i want to start a brainstorm about our organization-structure, how we meet and how we make decisions. who is a member and who is accountable for what. (It somehow is a call for an constitution and transparent rule set)
A good point to Start is this talk
some concepts are:
Hey, das freut mich ja besonders diesen Thread zu entdecken.
Ich bin seit bald zwei Jahren in der Sozikratieausbildung und
werde im Februar 2016 mit der Theorie fertig sein.
Ich bin auch gerade auf der Suche nach einem Projekt,
welches ich für meine Zertifizierung verwenden kann und
die anderen Projekte welche ich begleite sind mir momentan noch zu lasch,
wenn auch spannend und zum Teil groß.
Seit Anbeginn meiner Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema vor drei Jahren
habe ich mir gedacht dass die technische Entwicklung der optimale Ort für diese Technik ist.
Ich komme ja selbst ein wenig aus der Szene und
kenne daher beide Welten sehr gut, wodurch sich seit Monaten
Konzepte für einen optimalen Einsatz bzw Verquickung abzeichnen.
Falls es Interesse an vertiefenden Informationen gibt: lets talk!
LG
Walter
Very intersting!
How can we educate the community about this and involve them in the process of learning about it?
Could you continue in english so we can all follow (this highly interesting topic) ? :-) Thanks !
It is good to hear that we have an expert in sociocracy ;)
Maybe we should start by designing a questionnaire to gather people's opinion and to raise the publicity of this topic.
Hi Walter, using sociocratic measures in projects where numerous people are involved seems to be a very good idea!
As you have not been very clear about the certification you are going to achieve (and I am somehow curious), some questions arise:
In USA its about 60 hrs minimum education for the Sociocratic Practitioner, in Austria there seem to be higher requests. In the netherlands its a legal measure to get rid of what you call shop stewards in austria, so lets hope austrian industry will not find find out ;-))
SCN 2000: 2012-2016 states, that you have to be a professional expert, so I would like to learn what your profession is.
Also there is a choice between certified sociocratic facilitator, trainer and consultant - which of them is your goal?
Please let us also know, which scene you belong to and which are theese two worlds you are referring to.
Rereading christophs post, I follow the link to sociocracy 3.0 with "free" among the five good reasons, mentioning "Free resources, no hidden fees, no certifications, no small print" so I ask myself: are we really talking/writing about the same issue?
Thanks in advance!
Hi everyone, sorry that i ve forgotten to write in english,
in a nutshell i wrote that i am excited about the post about sociocracy as i am going to finish the theory modules soon
and aiming to become certified.
to the questions
In USA its about 60 hrs minimum education for the Sociocratic Practitioner, in Austria there seem to be higher requests. In the netherlands its a legal measure to get rid of what you call shop stewards in austria, so lets hope austrian industry will not find find out ;-))
as this is not the case for the actual austrian law, there is no way to exclude them.
on the other hand, i wouldnt call it "getting rid of", they are simply not necessary anymore,
as the sociocratic structure should provide a way better way to influence the decisions on all levels.
SCN 2000: 2012-2016 states, that you have to be a professional expert, so I would like to learn what your profession is.
well, i went to the SAE in vienna from 16 to 18, continued with by becoming a "media designer" and then went to the academy of fine arts,
since five years i am working as cio/cto in our family business but switching to, as I would call it, work as deep as possible with development
of the human being; i did over eight years of psycho analysis with dr. werner gradner (passed away feb 2015), being in a course
for transpersonal therapy with dr. sylvester walch for more than 3 years now, started phenemenologic therapy with dr. wilfried nelles,
next month i start a three year course with christian meyer, who is a graduate psychologist who works in the field between awakening
and self realisation, next thing i want to start as soon as i am finished with sociocracy is the trainer course for non violent communication,
as i am following it for years now and find it as a basis for understanding communication of humans, guess i will also do a trainers course
in dragon dreaming and start to take some acting classes again.
i did also a lot of bodywork trough yoga, butoh, acrobatics, le parkour. right now i start doing more contact and movement improvisation again and
will take a seminar in focusing in a few weeks.
i am also following the "pädagogic im aufbrauch" movement by arno stern, andre stern, gerhard hüther.
i hope that gives you a clear view of my professional background, my present state and the direction i am aiming for.
