what I want to say.

@bobcan from your description of Suma I am really getting the importance of 'LFA' (buddying), including recognising the reality of evading/avoiding the rules (reminds me of Bourdieu) and peer-to-peer learning/support.

Also the importance of flexibility of roles - so people can take up any role they can practically do. And how you encourage on the job learning - people do stuff, and others can 'see' it, including being massively supported by colleagues if needed.

As you say, many people are super practical and want to learn on the job - so finding ways to help them cooperate - and not get 'cut off' from others before they are worn down by the workload - is also something Suma is striving for.

Your experience is also that drivers and warehouse workers can't be encouraged to 'think before they act', and they wouldn't sit in circles etc!

All of this makes terrific sense to me and I think probably goes a long way to answering your question. Which as I understand it is "how to integrate the activities of Sociocracy so that it doesn't look like more, and, worse, non-productive work?"

This is something that comes up very often in discussions of Sociocracy. I think, and everyone knows this too, that the answer is to do with 'culture' and 'climate'.

These are such easy words to say but so difficult to grasp in practice, I think. But culture and climate are so important in influencing how Sociocracy works (or doesn't!).

To illustrate, as I expect @kayleigh will agree, Action Learning has also been important at Outlandish alongside Sociocracy. I think Action Learning has helped a culture (continue to) emerge where it is OK to fail, to get things wrong, to be open, and most importantly to learn from others.

(For those who don't know about Action Learning I suggest starting by looking Reg Revans on Wikipedia).

Sometimes Action Learning is understood as a method of training or development. As I am sure you know, it involves encouraging people to try stuff out - to make little practical experiments - and reflect on the results with colleagues. It is used, for example, a lot in leadership development.

But personally I think it is much more than that - I think it is a philosophy of how to live and work, one which has similarities to Agile, to having an open mindset, to being mindful etc.

And I think it is really important that we don't confuse the procedural and structural elements of Sociocracy with the more contextual aspects of organising - the 'culture and climate', which includes attitudes to learning, openness etc.

By procedural, I mean, in particular, consent-based decision-making - rounds, knowing how to make proposals, learning the difference between a 'concern' and a 'critical concern' etc. By structural I mean 'circles', 'links', 'roles' etc.

We also need to be clear what we mean by the word 'Sociocracy' - is it the procedures, or the structure ? When people say 'we use Sociocracy' perhaps they mean the whole way of organising and getting things done?

Perhaps @kayleighwalsh and @abbiekempson can say how they see it in their respective coops. For me, Sociocracy is sometimes the whole thing, and sometimes the structure and the procedures - and it is important to remember that these are both affected by, and influence the whole.

For me, it is very important to think holistically about the whole organisation and it's culture - and to focus on the structure and procedures.

And it is also important to focus on the tiny individual interactions and communication behaviours - such as those that help us be more emotionally intelligent. That's why at the worker coop weekend I spent at least half the time we had on EI, not just the consent process, or the structure of Sociocracy.

It's why I think Action Learning is so helpful - because it helps a supportive culture for Sociocracy emerge.

As a practical example, 'Culture' obviously includes 'diversity', or perhaps better said the behaviours that produce 'inclusion' (the process by which different voices are included/not excluded in conversations).

Sociocracy (the structure and procedures) can help with this but a 'Sociocratic culture' is, in my view, one which raises awareness of the potential for a lack of inclusion (eg new and old members) and constantly works towards reducing it. This, of course, is probably one place where 'Cooperative values and skills and working' overlap with Sociocracy.

It's not just about awareness of course. Sometimes the word 'DoOcracy' is used to describe Outlandish. I think this signifies the emphasis on doing stuff - the 'Action' of 'Action Learning'. Because most activity - of course - doesn't happen in Circles or in formal roles - it's 'on the job'! The structure supports this, and the procedures are always available, if needed. But it's 'culture' and 'climate' - including attitudes and beliefs about things like learning, or as @kayleighwalsh said - the decision to get stuck in and participate - that make the difference.

Responding to @peteburden 's post 23/08/18
''Perhaps [[@kayleighwalsh]] and @abbiekempson can say how they see it in their respective coops. For me, Sociocracy is sometimes the whole thing, and sometimes the structure and the procedures - and it is important to remember that these are both affected by, and influence the whole.'' Yes I would agree, sometimes I'm referring to it as the process of consent-based decision making, but frequently I think of a much bigger thing - culture, structure and climate.
Some of the big wins with considering it a culture is the emphasis on open mindset, being solutions-focused, and also that the circles are linked so there is a clear communication organisation-wide, where members of circles overlap.

Wow! Wow and wow again! What a fantastically informative read. I’ve been taking a few weeks off, partly convalescence after a lung infection that hung around too long, partly good old summer hols. But back at my laptop now & raring to go.
Thank you all so much for some fascinating contributions. I’ve spent some time yesterday and today reading through and trying to think of the most useful and practical way to contribute.
It sounds like there’s a real appetite for us getting together to practice the concepts of Sociocracy online. There’ve been some great offers to host an action learning group on a paid for Zoom account – thanks @johnn & @martinmeteyard & @abbiekempson
Thanks also to @peteburden for offering to lead a few sessions.
I noted Pete’s question about what has attracted us to Sociocracy – maybe we could use that question as part of an intro session? I also noted the potential different interests of advisers and co-op members, again that question would be a useful starter.
& thanks to @jdaviescoates for the offer of access to your ‘Sociocracy shelf’ :thumbsup:
@bobcan ’s ‘how can the activities of sociocracy be integrated into the work being done so it doesn’t look like ‘oh god, more work, this time it’s not even productive work!’ is extremely pertinent. I have been able to recruit a local co-op I am working with to be my guinea pig for my action learning in this group. I will be working pro bono with them and applying my learning. My initial suggestion to them was that I won’t run any training, but will attend meetings at a variety of levels (working group meetings, whole team meetings) and will input whenever and however seems appropriate. I must add I know this co-op very well, so they are relaxed about how I will work with them and quickly agreed to my suggestion. We will see!
Great to hear from @abbiekempson – I’m so interested to know how Sociocracy is embedding in Unicorn.
How about we start with a session led by @abbiekempson & @kayleighwalsh (if they are in agreement) with both sharing their journey for the rest of us, so we can get a practical hands-on feel for how it has worked for them? Then the subsequent sessions could focus more on practical learning for us (I’d be happy to work with @peteburden to design say the first couple of sessions if that’s necessary and helpful).
I’m not sure that Loomio is adequate any more for what we need to share and learn from each other. Seems like there was some confusion with the different threads and sub-threads. (Although it made for interesting reading!) I think Zoom for meetings supported by Google docs for information sharing would be most effective.
Last but not least, I loved the contributions on Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Labour. I’ve often worked with co-ops where EL is not recognised and the person or people doing it just get exhausted and withdraw or leave. I sometimes use an exercise on task and process which is not quite the same thing but is useful for drawing people’s attention to the need for a balance between the two.
I’ll stop now. Shall we start thinking about dates in September? My diary is filling up!

Hi @katewhittle Sorry to hear you've not been well, hope you're feeling better. I'd be very happy to lead / co-lead an introductory session (with @kayleighwalsh if you'd like to?) sharing where we're up to at Unicorn. I'll get our zoom account sorted so we can use that.

I've put together a very basic introductory , practice-based training that I've used with members here, that I think could be useful as part of this mix - or as a separate (complementary) zoom session for worker co-op members wanting to explore the basics of sociocracy and what it could look like in a worker co-op.

Thanks Abbie. Yes I am much better now. That would be wonderful. I'm inclined to wait until we hear from our resident sociocracy guru @peteburden but I'm hoping we can get started this month. :slight_smile:

Re: dates for an introductory session, I'm free next Friday 14th, Monday the 17th or Monday the 24th. Hopefully that works for some people (I can send out a doodle but thought I'd take a chance and see how it goes here first).

Glad you're better @katewhittle and hope everyone else has had a good week.

Lovely summary@katewhittle . I am very happy to contribute as you suggest, by looking at designing the first few sessions? Or maybe we do that collaboratively with @abbiekempson using the design Abbie's developed as a template? What do you think Abbie?

Also love the idea of a little context as an intro from Abbie and Kayleigh. As long as we get into practice as soon as humanly possible!

The main difficulty with these things always seems to be agreeing dates :) So maybe we should just seize on what @kayleighwalsh suggested and get started!! I have some time free on all those days.

Hi @peteburden and @kayleighwalsh. I could do Monday 24th (if after 2pm) and probably Friday 14th. Monday 17th is out for me as it's our members meeting. And I'm very happy to talk through / share my training plan and see if it could be recycled into sessions for this.

Fri 14th (this Friday!) is Co-op Culture's annual Member face to face strategy day and at least 3 if not 4 of us want to participate in this so appreciate if it wasn't Fri 14th

PS even if there are such things as gurus, I am definitely not one of them! :)

Re: dates for an introductory session

How about Monday 24th 2-3.30pm? That way it gives everyone else a heads up to get the time in their diary, let us know what people want to ask, and gives @abbiekempson and @peteburden and I an opportunity to have a quick chat about how we're going to approach it?