Also there is a choice between certified sociocratic facilitator, trainer and consultant - which of them is your goal?
as i am gifted as facilitator this is what i do mostly, but for the money part i would love to work as trainer,
as this is what i like most, to provide my knowledge and gifts for a greater goal.
i will definitely finish the program and will become a certified consultant as well,
as i want to learn it all. i even attended the workshop of gilles charette, who works with sociocracy as a transactional analyst,
in family and self-awareness.
so i try to cover all the fields out there, but will definitely become a consultant and trainer,
depending on the setting and whats needed most.
Please let us also know, which scene you belong to and which are theese two worlds you are referring to.
what i meant is the world of professional project management and team leading in an technical business environment on the one side and
being aware of different forms of working together on many different (psycho-, sociological and spiritual) levels and trying to learn as much as possible.
and i try to bring it all together :)
Rereading christophs post, I follow the link to sociocracy 3.0 with "free" among the five good reasons, mentioning "Free resources, no hidden fees, no certifications, no small print" so I ask myself: are we really talking/writing about the same issue?
well, i am still very critical towards the sociocratic movement, despite being part of it.
this has on one hand, had to do with the person barbara strauch, who "obtained" the german speaking area for the sociocratic method
with her way of thinking, acting and "doing".
on the other hand i have a strong history/background in, you might even call it extreme leftwing, counter culture movement.
by wanting to bring deep, grass root like, change to the world, i was attracted to the sociocratic method, so i always kept being critical,
till i ve get the feeling of being in control of enough knowledge to really "get it".
this opened the opportunity to get a deep distant look behind all the scenes and in a very broad context.
so i am still, very critical about the whole sociocratic global structure - despite being part of it - just because of its nature.
on the other hand, i had always had a problem with this whole thing about selling an idea which ultimately should help
people organize with less trouble and help them understand and free them self from their own patterns regarding socio-cultural interactions.
first thing i came across is that the sociocratic method is far from perfect and a lot of work needs and can be done there,
so research and work needs to be done to further improve the method. for this one needs a lot of time and there fore money,
so i find it okay to collect money to research and work on the sociocratic method. the results will help us all,
but the structure needs money that the people working on it can live from it and continue to work independently and free of fear of falling trough the cracks.
the other thing is, well yes, there are books out about sociocracy, you can read them and learn everything on you own,
everyone in a team can do so, but you will have no guidance, no person who is not involved in the team itself with a lot
of expertise on how to train this method and how to efficiently implement it.
some one who has a lot of backing and rear cover by other people working in the same field he or she can interact with,
upon the emerging problems, can help the team process ultimately quicker than if you do it the diy way.
it is just a question of quality of the implementation, level of professionality, money, time, effort and last but not least
seriousness about it.
if you really want to reach a goal you have to surrender yourself to the process, no matter what the consequences are
on the personal level. so you need some one outside the team to guide and shape the process, some one who gets paid
for thinking about the processes between the interacting people and whats needed and how its best implemented to
support these.
this are my two reasons for the value of money is used to transmit an idea like this
Thanks in advance!
thanks for your questions, it was fun to answer them and i hope i could shed light to most of the dim places :)
feel free to ask more :P
why we don't work on a proposal/ presentation of our (everybody who want's to join this conversation) vision of decision making in axiom.
in parallel we should ask key questions to the core team and the founders of axiom: who is axiom? who owns axiom?
things to work on (maybe within physical meetings):
-analyze axioms community
-find a proper rule set for communication and decisions
-find strategies of integrating the new system
-work on the presentation
-present it to the core team and founders
-conclusion and rework of the rules after collecting all the feedback
-restart two steps before and present it again, if it is fine for all -> next step: integration !
@christophvarga: do i understand you correctly, that you want to develop a new way of decision making for the apertus project?
@Walter : no, not necessarely. If one of the existing methods (e.g. sociocracy) fits, i would just See how we adapt it to our Situation. As far as i unterstand it sociocracy is a system wich defines how communication is stuctured and how roles are distributed. We need to think about which roles do we need, etc. What do you think?
i am looking forward to find the answer to the question: who is the community?
because if we can set up rules for the interaction between axiom core and all the players in the axiom ecosystem we could enable good communication and coordinated action beyond the inner circle. so that there is more than a few people working on a camera -> global acting network working together around a core idea/values*
oneness is one thing, but improving the communication between all members about their ideas and needs could get awesome ;)
*whatever that exactly is
i am looking forward to find the answer to the question: who is the community?
its quite simple, anyone who contributes to the project, there are no requirements per se other than being active and doing something
My only wish would be : Please don't make a complex system with complex rules, because what we currently have worked quite well for a long time already :-)
well, well, well... some ideas popped up in my head reading those lines :)
first of all, it just works top down, not bottom up. so the guy (normally its an old white guy on top of all) has to make the decision to, at least try out to, implement sociocracy.
so the highest instance hast to give up certain power to the rule set, which must be constructed, individually fitted and constructed by the group for them self trough the process.
so those people in charge must be able to live with uncertainty. if the think they do, but its not the real truth, well the implementation will fail.
if the want to be able, but are not, but really want to try, its okay, so they need to get the support they need, to handle the tensions.
second thing, VMZ in german means: vision, mission, ziele (goals)
vision is needed for the whole project/company, it is the main guiding star under which all decisions will be made and everything will be weighted with,
its the highest form of goal, the highest purpose all are striving for - together.
its easily formulated: how would the world look like, if everyone would use your product? (you have to define the value of everyone for your usecase)
if you have an objection when trying to decide something, it must involve a justification regarding the vision of the project.
a vision for the project could be "empowered the worldwide independent and professional filmography scene; the spirit of freedom and sharing is the driving force in the industry and the whole mediaworld"
mission the mission is formulated for the whole project and for every circle accordingly, normally on a yearly basis.
adding to this, every circle has its own mission as well, which can be looked up in the logbook of the circle.
a logbook is a document which every circle maintains for itself and can be looked up by every one in the company.
it is the place where mission and goals, a link to a nine step plan for the year, the roles and who is executing them, followed by a list of
all the decisions made by this circle, which are still in power, are written to. regarding "still in power", this is important, as every sociocratic made decision has an expiration date,
which is part of the decision. by this one can settle a lot of conflicts and further go back to working as you can change everything within the next meeting anyway,
lets just start with it and adjust while we are on the way. like riding a bike. it is impossible to ride in a straight line, its more like and always adjusting, never ending s-curved line.
so does every role and maybe even the vision, have expiration dates, but definitely the mission and the goals.
a mission for the whole project could be 'delivering an affordable FOSS, OSH camera to the world', trough this our vision can be reached.
goals are easy to guess concrete points to reach, not as abstract as the vision, it is the goals (could be an always running, life supporting task like 'keeping the finances in order' for the finance circle)
for the whole organisation/general or top circle, in our case it could be 'shipping the first batch of axiom beta cameras till 31.12.2015' and every circle attached to it, has to work accordingly to reach the goal :)
for instance: if the developers circle is transforming the whole system into something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUaN9tx07jk cause its more fun, it would be against the goal of shipping,
against the mission and vision of the project, as such a decision would be against them.
a objection against this would be easily justifiable.
so vision and mission are the first thing to be clear and decided/agreed upon.
an interesting point to start, would be to get top circle running, as this is in my opinion (and many other may see this point very differently)
one of the most important and integral features of the whole concept of sociocracy.
a top circle sits, like its name suggest on top of the whole structure and acts as last instance.
in that matter it doesn't meet very often. its job is to maintain connection out of the project.
so it normally has one expert of law e.g. a lawyer, economy e.g. a ceo of a camera manufacturer, social sector e.g. an union worker, finance e.g. some one from the bank for common welfare austria,
a delegate from the general circle and the ceo/person who is accountable in the end/project leader.