Whose Zoom are we using?

Thanks all

Re: whose Zoom - I'd mentioned that I'd be happy to cover Zoom to kickstart proceedings, and @abbiekempson mentioned that Unicorn had an account we could use. However, @martinmeteyard mentioned that "Development Co-operative has a paid for Zoom account which members like Co-operative Business Consultants can use - so @bobcan might be able to arrange use by this group?"

Works for me

Great, thanks for organising this, very much looking forward to it.

Would 2.30pm start be possible? If not that's ok as I can do 2pm - I'm delivering a full morning sociocracy training session until 1.30pm so may be a little frazzled! We can use Unicorn's zoom.

Brilliant! Many thanks @abbiekempson @kayleighwalsh & @peteburden . I can do 24th 2.30 - 4pm (?) This is all beyond the call of duty! You are all stars. Really looking forward to it. :clap:

Just adding my voice to the chorus of "you are all awesome"! 2:30 on the 24th is ideal for me, and I'll alert other Greencity members too. Thanks Abbie, Kayleigh and Pete!

I've been ignoring this thread due to hols and then lots of other work stuff crowding in, but remain keen to learn. Count me in for the 24th, although I do have an earlier unmovable appointment on that day and so can't guarantee I'll be there on time.

Count me in too!

Wow, S3 people are incorporating Agile and Beyond Budgeting into Sociocracy 3. see
https://www.agilebossanova.com/ This is a major development. Budget based financial control destroys democracy and agility, hence Beyond Budgeting ( and even the use of charity standards of reporting practice SORP for cooperatives) to enshrine 'for purpose' rather than 'for profit' financial strategy. S3 strips out the more mechanistic aspects of sociocratic circle method (and a lot of the complications of classic sociocracy ie fewer 'patterns') and makes it more about Human Relating (my obsession of course). Agile as most know is a developmental model of project management which has largely replaced the old hierarchical methods like PRINCE.
So this is really 'getting there' in formulating organisational coordination methods fit for modern situations (VUCA environment - volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) and people who reject the old sh*t but arent sure what new sh*t they want, so need some structure to lean on.
I'm pretty frustrated bcos I was promoting AGILE over PRINCE and Beyond Budgeting over orthodox financial management in 2004 and being ridiculed for it. Hey ho...

a webinar on BOSSA nova https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bossa-nova-an-unrecipe-for-thinking-outside-the-box-with-beyond-budgeting-open-space-sociocracy-tickets-49597947797

Hi, I've been following the thread at a distance but would be really keen to join the call next Monday, 24th. I've been reading a lot about the topic and trying to implement a mix of different processes in our organisation, but without any previous experience. So, it would be great to learn from other people who have been practising it for a long time!

I can't speak for Abbie, Kayleigh or Pete but I don't think there's any limit to who can participate. For what it's worth I've not - and none of my Greencity colleagues have - been practicing sociocracy at all! I've been reading a lot (less than some of my colleagues, I suspect!) but I'm not anywhere near implementation! So you'll be ahead of us in that respect!

Hi all, we can use Unicorn's zoom for the meeting next Monday. I've finally sorted out our account. Just click this link at 2.30pm on 24th to go to the zoom room: https://zoom.us/j/6661887480

@katewhittle @peteburden @kayleighwalsh Should I start a new thread to advertise it in case it's a bit buried in this one? I find I get a bit lost in long Loomio threads, not sure if that's just me (quite possibly!)

Sure thing @abbiekempson

Yes please, Abbie, good idea, thanks!

Thanks for sorting this. I'll be there.

Well that was a bit of a roller coaster technologically - thank you so much everyone for coming. Abbie is going to post something about next steps. Meanwhile don't you just love Microsoft :)

@peteburden At least it had the manners to tell you - mine just froze and refused to respond! Hope it's fixable.

thank you Abbie, Kayleigh and Pete. Very interesting and useful.

Thanks again everyone for coming to the session. I'm not sure what's next but maybe people can share thoughts / ideas here and we can see where that goes. I'll share the questions and recording asap. Zoom says it's 'processing' the recording, so hopefully it will work!

Many thanks to you too Abbie! I thought it was a hugely useful and enjoyable session. It may not have been obvious (as I did all the talking for Greencity) but there were six people from Greencity attending. And yes, in future we'll need to find a way to avoid having me hog the laptop... And several people who couldn't participate but who would very much like to see the video when it's finished processing.

Personally, I'd like to complete Pete's proposal session, learn more about sociocracy in smaller teams, and keep practicing in a supportive group so that I'm ready when we start making proposals to the wider co-op. And, although it's maybe a little too soon to be so ambitious, I'd like to consider Kate's original idea that sociocracy be considered for SolidFund governance.

Thanks @johnn Have you thought about getting the six of you together to follow SoFA's Empowered Learning Circle curriculum? http://www.sociocracyforall.org/elc/
It's by donation and relatively inexpensive if you go for the option with a coach supporting you, which is what we did. It's a mixture of theory and practical exercises so you really get to learn how it works. We highly recommend it.

That's not something that we've thought about, but obviously we will now - I remember seeing that you'd done it, but without really knowing the details. @kirstywarren is drawing up a plan for our group's study, I'll make sure she's aware of this option - thank you!

(Apologies, @abbiekempson , that should have been a reply to your comment above)

On the question a few of us raised about 'the difference between sociocracy and consensus done well', I just found this article, which I think offers a clear explanation: https://www.cohousing.org/node/2610

The short version: "Sociocracy and consensus are not opposite things. Sociocracy is based on consensus decision-making. Consensus is a decision-making method. Sociocracy is a governance method. Sociocracy establishes a structure for using consensus to make policy decisions (the planning and leading) and operations (the doing)."

I learned a lot from cohousing people. Excellently experienced and thought out cooperative team building. People first and then finance once the people are cooperating. Just what I like. The best writer on intentional communities, very practical but well versed in theory, I think is Diana Leafe Christian. She has videos about Sociocracy on YouTube, Ive just discovered.

Another is Starhawk who wrote The Empowerment Manual : A Guide for Collaborative Groups, one of the best manuals of practical cooperation. Based on her experience in intentional cohousing communities in the USA. Its available on t'internet for free.

Bob

Yes, they have many similarities and also differences. When people say they are opposites I think they are usually referring to the difference: that for many people consensus implies seeking a situation where everyone agrees; whereas consent works by seeking a situation where no one disagrees (enough to stop someone acting)?

In my mind sociocracy is a structure, a method of governance and a decision making process. It's also in my mind a way of behaving (a culture).

thanks all for your words that I'm reading with interest, following the call.

That's a very common misunderstanding of consensus that you mention Pete, when it gets equated with unanimity. There are problems with seeking unanimity, and it can enable brow-beating, like what was called 'militant sociocracy' on the call :laughing: I think there might be more similarities in culture and process than we might think :wink:

For more about these issues, take a look (& do please comment) at http://rhizome.coop/consensus-decision-making-what-it-is-and-what-it-is-not/

If an organisation or network uses consensus decision-making, the question for me then is how to make that work at scale, and that's where the structure and governance come in. One good option is sociocracy.

Hi @adamfromrhizome - very well said.

As so often, the difficulty is perhaps that people see the world differently and interpret words in their own way.

Perhaps it would be better to throw away words like consent and consensus and come up with new terms that don't come with popular associations! But then there is also value in asking "what do you mean by xxxx?"! If out of that comes more understanding.

PS I very much like your descriptions on the rhizome website - lots of similarities!

By the way here are the topics that probably need further exploration - generated by the group on the 24th https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M2m2_yXUtIGt8c9l_SMVDEy2vWCb7dUJtQ0dODDviAM/edit?usp=drivesdk

Thanks @peteburden & @abbiekempson for these notes, I hadn't realised they were there. I'll read & inwardly digest before our next session. :slight_smile:

I have started to add some comments to clarify the questions, and may start to add some answers too.

Hi everyone,
I posted this on the other thread on Weds, reposing here in case it was missed. Hope it's helpful to do that and not just spamming you all with the same long message!
.........................
I didn’t get any time yesterday, but here’s a follow-up from Monday’s session.

The Sociocracy for All article I mentioned is this one, ABCDE of Culture Change

The zoom recording is here:
Zoom (temporary) recording
Unicorn google-drive recording
Unfortunately it’s too large a file to live in the zoom cloud without us paying lots more cash to keep it there, so I’ve had to upload it to Unicorn’s google drive in the expectation that zoom will delete it soon - when you access it it may need me to give you permission, so apologies if there’s a delay. I've downloaded it to a pc in case this doesn't work.
I did consider accidentally deleting it as it’s recorded in speaker view rather than gallery view (I was sure I’d set it to that and will make sure next time), but I resisted!

It seemed like there was a lot of interest in a second session. I’m happy to take part in that and we can use Unicorn’s zoom again. Pete, perhaps you should lead the session for a practical exercise and debrief this time? If time at the end a discussion on people’s ideas for what next?