so it is the connection to the world surrounding the project, the world around us, gives feedback and direction.
they form the statute for the project and the circle charter (like rules of internal procedure)
So why is this top circle so important.
first, i think there are some obvious tasks it fulfills. first of all it uses it openness and invites other professionals
from the same industry into it, to equally decide about the path the project should take and follow.
like everyone else in the structure, this person has access to all the information, logbooks and so forth.
it involves the surrounding people, e.g. a normal company would maybe have a representative of its customers,
or the local urban neighbors, living next to their factory, or someone from the communal government.
in any case there should be some one affiliated with law, who in a sense is representative for the state.
so those represent a form of greater power.
when i was looking for a piece of paper from one of my sociocratic courses, i had an urge to take a
book from sigmund freud about compulsive acts and religion exercise into my hands and just open it
on a random page.
i opened it on a page where freud explains that religion was the first, trough or to which people projected
their (freud uses the word "trieblust" here, i did not find an fitting translation into english yet, but what the word
means in german is the urge for affective actions, like the lust to kill, the urge for vengeance and the lust venereal desire
or sex drive and so forth) away from them, onto gods. they sacrificed it (e.g. catholic priests and buddhist monks still live celibate)
and gave up all their iniquities ("venegance is mine..." spoke the lord).
freud writes that it was fundamental for the cultural development, as those acts and deeds where just possible in the name of god
and by this, the humans freed their society from bad, social-detrimental drive ("Triebe" in german).
it is no coincidence that the old gods had all traits of humans, with all the following bad habits, unconstricted attributed to them and
that it was no contradiction that it was not allowed to legitimate own iniquities with a divine example.
my note on this passus: dont get "acting in the name of god" (which is i am doing this for/in the name of god)
and "acting like a god" (if god can do this, i can do this as well) mixed up.
why do i bring this deep psychological and spiritual level into discussion?
because, like i said when i entered this topic, i find it one of the profoundest elements of sociocracy.
till around 15 000 years ago we had cooperative society structures, where cooperation was the way to survival.
around this time dominatoric (dominatorisch in german) societies started to appear and take over.
some when after, the phase which sigmund freud described happened and held on till around 200 years ago,
when the french revolution happened and with it came a lot of new philosophy and socilogic theory like marx
(leaving plato and aristotle in disctinction to self aware humanistic theorists)
this was the time humans started to reject religion and new concepts started to fill the appearing void,
like nationalism and the idea of a folk, liberalism, capitalism.
we start to witness the beginning end of this phase right now as people start to reject this values as well.
in the same time, we are more individualized than ever before.
i dont dare to say that there never actually where more sub cultures parallel in such concentrated places
like our western cities ever before, as i have not lived for ever, but at least i dont know of any record,
which says something else.
even if these ideas become obsolete for some people nowadays, they have to find something else, e.g. spirituality, philosophy or what ever works for them,
to deal with the world around them.
this becomes more tricky when such freed or empowered people want to work together in such free manner and on the same time
try to get everything packed into their work and livestyle.
as we are on the bleeding edge of socio-cultural development we have no perfect working solution, but it is said, that five people with the right
amount of knowledge bring together 80% of the wisdom to solve a problem.
so in sociocracy we give up the higher power to the top circle, a circle of at least five experts and trust that they will find the best decision
for the whole project of us, till they meet again.
this is a very spiritual concept in the way that there must be trusting and believing in power (in the meaning of to be in control of sth.) first,
to make the system work.
appendix:
right now, my constantly evolving believe is, that sociocracy is a structure and method, which demands and produces trust and
therefore makes itself obsolete at one point or an other.
but it is needed to guide young up growing people, even children, into this concept of trust trough structure,
till the moments where it becomes obsolete by the fact that trust rules over structure.
but as life works, unexpected and traumatic experiences happen and are constantly changing our path of life and are challenging
us and our believe in what ever we believe in.
to sail trough those stormy weathers a familiar structure is of help in guidance. so in the end i am not sure how much we should
work into the direction of abandoning the structure, in stormy and fast cycling times, with constantly speeding need to adopt, like these.