Some questions posed that I didn’t get to answer in the session:

How does the interface between sociocratic teams and the rest of the co-op work?
The Veg circle, which is comprised of the coordinators and delegates for each sub-circle sends its delegate to our Forum. In this way it’s not much different to our other teams who send a rep to Forum meetings - the feedback system is a little different and veg now have their own newsletter which is circulated to all sub-circles to ensure everyone’s in the loop with Forum.

In other teams we’ve started introducing elements of sociocracy such as open selections process rather than secret ballot elections for team overviews, so this is a mix of old and new (overview rather than coordinator and delegate, but an opportunity to try out the sociocratic method). We’ve also added in other complementary elements such as using rounds in some meetings.

Our intention is to bring a proposal to the co-op to go for a full transition to sociocracy rather than a phased introduction team by team, but we’re seeing a phased introduction of tools and techniques as more members attend our training sessions and want to take things back to their teams.

I’m sure there will be bumps in the road, but we’re hoping that there’s so much commonality with what we do now it won’t be too difficult. We’ll see!

How does the People circle work in Veg vis-a-vis HR team?
The Veg people circle does cover some HR functions, and it is working with support from our Personnel team (onee of whom is a member of our sociocracy implementation group), but its remit is fairly broad and is a crossover between HR and training and H&S etc. Its domains are: addressing team training needs, induction of probationers, looking at staffing needs and liaising with our Ops Planning team as needed, looking at the spread of roles and responsibilities held across the circles, working on role descriptions, thinking about well-being and H&S.

Team sizes
Our existing teams vary from four people to around 25. The ideal sociocratic circle size is 4 to 7, so our redesign proposal will work towards that, but with some flexibility based on the type of team and its levels of decision-making versus operational stuff (based on consultation with members and support from SoFA).

How self-managing is the system, will it take a lot of time input (tricky in co-ops without a lot of management time)?
For us this remains to be seen. For some things hopefully it will be a quick learning process and easy integration of new methods, for others I think there will need to be quite a bit more support and help to embed them. Ultimately though we believe sociocracy is adaptable to needs and wants of particular groups, so if we can help people move into the consent and equal voice culture, hopefully strict adherence to the sociocratic rules won’t be such an issue.

What are the workload implications for sub-circles and the time cost of the roles?
We are very much still working this out, but we hope that our current meeting system with large teams coming together fortnightly will balance with smaller circle-based groups perhaps needing a little more time to work well. E.g. the veg meeting was 20+ member hours a fortnight depending on attendance, the circles are using the same amount of time but are creating space for much more active management and progress on team goals. So that should be a net gain for the co-op. We have learned that embedding the new roles is taking a little time, and giving people support to fully understand and start implementing the coordinator, delegate, secretary and facilitator roles is an initial time investment.

What’s the difference between consent and consensus done well / done in smaller groups?
I don’t think I have a very clear answer to this yet on a practical basis, I’m definitely still learning, and we think our version of consensus at Unicorn is very similar to consent. The crucial difference for us though is that we ask ‘can you live with this proposal’ in consensus, and invite people’s personal preferences and opinions into play, in consent we ask ’can you work with this proposal / would accepting this proposal hinder us doing our work together to meet our stated aims?’ - that leads us more into range of tolerance than personal preference, and actively accepting reasoned objections. In consensus, objections can lead to blocks and stalling something because it’s not perfect, whereas in consent we’re looking for ‘good enough for now, safe enough to try’ to push something into action. If we don’t try we don’t know. So if there are objections, we’re asking what could go wrong if we do this? Let’s figure out how we measure that and see if these things do indeed happen, then we can reassess and try something else if we need to.

What about Policy?
I’ve forgotten the exact question here, but in case it’s useful I’ve copied and pasted from our in-house training guide on sociocracy to outline the difference between circle policy and Unicorn policy.
In sociocracy, all circles make policy to set guidelines for how they do their work. It’s quite different to how we define and understand policy at the moment:

Policy at Unicorn
A written document establishing a course of action, principle or rule of conduct proposed and approved by all members during a general meeting. The purpose of a policy is not to iron out the details of day-to-day operation. Rather, a policy will:

• shape and develop the co-operative
• protect members or Unicorn
• define workers’ rights or entitlements, or
• put a specific area of Unicorn’s ethics into practice.

Circle policy is about creating agreements to help with how the circle is organised, and for operational work e.g. for when x happens, we do z. The purpose is twofold: firstly it’s about clarity, so everyone knows what’s agreed and expected for the work we do together, and secondly it’s to save time, by making ‘bulk decisions’ that cover what to do every time x happens (e.g. dealing with a specific delivery, or common customer complaint), rather than dealing with x individually on every occasion it arises, and bringing the discussion of how it was/should be dealt with to the meeting each time.

Thanks Abbie, that is fantastic, you are going way beyond the call of duty! :slight_smile:

Hi All. This webinar may be of interest: 'Insider view on decision making. Experiences of Dynamic Governance (Sociocracy) in Pioneer Valley Cohousing' run by Sociocracy for all.
(https://www.eventbrite.com/e/insider-view-on-decision-making-experiences-of-dynamic-governance-in-pioneer-valley-cohousing-tickets-50421935366?mc_cid=e088cc2ef4&mc_eid=b805bfa838)

Thanks Kiri, I saw this too & signed up for it. 12 noon in Boston is 5pm here, right?

I think it’s 4pm because the clocks go back end October. I’ve also signed up.

oh yes indeed, I got my 'summer time ends' mixed up with my 'daylight saving time ends' :laughing:

Looks interesting @kirilangmead3 - thanks.

Btw here's an interesting new book from John Buck (author of "We the People" - one of the best books on Sociocracy, IMHO).

'Bossa nova - Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy: Survive & Thrive on Disruption'

Looks like they are trying to connect up a number of approaches to help with creating more agile orgs.

From my perspective (Organisational Development - which is largely methodologically neutral) - this makes a quite a bit of sense.

From the blurb:

'Many experts are looking into implementing company-wide Agility. Yet, they work from one perspective. For example: 

A Beyond Budgeting expert might say, "Stop fixing the budget annually, because otherwise you won't have the flexibility to react to frequent market changes."

An Open Space expert might say, "You need to make space for what you don’t know and can’t control, for totally new things to emerge. If people can follow their passion, you will be able to implement company-wide Agility, otherwise people will just do what they are asked."

A Sociocracy expert might say, "You first need to resolve the power structure, because as long as you have a hierarchy defined as top-down you will not become agile."

An Agile expert might say, "You need to start inspecting and adapting by using regular retrospectives in order to react flexibly, otherwise you will neither be able to learn from the market nor from within your company."

All of these perspectives are true, but the perspective is always from within the discipline. Our new perspective synthesizes these approaches and invites you to take a new, overview perspective that can truly address the challenges of doing business in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.'

(In other words always be cautious with 'experts'!)

https://leanpub.com/bossanova

(Thanks Martin and Francois from Caterfly.co.uk for the heads up about the book.)

There's a website also with a load of vids etc. at https://www.agilebossanova.com

thnx Graham

@katewhittle, @kayleighwalsh, @abbiekempson and I have talked and we'll be running a followup session to the one on the 24th September on Friday 19th October at 2pm - 330.

We'll try to complete the run through of the decision-making process that we started last time. And if there's time gather and answer more questions.

Please also take a look at the questions and answers from last time https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M2m2_yXUtIGt8c9l_SMVDEy2vWCb7dUJtQ0dODDviAM/edit?usp=drivesdk.

Hope to see you.

@abbiekempson - can you confirm the Zoom link again - Thx.

Pete

Thanks Pete! :pray:

Thanks @peteburden The session can be joined using this zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/444762701

Thanks Abbie!

Just a reminder that tomorrow afternoon - Friday 19th October at 2pm until 330 we'll be running a second session on Sociocracy - where we will try to do a (demo) run-through of making a decision by consent.

I think this is one of the most useful aspects of Sociocracy - and, as we discussed, probably an attitude as well as a practical process that we can use together.

I am hoping @abbiekempson and @kayleighwalsh will be helping me with the reaction rounds etc. The Zoom link is above and here https://zoom.us/j/444762701

It would be great to know if you're planning to be there. All welcome!

I hope to attend.

I'm aiming to be there, but will need to drop out at 3 as I need to get my daughter from school.

My colleague Fiona will be representing Greencity, however me and @kirstywarren are both hoping to be around, possibly sitting in and taking notes.

Yes I will be there, thanks for the reminder @peteburden :thumbsup:

Great - Please note we are starting at 2 not 2:30 (as last time).

apologies all for blobbing, a bob diary malfunction

Thanks everybody for coming along yesterday. It felt a bit bumpy at times - which I think was largely to do with using zoom. Good experiment though - we learnt a lot.

One thing I wanted to acknowledge specifically were the questions about 'critical concerns'. As @abbiekempson said they use a different formulation at Unicorn. I personally like the form 'do you have any critical concerns?' because the question asks me to look inside myself and try to sense whether I do or not.

Sometimes people talk about 'is this a proposal you can live with?' Or a way to grasp this is can I give this my full support if we (as a group) decide this is the best way into action?

For me it is more of a 'felt sense', than anything else.

Thank you Pete (and @abbiekempson and @kayleighwalsh ). The Greencity views on bumpiness were split - @kirstywarren had participated in sociocratic rounds at the WCW and felt the bumps; Fiona and I were both newbies and didn't. So I suspect you're right about Zoom. I agree we learnt a lot, and important stuff too given that @katewhittle first started this discussion with a view to using sociocracy with Solidfund. I think Greencity need to practice face-to-face, to learn that "felt sense" you mention, but I feel more confident that we can in the future apply sociocracy online as well.

Some of you will know that I have finally sent emails out inviting worker coop HR workers to join a CoopHR group. To share experience, ideas, contacts etc.
There will be support from Nottongham Business School HR department who are researching 'HR without management authority'.
We talked about it at the WCW.
At first this will be a group email until decision what platform to use.
If you want to be part of this group please send me your preferred email, to bob@cbc.coop.
Im getting it together until we can decide how to properly organise.
See you,
Bob

I guess it's because I'm a newbie that I felt it was fine. I certainly learnt a lot. Although it seemed to me a rather 'forensic' examination of the different concerns, which I suspect a group new to sociocracy might find frustrating. Especially a group with heavy workloads and on the lower end of the payscale. It would be important to have everyone on board trusting that once we've got the hang of it, exploring people's different concerns would be smoother. Thanks a lot to @peteburden @kayleighwalsh and @abbiekempson

I think that's a very good point @katewhittle. There is definitely something about adapting the process to the people using it, in terms of adjusting the questions/explanation etc. A good way to get a feel for this is probably just to watch different groups doing it. I guess a group of gene scientists might use different language from assembly line workers (although my view, of course, is that all people and groups can equally express their consent or dissent in the right circumstances, and that we can actively support that by becoming more aware of our own personal tendencies to suppress opportunities for dissent. )

Thanks for the session, and apologies for having to drop out before the end of the meeting. One thing that I found interesting, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it, is that it felt as if, although @kayleighwalsh had made the proposal, having done so the proposal became the property of the group very quickly. Yes, Kayleigh responded to clarifying questions, but once alternative proposals began being put forward, there appeared to be no questions along the lines of "Kayleigh, having made the original proposal, would you be comfortable with this new version which is different?", i.e. she no longer had ownership of the issue. Of course everyone, including Kayleigh, had the opportunity to express their views about any alternative proposal suggested, but her unique position as the instigator was apparently lost. (I think @katewhittle mentioned something to this effect in the discussion, and of course having missed the end it may have been picked up on further).

Is it a good thing? I'm not sure. On the whole I tend to think that it is a good thing, and that ownership of the issue effectively becomes shared. On the other hand I can envisage a scenario where a potentially much more complex proposal is put forward, one that has required a good deal of work to develop (not wishing to play down Kayleigh's proposal, which was well crafted given the purpose of the discussion), and I wonder whether in that scenario the same approach would apply, or whether the proposer/owner of the proposal would have had more of an influential role in the discussion. Not sure if I'm making myself clear with this, so apologies for that, but if this is making sense I'd be interested in others' thoughts on this.

Thanks @peteburden and @kayleighwalsh for the session, and to everyone who came along :)

A few of us stayed on the call to discuss follow-up options. We'd like to propose a third session, but this time as a meeting to talk about what people would like to do to take this forward rather than a delivered session. So the agenda will be more fluid, but the aim will be to have a series of rounds sharing where we all are with sociocracy (what we're doing already in our co-ops, what we're hoping to do etc), and then to explore ideas for an online practitioners forum of some sort.

Depending on time and numbers we may use a sociocratic approach for proposal shaping in groups, or we may decide to set up a meeting shortly afterwards specifically to do that.

Meeting 3 Doodle Poll - please fill in by Friday 26th.

Thanks,
Abbie

@graham2 @katewhittle @johnn Following on from your posts about group ownership, bumps with the process, and timescales etc, I thought I'd share in a bit more detail how we're learning to do this at Unicorn. As I started to say during our session on Friday, we take quite a difference approach to consent decision-making, as taught to us by Sociocracy For All. There are definitely some big similarities in process, but some key differences too. For us it's about being action focused, moving things along as quickly as possible so we can learn by trying things out, i.e. the "good enough for now, safe enough to try" continuous learning approach. A brief outline of the method we're using/learning:
1) Clarification questions - is there anything you need to ask to understand the proposal as written?
2) Quick reactions - what comes up for you about the proposal?
3) Consent - answered in the positive i.e. 'consent' 'yes' 'happy' 'ok' .. OR 'I have an objection'
4) Hear objections in turn - they must be reasoned objections related to the aim of the circle (I think perhaps for us the 'felt sense' approach is more our current consensus model). For objections we ask - if the proposal is passed, how could it impede us working together to meet our agreed aim(s)? Everything is based on the shared, mutually agreed (mutually consented to) aim or aims.

In this way objections are owned by the whole group once aired. It shouldn't be a negative thing to object, it should be embraced as a positive - a way to further improve the proposal and to ensure we reach 'good enough and safe enough' as smoothly and quickly as we can. There are three key steps to resolution of objections:
1) Look for small, easy amendments within the spirit of the proposal, quickly retest for consent
2) Shorten the term - if 6 months isn't safe enough to try, would trying it for 3 months feel safer?
3) Measure the concern (often in conjunction with two) - what do you think could go wrong if we implement the proposal? Let's figure out a way to measure if that happens and a review date to see if it has happened or not.

I love (at the moment anyway, it's all still new and shiny for us!) the spirit of moving things forward and trying something out to find out if it works or not, rather than discussing at length what may or may not happen if we agree to x.

I certainly appreciate, as @graham2 asks, that for more complex proposals stemming from considerable individual work, the outline I've sketched above may take loner to work through, and may have more personal feelings embedded for the person bringing the proposal. However, if the proposal is of this nature, I'd expect / hope it would stem from some collective work using the sociocratic proposal shaping methods, even if then taken away and progressed by one or two people.

Hope that all makes sense!

Thanks Abbie!

Is there a recording of the last session? Sorry I couldn't make it

@abbiekempson @graham2 @johnn

Hi Abbie - I see the similarities - in the process for example - but I am not so sure about the differences.

Certainly for me, my experience of this (and it goes way back beyond ever discovering Sociocracy to agile forms for working in companies I was involved in the 80s and 90s) is the idea of being action-focussed - iterating fast, and learning from error. (The theory for this is probably Stacey's complex responsive process which asks us to 'take complexity serious' - we cannot accurately predict the future or control it - therefore the sensible thing to do is iterate and experiment!)

And I also believe deeply in a good enough approach. I tried to make this point - that @kayleigh or any proposer has put forward a proposal because they have energy for it. What we don't want is a dampening of that energy - which typically arises when arguments start - just watch the two sides of the house of commons baying at each other and purging their useful energy that way, and in fruitless outrage, rather than getting on and trying stuff!

We seem to agree on clarification and quick reactions. In terms of asking for consent, I think I am asking the same question but in a slightly different way. What I am trying to do is to take into account people's ability to learn to express their felt-sense. Personally I have often in board meetings had that experience of knowing I didn't want to support something but being unable to say why (maybe this is the result of my own peculiar way of processing reality!). One of the things I like about the proposal becoming a shared proposal @graham2 is that often other people are able to express concerns in the dialogue which surrounds it - concerns that I or others may have had but may not be able to put into words.

In terms of the three key steps to resolution you propose @abbiekempson these are exactly the same ones I would usually suggest as a facilitator. That was a 'bumpy' bit in the demo and it didn't really seem like we had time, or something. But @marksimmonds made an example of 1) I think. And 2) - turning the project into a 'pilot' very often seems to me to be a quick way of gaining consent on even a very complicated proposal. I also agree 3) 'measuring' (or I would say seeking feedback) is a great way to reduce anxiety - which of course is always there when something new is introduced.

Again compare and contrast with some of the large 'decisions' that are forced through while still badly thought out - OK you can't 'pilot' everything - But i think you can nearly always find some practical next steps that will move the initiative forward (often these having the side benefit of involving those who are unsure in the learning and experimentation - which can also go a long way to resolving concerns in practice).

I also completely agree that the aim is to get everyone behind the proposal. So while @kayleigh had brought it forward - I would say as voice for the broader group - implementing it is going to be a responsibility of the group and therefore everyone's real buy-in (not some false facipulated (facilitated/manipulated) version) is necessary.

Again my love of consent in this regard comes from practice. I have been in too many meetings where the HIPPO's (highest paid person's) opinion drives 'agreement' only to push disagreement underground, where it inevitably surfaces later as sabotage in serious or minor forms (like simply not supporting the implementation).

Sometimes people offer 'can you live with the proposal?' as a way of helping determine what is meant by consent but on reflection I would suggest this is probably too weak - a better question to ask yourself might be 'can you actively support this proposal?' - in the sense of definitely not get in the way and preferably enable it (by removing blocks) and best of all actively assist it into implementation.