@philippej hey philipp, could you tell us how decisions where made, how large the team was for how long (easier formulated: how well did you know each others and how where the core areas/specialized fields and knowledge distributed?)
i can understand your fear of change, but as teams grow, complexity grows.
there are certain ways of dealing with this,
you can, for instance, handle this with command and control, building hierarchic structures, trying to avoid to much change,
and keep everything in line and rigid as possible.
so if you want less rules, thats easy: distribute power into ranks and roles, the only rule you need for decision making is "rank > role"
thats it. classy system, worked for thousands of years. keeps everything in place and if the decision making guys fail, everything falls.
discipline, divide and conquer and hard work, did pay off well in the last centuries,
not very resilient in a biological way, meaning adaptive.
but i think it is very important that in dynamic, drastically fast changing times like ours now,
it is key to accept that every security and safety is pure imagination.
what i try to say is, obviously the world around us is changing, maybe faster than ever, or because we are
on a critical point in time.
one thing i learned in my life the hard way is: if you stick/cramp on something, it will break (you).
a method that could work better could be getting the needed knowledge in personal form together finding a way how we can make sure
that everyone is heard and the decision making is based on equality and not who is the loudest, strongest, oldest, has the most time
to keep sitting, talking the longest, or is not giving up no matter what.
sociocratic it would be, forming a circle, choosing some one to lead the circle (leading in sociocracy translates to serving/helping/guiding/caring)
getting a bunch of experts and/or the people carrying the decision out
(who are maybe also the people who should decide what should be done, as the can estimate the situation best)
together and using all the knowledge available, to find the best solution possible to achieve in the given time frame and
under the given circumstances.
i am not up to persuading everyone to vote for sociocracy here :P it is just the corner i am coming from and
working my self towards and trough all the other methods i hear of.
so far i could integrate all the things i liked at new methods into sociocracy or i found it already there.
still learning everywhere i can :)
@philippej good morning, i just saw, that i did not finish what i've started; as i stated that in the traditional setting
you need basically just one rule "rank > role" but how could, or tbh does it work alternatively.
well you can gain the maximum freedom for the individual and therefore maximum resilience possible for the project,
by disconnecting power from people and distributing it accordingly to all the people involved and constantly adapting
this distribution to changes which occur.
so everyone has a clear room (in sociocracy and holacracy this is called a domain) to determine.
those rules could traditionally be a set of resources like money in form of a budget, a car for being mobile,
being of charge of the duty roster and so forth. by this the people "on the front" can decide in the pre defined domain
and therefore the whole project is very adaptive, dynamic and flexible.
the whole crew is organized in circles, which meet regularly (like all two weeks but at least all two months is very recommended)
and which are keeping track of the progress. also there is a person leading each circle which work is only to maintain the structure,
of information flow and check back that everyone got everything needed to do his job, so nothing falls trough the cracks.
if this person sees that something doesent work accordingly, the person tells his secretary to set up an appointment with
at least the agenda point of discussing the observed behavior.
in sociocracy this is called dynamic controll ("dynamische Steuerung" in German) like i refereed to earlier in my text,
when i was describing the s-curve like way towards a goal, as there mostly are no straight lines in reaching a goal.
so yes, the dynamic of having a lot of different roles with certain domains distributed and organized by circles,
looks a little bit like the body organizes the cells in organs, as brian robertson likes to say.
the difference here between sociacray and holacracy would be, but does not have to, is that in sociocracy
you would have a, normally linear hierarchical structure for operations and execution and a sociocratic circle organisation for decision making.
in holacracy there is just this one dynamic structure, which is accountable for both, execution and decision making.
this results in the fact that if a decision needs to be made, the person who wants this decision to be made is responsible,
that all the necessary people for this decision are attending the according meeting.
so it is very easy to loose track of single people and tasks.