Hope that helps
Pete

Not all projects can be broken down into small iterative steps. Relocation, chenging the computer system, buying big capital goods, even employing an extra worker (in small coops) are all or nothing steps.
Im interested how such decisions can be done in a gradualist, iterative, organic way.
Of course old style hierachical culture practised all or nothing. Force through a big decision and recruit allies while disabling opposition. So old style project management techniques were fitted to this culture eg PRINCE, and are more about enforcing control than doing the job itself. IMO

Hi @bobcan

@abbiekempson listed three ways to work with proposals. There are more - because this is fundamentally a creative process involving a group of people.

"1) Look for small, easy amendments within the spirit of the proposal, quickly retest for consent
2) Shorten the term - if 6 months isn't safe enough to try, would trying it for 3 months feel safer?
3) Measure the concern (often in conjunction with two) - what do you think could go wrong if we implement the proposal? Let's figure out a way to measure if that happens and a review date to see if it has happened or not"

Personally, I think all the things you mention can be approached iteratively, from the point of view of making a group decision. Even something that appears unitary - like hiring someone is actually a series of steps - assess the available budget, define the role, write the job description, sound out recruitment agencies etc. So from the point of view of getting a decision that everyone can agree to, the group might not want to sign up to hiring. But they might agree to some of those steps.

We can also vary what we mean by hire someone. For example, how long is the probation period, is this a permanent or temporary contract.

So we as a group might agree to write and publish a job description but measure how many replies we get before deciding whether or not to proceed.

Relocation is a really difficult one - that would require real creativity to come up with some intermediate steps. Anyone? :)

I think that a relocation (or other critical decision) would
require a deal of research to inform that decision. That research
could be the basis of an iterative approach using - agreeing scope
of research (membership of sub-group perhaps), reviewing initial
findings, agreeing further research (repeat as required), drawing
up series of options, testing with whole group.

Hi everyone, sorry for going quiet - rushed off my feet at the moment. Thanks for filling in the doodle poll. Unfortunately there's no date that works for everyone, but lots of us seem to be free for Weds 7th November so I'd like to suggest we go for that, starting at 1.30pm rather than 2pm (so we finish in time for those that need to leave at 3pm).

Hope that's ok.

Thanks so much for organising us Abbie. I should be able to make it, might be a bit late if the GP's running late! I've booked a call with SoFA on 12th November, to see if I can enlist for the Sociocracy Leadership Training starting next January, & I'm attending the webinar this Friday at 2pm. So all systems go! Frankly I just want to get on and practice it, so I can use it myself in the co-ops I belong to and have it as an additional string to my bow when working on decision-making and co-op structure with clients.

ive got 4pm our time for the sociocracy seminar this friday. could you check and tell me if im wrong. made my head hurt working it out.

Hi @katewhittle - that's great, i'm sure you'll enjoy SoLT, it's a great learning experience :)

Oh whoops, sorry, no idea why I put 2pm above! In my diary I've got 4pm. I'll check it.

Kate, do you want to be on the worker coop HR people mailing list? Im putting one together to try to create a network, especially now that Notts Business School are actively working on worker coop HR. Kiri Langmead and Prof. Daniel King are lead academics.Bob

Yes please! I also passed on this info to Mike at Delta-T

I got an email from SoFA this afternoon at 4pm saying it was 24 hours till the webinar, so I'm guessing 4pm our time is right. They also said they'd send a reminder one hour beforehand, so we should be ok. :slight_smile:

Just a reminder it's the meeting tomorrow at 1.30pm - 3pm.

Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/252653307

So sorry I missed the meeting! Congruence of GP appointment & checking up on my 8 months' pregnant daughter! (She's fine, thanks). But I'm a bit hyper :laughing:

I'm really sorry I missed it - my dog Molly is unwell and after an upsetting vet appointment this morning and sorting out a referral to a specialist I'm afraid I completely lost track of time. I hope it went well and I look forward to hearing what's come out of it. Apologies again.

sorry to hear that Abbie. we had a useful hour, mainly raising difficulties on the ground.

Yes, sorry also @abbiekempson, hope it works out.

Hi All

Abbie - so sorry to hear about Molly. It sounds like you have had a really tough day and totally understandable that sociocracy was the last thing on your mind.

Kate - Hyper is good and glad to hear all is well.

Thanks for a really interesting discussion today. I have ‘summarised’ some key points below. Feel free to add if I have missed anything/correct anything that I have misunderstood. It would be great to hear thoughts from those who weren’t able to make the meeting.

Things people want to get from the group
At the end of the last session we identified a two possibilities in terms of the purpose of the group:
1. Practical training
2. Developing a learning group to share experiences, challenges etc.

Key points/requests from today’s session include:
- Having the session has been great. Now keen to apply what has been learnt – I think this is great and shows the potential of using zoom study groups to get cooperatives started with sociocracy. This might be worth bearing in mind if the group would like to get involved in introducing sociocracy to other cooperatives.

• There was a call for practical examples. This was seen as crucial to getting cooperatives and co-operators on board with sociocracy (or any new technique/approach).

• How do you introduce sociocracy to groups that have no time/will to experiment? – We had a discussion about the challenge of introducing new ideas to cooperatives that are already creaking at the seams. When everyone is pushed to their limits, even if something sounds like it might help in theory, trying it can be emotionally too much or might feel like too big a risk. I think this links to two issues: (1) If we want to be involved in promoting sociocracy (all be it, not as a silver bullet) how do we reach out to those cooperatives who are not already engaged in the cooperative network. These are often the cooperatives who are struggling or are rushed off their feet. (2) How do you break sociocracy down into ‘bite-sized’ chunks that can be easily introduced, implemented and maintained? We agreed that introducing check-in rounds might be a good place to start, but also discussed the risk that this can alienate people who are less comfortable sharing their feelings.

• As either a consultant or a cooperative member trying to introduce sociocracy, how do you develop and maintain trust? What do you need to do to be an effective leader of change? How do you get people on board and maintain their support? This was linked to the need to manage people’s anxiety. Any change can bring about anxiety and if this is not managed appropriately it can lead to resistance or rejection. We also discussed the need to manage our own anxiety.

• How do you deal with resistance? We agreed that the key here is getting people to talk about it and identify what is behind it. This isn’t always easy!

• How do you deal with uncooperative people? We talked about the role of empathy and focusing on the positives (i.e. what that person contributes to the group). These approaches can be great but how do we do them (and deal with the emotional labour involved) and what do we do if a member is just not interested, won’t engage or is sabotaging process or ideas that other members are supportive of?

In addition to what we want to focus on we also highlighted some events that might give us an opportunity to explore the issues identified:
Losing Control: Pete told us about ‘losing control’ that is being held in Birmingham on 5-6th February (http://www.losingcontrol.org/). They are open to ideas for sessions including ‘talk to me’ (sharing examples), ‘help me’ (focusing on problem solving) and ‘teach me’ (training focused) events. This is a potential platform for meeting/developing ideas/gathering momentum. Any thought? I am considering proposing an event on HR without hierarchy.

Sociocracy learning and training with Ted and Jerry: Ted and Jerry are coming to Nottingham and will be running and event from 1-3 March 2019. The Friday and Saturday will be dedicated to trouble shooting and problem solving for cooperatives who have started to use sociocracy. We hope to host about 6 cooperatives (about 3 members from each). Daniel or Martyn will speak to the cooperatives involved before the event to get a clear idea of the issues they are facing. Involvement in this part of the event will be by invitation. If you/anyone you know would be interested in taking part please let us know.

The Sunday (3rd March) will be open to wider cooperatives interested in learning more about sociocracy and will be focused on training. Again, if you know of anyone who may like to attend please let us know.

Festival of Debate event: I am in the process of organising a follow-up event to ‘Ted and Jerry come to Nottingham’ as part of Sheffield’s annual Festival of Debate. Details of this are a bit up in the air at the moment but I will keep you posted. If my various applications etc. come off the plan is to run a workshop introducing people to sociocracy and exploring some of the challenges people have faced. It would be great to get those who were involved in the March event to share their experiences so we get a kind of snowballing effect.

Actions:
- Given the points discusses I think it would be great to include a session on ‘change making’ in the March ‘Ted and Jerry come to Nottingham’ event. This could cover introducing sociocracy, developing and maintaining trust, managing anxiety and dealing with resistance.
- It would be great if anyone interested could share expressions of interest/ideas for Losing Control
- If anyone has recommendations of cooperatives who might want to be involved in the events above could you please either email me (kiri.langmead@ntu.ac.uk) or post on the loomio group?
- Add any thoughts, reflections, objections etc. to the loomio group – lets keep the discussion going!

Great summary @kirilangmead3 I think your suggestion of a 'change-making' session is a great idea.

It might be an opportunity to introduce some new ideas about 'change'. I think the default way of thinking about change is often 1) define the change 2) implement it 3) watch the results accrue. In my experience, change is nothing like this.

I think many 'change projects' fail because this underlying assumption about how change works is not challenged.

re Change, absolutely Pete. Change almost never happens by predestination. Tasks may, even big ones. Change accrues by everyone or at least a majority of participants talking about, thinking about and acting differently by some sort of agreement. It is a social process and coops should be good at it. Are they?Ralph Stacey is very good on change. He writes about strategic change (taking a different path in the unpredictable far future) and why almost all strategic change methodologies are fantasies based on delusions.

Tactical change is for example business planning into a predictable future, a year or two hence. It is essentially cybernetic, systematic control towards a desired performance target.

Operational change is day to day process management using whatever passes for management authority. It operates in the near and highly predictable future.

It is easier to gain collective agreement and therefore management authority for operational and tactical change. eg changes to a work rota or a cash flow, than for strategic change where everyone has a valid opinion and a clash of opinion. Sociocracy clearly has a potentially crucial role in solving the strategic change puzzle in worker coops (why are we generally so bad at it? Why do we so often settle for MOTS - just more of the same- rather than real change for the better?)

Hi Bob. I I really like that way of separating those three types of change strategic, tactical and operational.

I am also a Stacey fan. And think he would agree that anxiety also needs a rethink.

The common idea is that anxiety arises - often the word resistance is used - when a change is introduced. I think, and I think Ralph would agree, that anxiety is always in and around us. It is part of the human condition and exists in all the groups we are part of.

It is certainly my own experience and my experience of every group I have ever been in. Sometimes it is visible but more often invisible (and unacknowledged).

Either way I think it is what drives the conversational patterns we create. And it is those patterns - for example, failing to listen properly, advocating our own ideas (as I am doing here!) - that mean that we maintain the status quo and end up settling for 'more of the same'.

So, yes, I also think Sociocracy has a role in helping us find better agreement around strategic change - because it is a different conversational pattern - one which encourages listening (when done well!).

Of course introducing it also raises anxiety as we acknowledged the other day. So the ability of those introducing it to hold and if necessary name that anxiety is also very important.

By the way @kirilangmead3 here's a nice little video by Gervase Bushe - he's a good talker I think - introducing Dialogic OD, which I mentioned on the call.

https://youtu.be/myyj15AfH3Q

One of the things I like about Gervase is that he is trying to operationalise this approach (through what he calls Clear Language (not to be confused with Clean Language, although both are useful!).

good video. makes some important points not the least of which is the need for healthy communication inside groups and holding back from resolution in decisionmaking to allow participants to develop themselves and their relationships with the others. Which is a key 'rule' in consensus of course and many other techniques 'stop the race to solutions, people are just trying to avoid the cognitive dissonance (my brain hurts!) of uncertainty.
Its systems theory based, so lots of assumptions about how people behave which will also therefore be hierarchical - even while denying it.
Love the reference to Ralph Stacey as an extremist - bring it on!!

Hi everyone, just flagging this up in case anyone in the Manchester area is interested in coming along.

REGISTER NOW:
Introduction to Sociocracy in Manchester with Unicorn's Abbie Kempson | 27 Nov 5:30 pm @ Holyoake House | M60 0AS

Would love to be there Abbie, but just not possible. Enjoy & hope it goes well, I'm sure it will! :slight_smile:

I am puzzled why no one has suggested at the outset of this discussion on Sociocracy "shall we compare this new structure to what we know already?" For a worker coop, surely the VSM would have been gathering dust on top of some ones cupboard and as with any comparison eg cart horse to that shiny new tractor lets look at the merits of the new to the old. Its as if no one is aware of the VSM or perhaps would rather pretend it does not exist. I dont know which is true being new to the group, please advise?

My guess is that few people are aware of the VSM, and fewer still have actually applied it for real in their cooperatives. As to making a comparison between the VSM and sociocracy, my take on that is that it would be comparing apples with pears. Sociocracy, in my uneducated view, is a methodology for how to do deliberation and decision-making, where the VSM is a diagnostic tool for designing and analysing management systems and information flows, in support of effective decision-making. I'd say that the two things are compatible and have the potential to be mutually beneficial. However, as I say, I am an uneducated heathen and have studied neither discipline in depth, so very happy to be corrected. :-)

Just to say that Bill and some others at Cetis are familiar with Beer's VSM, though I don't know how much they have applied it in practice

Phil, VSM? Googled it and I’m sure you don’t mean Vibrating Sample Magnetometer in this context 😉

Viable System Model. Piloted by Jon Walker at Suma in the 1980s - see https://www.esrad.org.uk/resources/vsmg_3/screen.php?page=preface (see case studies). @bobcan could tell you more I'm sure.

This thread getting awfu’ long and taking time to load, start a new one? I’ve been a lurker here rather than a participant, but some great contributions and reflection, looking forward to diving deeper

I agree with Graham, apples & pears. I looked at VSM years ago and decided it was one for the academics, I couldn't see any co-op members that I knew finding the time to even understand it let alone implement it in their co-operative. I suspect Sumanoids came to the same conclusion. @bobcan ?

On the face of it it does look a bit complicated. But if we consider the increasingly distributed and open nature of doing business, e.g. the whole platform co-op thing, etc., then frameworks like VSM can be hugely valuable in my view. I've been trying to encourage Jon Walker to write a simplified 'VSM for Dummies' type of thing to make the on-ramp a little more approachable, no luck so far. The whole VSM/Stafford Beer approach is widely used in the corporate world - I see no reason why it should not be useful in co-ops, and lots of reasons, given it's basis in biomimicry, why it could be a great fit for co-ops.

I know very little about the VSM (with a pint inside me I can, apparently, talk energetically about Salvador Allende and Tulip Chairs...) but I do see similarities with sociocracy, in terms of feedback loops etc. That said, this thread seems to me to have had its day long ago (and served its purpose well) - I'd definitely be in favour of a new thread focusing on the VSM and co-ops. And hearing from Suma and Cetis if anyone from those co-ops remembers the VSM times?

I'd be happy to talk to you about Salvador Allende any time @johnn !!

Are you aware of Jon's joint publication with AngelaEspinosa "A Complexity Approach to Sustainability: Theory and Application (Second Edition) (Series On Complexity Science)" ?
web link:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complexity-Approach-Sustainability-Application-Science/dp/1786342030/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1528536978&sr=1-1&keywords=Complexity+Approach+To+Sustainability%2C+A%3A+Theory+And+Application+%28Series+On+Complexity+Science%29+second+edition

Well hopefully I'll manage to gatecrash the next CoTech gathering and I can take you up on that!

Viable Systems Model is a cybernetic process control methodology invented by Stafford Beer. It uses a biological analogy of organisations to describe various subsystems and how they are integrated with each other and the whole organism.

VSM was used by the Allende government in Chile but all evidence was destroyed by Pinochet. British coop people eg Jon Walker got interested and Jon even trialled an attempt to use it in Suma (1986-90ish). It didnt work.

People are not parts of systems and their relations with each other vary unpredictably (ie are complex). The biological analogy is false. your heart doesnt decide at random to become your brain but people do suddenly change behaviour and become different people effectively.

In hierarchies this variability is suppressed so people look like simple but complicated sub-systems to an external observer eg the HR dept. (even thought they are behaving in a complex (uncontrollable) manner at their local level).

Jon was the General manager at Out of This World consumer coop of the late 90s early 00s, where I presume he also used VSM. OTT failed due to systematic errors in management. So again not a good example of VSM.

It also shares the problem of most cybernetic models (cybernetics is management by regression to a desired target from an uncontrolled variance eg central heating controllers) that it isnt sufficiently varied to cope with human behaviour (as above).

In systems theory is a rule of requisite variety, the controller has to have at least as many variable states as the controlled eg central heating controllers have more states than the heating system. Human minds are probably the most complex things in the universe and an aggregation of communicating human minds, an organisation, vastly outdoes any control technology in terms of requisite variety.

Imposing VSM (and it has to be imposed one way or another. It is not intuitive.) is just another example of the system taking precedence over the relations between the people. It exists above the people. (Though in reality it doesnt actually exist beyond a fantasy in a manager's mind because all that really exists in an organisation is the web of communications between the participants - the complex responsive processes of relating- of which VSM becomes merely one strand in the ever changing web of complexity of the organisational conversation. No wonder manager plans and models 'sink without trace' unless they are imposed by force.)

Jon is still promoting VSM with his partner Angela Spinoza. Its used in Colombia and I heard Mondragon were playing with it. Be interesting how it resurfaces after they have modded it.

As a simple process control technique linking production departments together its ok but dont think its a whole organisation, bells and whistles strategic management methodology. It cant be, remember cybernetics is regression to a pre determined target. It cant deal with novelty or innovation at all. It is a normalising technique. But what we all want and seek is novelty and innovation in business to be able to better satisfy worker and consumer needs and wants.

So what we want are management techniques that encourage effective and efficient communication between these wonderfully complex entities, human minds, to be able to agree what to do together and how to resolve disagreements.

Because we arent extracting value for absent owners, we dont need management techniques that are really designed to control people as labour units, even though they are dressed up in TEAL colours. We can use the complexity of humanness in all its awesome messiness and power. That's why some coops 'work' unbelievably well. Annual Return on Capital Employed of 100+% like Suma. (Good normal businesses manage 25%) Imagine if we could do that in other coops. The source of that power is allowing complexity to do its stuff.

Or as Jon said the last time I saw him "That's all very well Bob, but when is this going to happen? And we have some evidence this complexity interpretation works and isnt just talk."

I've been chatting to Jon recently - he's very interested in
sociocracy.