a short example of this:
in sociocracy the whole circle meets regularly and everyone should be there or in case some one cant be present,
there is some one else representing his circle. which is not so often a problem, as there is always a delegate with the circle leader
as circles are always double linked ("doppelte Kopplung" in German) together. a person who leads the circle and a person
who is elected by the circle as delegate.
this has the downside that sometimes topics come up, which are important for just a part of the present people.
i guess that a good facilitator (every sociocratic meeting is facilitated) would try to quickly form a domain within the whole circle,
by this integrating all attendant people into the decision making, defining under which conditions the few involved people can work
out the decisions for them self and continue working on the agenda.
as with every sociocratic decision comes a time frame in which the decision is valid the topic may never come up again in the circle,
as the involved teams can work it out from this point on, on their own. it gets added to the domain of their circles, therefore written
into their logbook and its not a topic anymore till some one brings it up again :)
have a nice sunday everyone :)
Interesting topic, a lot to read and keep up already, with unfortunately not that much time on my end to discuss deeply :-)
But to answer your question, I'd say that the project is currently a do-ocracy. I quite like the description provided here : http://www.communitywiki.org/fr/DoOcracy
@philippej i am thankful for your concerns. it is good to have that voice to keep being aware of 'only as much complexity as needed'.
@Walter thank's for this comprehensive insights
why i came up with this whole topic is not because i see problems right now. everything is working well, i can bring my ideas and concerns to any subject i feel it fits. i have also the feeling being heard from the other side as well ;)
what i am concerned about is what happens when the spirit/dynamic of the group is changing after a while (some people go, some will come, the first main goal the gamma production is over,..). Out of my experience with groups this changes can create vacuums and attracts people which maybe are ego driven and want to take over some control. Sounds a bit stupid but it happens from time to time and that is what i am afraid of.
i think it is better to think about rules before to 'guarantee' that this good spirit right now can exist in the future as well.
and i think we should take all the time it takes so that everyone feels comfortable with the changes.
soft critiques on the actual situation:
transparency. how can i see which decisions are made and how? e.g. who decided to postpone the release of the gamma and why? also (the other way round) who of you not within the ergonomics group know that we (fictional) decided to make the enclosure twice as expensive as predicted? do we have the authorization to do so? and when we make the final product three times as expensive as backers expect?
that works as long as one person is the communication gateway for most decisions. he can bring everything perfectly together, but what if it is getting too much for this one person? than complexity starts i guess.
question:
do-ocracy. i like it and because of it's less need for organization. but how do you deal with a conflict where someone is doing a thing in the name of axiom which you cannot agree because it crosses the project you are working on? i don't know if it happened jet but i don't want that conflict to end up as an emotional one.
@sebastian i like the idea to keep the community that open for now. i played around with some worst case scenarios but when we manage to make all the decision making based on argument guided by our 'values chart' (openness,...) than nobody should be possible to harm (conscious or unconscious) our goals, missions and visions. the only thing is that we have to make sure that all the (self claimed) members accept our constitution (vision, values, rules).
@ Walter: I am sorry but I also had not enough time to read your very indepth explanations, and I think if we want to spread this process in the community we also have to boil down the information to the most essential core not expect everyone to read a complete book on the topic :)
what i am concerned about is what happens when the spirit/dynamic of the group is changing after a while (some people go, some will come, the first main goal the gamma production is over,..). Out of my experience with groups this changes can create vacuums and attracts people which maybe are ego driven and want to take over some control. Sounds a bit stupid but it happens from time to time and that is what i am afraid of.
And that is a very real scenario, we are a rather small core team with several single point of failures, we are just not that big yet that we can cover any responsibility with several people - not much we can do about that either other than be aware of it and aid/enable growing in the future. And we actually already had this situation once when someone "from the outside" tried to "take over" parts of the project - we still do not know if it was ill intention-ed our just a clash of culture/philosophy/missing understanding of the way this community works. In summary someone brought ideas to this group and engaged in organizational group matters but in retrospective must have thought these ideas remained his "private property" - was then disappointed and angry that the group decided against some of those or picked up others (he accused us of "stealing" them then...).