I've got 50 page detailed case study of the failure of Out of
this World written by Jon. Whilst the failure was indeed down to
poor decisions around risk and finance, there is no mention of or
indication of the use of VSM.

indeed and it would be odd not to have used it at OTT given his before and after enthusiasm. an omission? Indeed it says everyone else was to blame for the failure of OTT except the general manager.

Jon in his published works makes big claims for VSM in Suma (to the irritation of the old timers who remember the era) and says its eventual failure was due to Suma not doing it right. In my book that is a failure in the method. people couldnt understand it, didnt engage with it, didnt encourage others to engage etc. There are lots of 'if only everyone would agree this idea of mine would be a perfect solution' . Like world peace if only everyone would stop fighting.

if you need to get people in line to follow a method you are suppressing their humanness. ok for sports direct or amazon but self harming for a worker coop and suppressing the synergy of their collected intelligence, i think.

Dear Bob,
Thank you for your considered reply and I can see that you have a good understanding and experience from practical use of the VSM. I have started a new thread and I hope that any further comments will be under that thread. I am reminded of a passage by Jonathan Haidt:
"If you really want to change someone’s mind on a moral or political matter, you’ll need to see things from that persons angle as well as your own. If you truly see it the other person’s way - deeply and intuitively - you might even find your own mind opening in response….empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although its very difficult to empathise across a moral divide."
So my plan is to offer a web site open for comment and content revision where the people taking part, attempt to remodel the VSM to embrace Sociocracy. I think that should satisfy 2nd order Cybernetics and Jonathan Haidt. I took on the BSI9001:2015 QMS diploma with an open mind, (or thats what I thought at the time, ) to help me move on from the VSM, to more conventional management practices. We needed as a business to win more tenders and as a contract manager I wanted best performance and total customer satisfaction. I used the VSM as a baseline, starting the course and expected that AhAh moment to come along as I progressed. The work was marked by a BSI ISO9001 trainer. I was surprised that at no point along that path did the VSM fail. I have put on line all of that marked work on a rough web site https://usqc.org Its just a space on the web at this time to store working files. I hope people with look on the posts and help me discover where any logical inference I have made is weak so that a generic new site can be built which embraces the best of Sociocracy and the VSM if that is at all possible. Please note I am not on some ego trip or aspire to great heights. I am just a grandad concerned about CC for his kids. I will be ash and long gone but I suggest they will not and I hope to leave something behind to say "I tried". I am dismayed by the rise of protest movements such as "extinction rebellion" which I feel is a sad reflection on the Transition towns movement. People are loosing all hope. Please help me Bob to give them that hope by turning over every stone we can, to find answers whilst we still can.

Dear All, Happy New Year, and here are my responses to Bob. I think you’ll find (as Ben Goldacre says) that it’s a bit more complicated than that.

I have asked Angela to comment separately on Bob’s theoretical understanding of the VSM. Bob has involved her in the debate, and she’s one of a small number of people who peer-reviews systems and cybernetics for top academic journals, has lectured and published widely for decades and is considered to be an expert on these matters. This will come later in a separate Loomio contribution.

But first : Suma 1986. Bob says “ “It didn’t work”

The VSM work at Suma was over 30 years ago, and memories can be notoriously unreliable. Happily there is an account I wrote up at the time, and which was put online by John Waters.
https://www.esrad.org.uk/resources/vsmg_3/screen.php?page=2_2cs2
I wrote this while still at Suma. As it was published as part of an ICOM training manual, it was checked by several people at Suma and judged to be a reliable record of what happened. The Proposals are taken exactly from the Autonomy Group’s wording to the membership - (there were 4 of us) . I was there for about 7 years after the changes, and during that time no-one questioned the accuracy of the account.

To summarise, the following was proposed and put into place :
1. Suma changed from trying to work as a single large group to a cluster of autonomous work groups, each responsible for a part of Suma’s operation. This worked !
2. Each work-group was given as much autonomy as possible. This worked !
3. Budgets were allocated to each work group, so they could make day-to-day financial decisions without General Meeting approval. This worked !
4. Co-ordination of work-groups was initially attempted by a series of meetings called the Hub/Sector which mainly focused on policy issues rather than co-ordination as proposed, and was eventually dropped. (This didn't work ) Co-ordination was then undertaken by a new post, the Operations Coordinator. I was doing the personnel job at the time and wrote the job description, which was pure VSM : creating synergies between autonomous , self-organising departments. This worked !
5. Suma started to develop daily performance measurements, which we called indicies, better known now as KPIs. These were to provide accountability, but more importantly the daily feed-back so everyone could assess their performance and respond accordingly. This worked !
6. A “Future Strategy Post” was proposed but was never properly implemented. This didn’t work !
7. Quarterly General Meetings were proposed, but initially not seen as necessary as the Hub/Sector system dealt predominately with policy issues. Once this was dropped (see above) QGM’s began to be called to deal with Policy issues. This worked eventually !

Generally, a new, more effective way of working was introduced. Suma did a survey a year after it was introduced which generally gave the thumbs up. We didn’t get lots of things right the first time - especially the Hub/Sector system - but the VSM provided the guidance to evolve our way through the process. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but a blanket : “It didn’t work” seems a little hard to justify. The central concept of autonomous work groups, real-time information providing daily feed-back, a meta-system to coordinate the autonomous operational bits, and policy systems which involve all members was put in place and worked while I was there. Suma’s reluctance to establish the proposed “future strategy” function maybe explains Bob’s conclusion that the VSM cannot deal with innovation and novelty. (???)
All my “claims” are as above and as detailed in the “authorized” account, which Suma members were happy with at the time.
I can only assume that Bob’s assessment is limited to the Hub/Sector system which didn’t work in its intended role of co-ordinating autonomous departments, and was eventually superseded by the Operations Coordinator.

But have a look at the “authorized” version if you want the whole story. (Please note : the Operations Coordinator function was put in place after this account was written in 1991.)

Second : The VSM cannot deal with novelty/innovation/strategic management.

Maybe the best way to resolve this is to introduce Bob to a few of the many people who make their living doing exactly what Bob says is impossible. Look, for example, at Fractal Consulting

http://www.fractal-consulting.com

Patrick Hoverstadt has been using the VSM for 20 years, and has catalogued dozens of successful case studies. (Check them out !)

Bill Christopher hired Stafford to consult on the 4 billion dollar company in the USA where he was working, and found the VSM so effective he set up his own VSM consultancy. His findings are described in his book Holistic Management. He states that every time he applied the VSM it always worked well. Much of this involves innovation and strategic management in very large complex companies.

Malik in Management built up one of the largest consulting groups in central Europe based on the VSM. They have done hundreds of applications. They are so impressed with Stafford’s work they have set up The Cwarel Issaf Institute to promote his ideas.

It’s odd to get Bob’s very negative assessment of the VSM at a time when interest is booming.
This year Raul Espejo ran a workshop for the Labour conference fringe meetings in Liverpool on the Chilean work - it was so popular there was standing room only. There are over 1,000 people on the VSM Linked-in group. We’re currently working on combining VSM with the Sustainable Flourishing Business Canvass of Antony Upward. Mark Lambertz second VSM book (in German) sold out this year in the first few days. Angela (actual name Espinosa) and my book is now on its second edition. Andy Goldring has used it in the British Permaculture association.(very similar approach : learn from nature, use systems thinking to build a model, apply to the way we live and work. ) Gary Alexander has used it in his E-gaia proposals for a sustainable earth based on communication. This year it’s turned up in the design of new cooperative economies involving crypto-currencies and platform coops. I could go on . . . . Most of these examples have been published. We can provide references if anyone is interested.
All of this is on public record. Practitioners consider the VSM to have enormous diagnostic power, “blisteringly fast” (says Patrick Hoverstadt) and (see above) it has been used successfully for decades in dealing with problems in large organisations.

All of this looks a bit different from the picture Bob paints.

Many of us who've studied it in depth consider the VSM an extra-ordinarily powerful theory which is of enormous relevance to the cooperative sector.
What bothers me most is that comments like Bob’s, if widely accepted, will deprive the cooperative world of an important tool.
At it's heart the VSM is based on on individual creativity and collaboration, and designs everything in the context of its links with the environment.

So, what to do ?

I have two suggestions :

First : I would like to invite Bob to a Scio (Systems and Cybernetics in Organisations) meeting in Manchester. Patrick Hoverstadt and many others would be happy to discuss these issues.

Second. Angela has suggested we organise a half day seminar in Hull at the Centre of Systems Sciences, again to look at the relevance of the VSM and Sociocracy. Usually Mike Jackson (who’s written most of the books on systems sciences in management) comes along, as well as some of the UK’s experts in systems sciences. Everyone is welcome.

Maybe we can all enrich our understanding of these issues, and hopefully help the coop sector to grow and prosper.

And, finally, if you want a really up-beat assessment of Stafford and the VSM, check out Open Democracy, always a reliable source of information.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/node/611
Stafford Beer: the man who could have run the world

More on the VSM and Sociocracy to follow.

Happy to take part Jon.
I took on the personnel role in Suma in 1994 immediately after Jon (was still using your in tray when I retired in 2015!). Some of these changes still existed but much had disappeared. My memory of the times Jon talks about are not good. I do remember that Suma members acknowledged the common sense in better organised work units using metrics to self-manage better (Suma has always been self management in principle if not in practice) and better coordination between those units and an overall operational coordination function, the Operations Coordinator, which I think together correspond to S1, S2 and S3. But members rejected S4 and S5 external scanning and future changes as putting too much power in the hands of a minority. So VSM was acceptable and maybe actually worked (I cant remember now) in the operational and tactical levels of management. many schools of management work at these levels, it doesnt have to be VSM. Other cybernetic methods such as Management by Objectives for example are intuitively acceptable to people.
By 1998 the Investors in People assessor said Suma was working well at the individual level and whole coop level but had virtually no internal coordination at the team level. VSM had not lasted. It was an impossible to coordinate mess.
For me a coordination methodology must be self-reproducing or it has to be imposed and maintained by status authority or charisma authority. In the lack of authority VSM had faded away.
Ive read your piece and Ive looked up the consultancies and essays and I still find that VSM is an idealised systems theory which is apart from the people in the organisation and to which they must be subordinate for it to work. Because it requires an authority hierarchy it is therefore a dangerous methodology to use in democratic cooperatives. More dangerous because it seems to be merely technocratic but real world research shows that the most common cause of demutualisation in worker coops is a takeover by their technocrats.
Its also incomprehensible for me, a postgraduate level reader, so inaccessible to most. https://archive.org/details/World_in_torment-Stafford_Beer/page/n7 I got a few pages into this and realised I understood little except in the most abstract way. Its intellectually pleasurable, like trying to tease out meaning from dense philosophy, but as a guide for normal people to organise organisations? Sorry.

But Im happy to be shown to be wrong. There's nothing more exciting in life than discovering a new way of looking at the world and new insights.

Hi Bob. As promised, I m responding below to your comments on the VSM. Hope to engage in a fruitful and productive conversation.

Thanks Angela, apologies for getting your name mixed up with the philosopher. I checked too.
I'll write a reasonable response. There's quite a bit where I suspect we are on different planets here. As you say talking creates understanding so yes lets. I've been reading a bit more about VSM and TBH so far I havnt had that 'oh, maybe I was completely wrong' moment. I'm used to that feeling

Umm I don’t know who receives this but it’s ok if it’s shared. Thanks Angela and here’s my response. Hope it’s interesting.
Bob

Google Document
AE VSM response BC Jan19
( https://docs.google.com/document/d/12klgLYszTqV2h7yVQrTc1j9kPFZQDeRUuulw9KLtt4I )

Lovely explanation of Stacey's work @bobcan - thanks.

As you know, I completely agree that we need to differentiate Complex Responsive Processes of Relating (or what I tend to shorten to Complex Responsive Process or sometimes Complex Social Process) from Complex Adaptive Systems, or, more generally, conventional 'systems thinking'.

It's also very interesting to hear how your experiences in Suma - and specifically being unable to use hierarchy or status authority - led to you thinking about strategic management in a way that chimes with Stacey's more recent thinking, which is not really 'systems thinking' as it is generally understood.

And also to hear about the success of the member recruitment processes that relied upon agreements between membership and personnel workers.

You seem to be describing conversational processes - it's not a matter of sitting outside the 'system' and creating a process or procedure to link one output to another. It's much more about being in that process conversationally and adapting to it as it happens.

It strikes me here that 'process' is a highly contested word - for many it has a meaning that is much closer to procedure - a series of steps. Whereas for me, and I guess for you, we live in - and experience - an ever emerging 'process' - a 'to and fro' of lived experience between human beings.

As you also point out these ideas can be frightening. Losing 'the safety of an abstract depersonalised unemotional, goal oriented systems based method' can be scary. I suspect that at core many of us believe that if we submit to our experience - we may experience discomfiting emotion, especially when we are not used to it. And we may be right.

Of course, there's also a risk here that trying to find a new way of explaining takes us down the very same route of abstraction. By making things abstract and talking about complex social process versus complex adaptive systems we find ourselves in a new 'porridge'!

The alternative is to open ourselves to and enquire into our experience - what is sometimes called 'exploring' instead of 'explaining' (eg by Agazarian). Explaining is of course by far the dominant paradigm in our (Western?) world.

And it is also, I think, really important to remember that we are always in this process of gesture and response as we communicate with other people. In fact, we are in it right now!

That's why I was so pleased to read your last sentence - that you're keen to continue the conversation. Of course, we cannot *not *continue the conversation - from a complex social process point of view! Even stopping is a gesture, which will generate a response!

By the way, I wanted to correct one small point - my understanding of Sociocracy is that it has been around much longer than Holacracy - so it didn't originate in Holacracy.

I also share your concerns that Sociocracy may contain hidden cultural assumptions. Or if we use Stacey's framing, it must. Because Sociocracy, as well as being a conversational framework is also an abstract method that can become reified in use! The framework cannot exist without the people using it!

I think the only way we can mitigate this is by staying very mindful as we use Sociocracy or any other approach. To gain benefit from this approach or any other, including VSM, we need to try to stay aware as we talk about them and use them, so that we avoid these traps of abstraction and reification.

That's why for me Dialogic OD is a helpful way to think - because it reminds us that it is our own mindsets that determine how we communicate.

Obviously (!) other people's mindsets contribute too. And it is tempting to imagine they have it wrong, while we have it right!

But while we seem to be able to sense other people's emotional states, I think reading other people's minds is not possible. So I don't believe we can know what another person's mindset is.

In that way I would humbly suggest that we can't know how @jonwalker or @angelaespinosa (or anyone else!) really think, or what assumptions they bring to the (complex social) process of applying VSM!

Which is why it is always so important to continue the conversation!

Best

I just want to say thank you Bob for giving your considered reply to the questions raised by the VSM. My apologies for not reading this sooner. I understand the "turning brains to porridge" feeling some people have expressed and I do not wish my searching for answers to be over bearing to this discussion group. The "Heart of Enterprise" was a recommended read by Allenna Leonard, Stafford's partner for 20 years. I am so grateful to Allenna for pointing me to this book as it provides so many precious insights relevant to this discussion we are having. rather than be over bearing I will as you have write a separate document, titled " Later in the Bar"

Bob
Thanks for your very sound and interesting response. I apologise for the long time in responding. We re in the middle of moving home and have been quite absent from emails recently. I have very little to disagree with your arguments. We clearly come from different traditions; I have tried reading Stacey's work but I didn't find it particularly engaging; very nice theories, but I didn't feel they were very useful in practice, quite abstract for me. When I asked him after one of his invited talks in the Centre of Systems Studies how he would apply his theory to a business, he responded he '' never try to 'apply' them; he d rather use them as inspiration for new approaches to leadership... that was when I got off his work.. But I do think that there is always things to learn from other perspectives, and I m happy to learn from you on how inspiring you have found his work. I m always happy to learn more and challenge my own assumptions. I will respond more in detail to you, but it ll be when we re back to UK in about 2 weeksBest wishes
Angela

yes he was ridiculously circumspect in practice and so is his successor chris mowles. i think he disappeared up his own hyper reflexivity.

but i can see many ways to use his work and have written short pieces on this. and tested it in coops and seen improvements. its easily applied in coops. i havnt tried in non coops.

isnt it funny how vsm (as far as i currently understand it) and cybernetics in general seem abstract from lived experience to me and staceys stuff is to you.

best wishes

bob

Hi @angelaespinosa. Many thanks for such a full and carefully argued response.

I am really struck by the tone of the reponses so far from the 'VSM community' - very calm, measured, and providing lots of data and information.

Thanks for that, I think it can only help, when there are such different view points here. I think it would be very easy for irritation to arise on both sides, and I am not sure that would help us increase our understanding. Which I think would be sad because I sure we all share similar aims at heart.

I did have one immediate thought about something you wrote. And I wonder if it might be at the heart of the debate, and therefore perhaps is worth clarifying?

You mention 'complex adaptive systems', and also 'complex responsive process'.

My own take on these approaches is that they are almost completely opposite to each other. (Or perhaps in some way complementary, but definitely quite different.)

I got the sense that they might be the same or similar for you? I wondered if you would mind clarifying your understanding of both approaches?

My view is that it is usually our assumptions that make life difficult! So if we are assuming different things about the words we use I think it might be worth us exploring that potential confusion.

Best

My, this thread takes a long time to scroll on ios ...

thanks Philip. my concern is that worker coops invest their preciois time in methods that work for them as worker coops ive seen too many spend their time and morale on highly recommended initiatives that dont.

socuocracy is one that seems to work even if it doesn't. in that people learn to communicate better which is always a good thing.
the Stacey ideas are similar. even if they themselves don't result in business improvement they do again improve communication.

VSM can improve communication but theres a lot of investment to get to a working VSM and it can all just fade away. ive seen that. it has to be maintained by champions. so its a risk. Im also not happy with the evidence base for its effectiveness (cost benefit). so for me its interesting but I wouldnt recommend it except in its simplest form as an aid to patterning conversations.