Since that incident we are more aware and cautious about the core strategy and involve newcomers and outsides only if they actually contribute instead of just providing ideas/feedback -> I guess that comes down to the do-ocracy :)
soft critiques on the actual situation:
transparency. how can i see which decisions are made and how? e.g. who decided to postpone the release of the gamma and why? also (the other way round) who of you not within the ergonomics group know that we (fictional) decided to make the enclosure twice as expensive as predicted? do we have the authorization to do so? and when we make the final product three times as expensive as backers expect?
that works as long as one person is the communication gateway for most decisions. he can bring everything perfectly together, but what if it is getting too much for this one person? than complexity starts i guess.
As you mentioned the key is "communication". We cannot expect everyone in the community to participate in every mattery, everywhere at any time. So we need active communication that summarizes and distributes the essential information (the gateway you mentioned) - it does not need to be a single person but without this constant active communication the project will not work as "community project".
@all cmon guys, its not THAT much .... *j/k*
while cooking it crossed my mind that i ve overdone it a little bit with my text production for this instance, be aware, i am still in alpha state and need a lot of bugfixing in my routines. but i am operational, so if you want to create a system fixing all the bugs and preventing you from a performance bottleneck, you should create a circle with people who know about the actual system, the actual problems, the problems they might occur and some guys who are into community building and anarchism :P
A PRACTICAL PROPOSAL
a thing you could do, you could hire me to come over and facilitate one of your meetings,
the more critical and emotionally loaded the decisions to make are, the better :)after that you can decide if you want more of the good stuff and we can form an implementation circle.
in this circle the implementation for the project gets tailored,designed, lead and measured.i facilitate six meetings of the general circle and just DO sociocracy with you.
you dont have to have read any books or any texts, you just meet to make decisions and
i accompany and guide you trough the process. after doing it for three to four times you just know
how it works. by that time one of you can start to take over the facilitator role and i support you
a little further.
this is it.
a hand full of people need to know a little bit about their roles and how they work, but no one need to learn as much as i know. if there are problems, like you cant fix a problem and your intern facilitator is overstrained, you can always call me or some one else of the sociocratic centrum in :) how deep you wanna go and how much of the sociocratic structure you need will be decided in the implementation circle anyways. it is always you, who decides.
A PRACTICAL QUESTION
in any case, forming a vision, a mission and some goals will definitely help, no matter what system you are going to use.
but who works it out and decides that this is now project wide in power, in a do-ocracy?
@sebastian: as you wish, here we go:
the sociocratic structure builds upon those four pillars:
-consent
tl;dr version - consent consent means, in distinction to consensus, that we are not looking for a solution which everyone is 100% okay with, but we formulate, the facilitation is the job of helping the group formulating it, e.g. by knowing non violent communication and by that is trained to hear their needs behind their arguments and analysis, a proposal which every one can live with, at least till we meet again. so we can continue to work and focus on reaching our goals, instead of working out the one perfect solution which meets all needs. if some of you every attended basis democratic processes, those know how long those meetings can last and not seldom do they end in a situation where everyone just gives up their initial opinion, just for the sake of ending the debate. this here is not the case as there is a system called the sociocratic meeting, wich implies a structure how a meeting is held, to which everyone can relate to and trust in it. in this structure there are rules how consent is formed, which breaks down to this - "image forming round" some one who has worked out the proposal is presenting it to the group, if its a good prepared meeting, the attendees would have gotten all the necessary information in the invitation e-mail. the person answers all the question from the group. at the end, i ask everyone with eye contact if the person is sure to have understood the proposal and does not have any more questions - "first opinion forming round" everyone says what he/she thinks about the proposal - "second opinion forming round" everyone heard what all the others are thinking and their arguments. based on this you may have gotten new perspective and points of view onto the topic and developed an advanced opinion. so everyone is invited to tell the group if their opinion has changed and why. - the facilitator works with the information he/she picks up and formulates an advancing proposal, together with the group. e.g. i would be for it if we would apply/add this rule/criterion/obligation to the proposal. - there can be even more "opinion forming round"s if needed, but as every point on the agenda has a time frame, there is a limit at which you see if the proposal is ready for being decided yet or needs more development to it. - "consent round" every one will get asked for his/her consent for the formulated proposal, no one has a heavy objection in contradiction to the vison, mission and/or goals of the circle and/or the whole project.
-circle structure
tl;dr version - circle structure the structure of the project is organized in circles, where every circle has at least a person filling the leading role and a person filling the delegate role. two people can form a circle. every circle is connected to an other circle trough double connection. a circle decides that it needs to form a circle for a certain task. the decide who would be the best person to lead this circle. they decide the goals for the circle and they decide the domain of this circle. the first thing the person with the leading role does, he/she finds people for the circle. at the first meeting, the first thing the circle does, they elect a delegate, who will then be in the upper circle with the person with the leading role, representing their own circle.
-double connection
tl;dr version - double connection every circle is connected to the next higher/inner circle trough two people/roles, the leading person/role and the delegate person/role the job description of the role for the leading person: simple: keep an eye on the goals of the circle and take care that all the people that they have everything they need need to work. care, help, support and serve your circle of people. "a good boss, empowers and creates new bosses" - if everyone is the boss, no one is the boss. the job disciption for the role of the delegate person: represent your circle in the upper circle and make sure that there are no decisions made, your circle can not fulfill or would be against the goals of your circle of vision, mission, goals of the project. the most important thing is to keep a good working inner consent, if you have parts of yourself objecting a decision in the upper circle, put it in there, as you are responsible for your decisions towards your self and your circle. your job is to maintain the good of your circle, by giving the needed wisdom and insight of your "worker role" to the upper circle members.
-open election
tl;dr version - open election this is a very important point, as it shows profoundly which parts (must) have developed to be able to live in a sociocratic system. as the secret election was a revolutionary act to guarantee ones safety, no matter whom you have chosen to vote for at an election, we exchange this guarantee with trust. trust is the nutritious base of sociocratic and all other common government systems. a sociocratic election works like this: like a normal proposal, a job description is formulated and agreed on with a consent round. after this everyone gets a piece of paper where he/she writes his/her name on top and below of it the name of the person who he/she thinks is best to be elected. the facilitator collects the pieces of paper and reads the first one out loud, like: "person X you have chosen to elect person Y, why do you think this person is suited best for this role?" person X now has the opportunity to tell the group why he/she thinks person Y is suited best. we want to make most of this situation, so we try to NOT make distinctions and contradictions to other candidates, but speak in a positive way of why we are in favor of our candidate. by this person Y hears why person X trusts him/her and collects a lot of good words, boosting his/her self esteem, just by hearing that some one is trusting him/her and why! this goes round, till everyone told the group, why he/she is in favor of which person. then, like in a normal consent forming process, there is a second round where people can react to what the have heard and learned from the other people talking about their opinion. talking from experience: sometimes if all think it is a clear choice, on person, bringing in an unthinkable vote and talking about why, i have seen whole groups changing mind and a totally new person gets elected. sometimes with some supporting terms and supporting conditions and mentors elected aside. then the facilitator posts some candidate for being agreed on trough a consent round. the job description can ofc still get altered, something added to or deleted from it. so in the end we get a person, with a very wise job description, a buck full of compliments and a very sharp knowledge what the people think and expect of/from him/her. this is completely different to other voting systems where an abstract job description is released, if any and some is elected or ordered to fill this role with no background information on what, how, why, to do. many of those people having a stressful time incorporating their new role and sometimes it happens that till it is find out that they are not fitted for the job, the project may have lost valuable time and resources. the sociocratic method of electing and consent decision prevents many of this stumbling blocks, by integrating everyone's wisdom in the process of decision making.
@sebastian:
or did you mean something like the holacracy constitution?
in sociocracy there are norms for certification of an organisation
as a sociocratic organisation.
added 3.11 15:35:
those norms are very detailed.
if i remember correctly, this norm was necessary for the sociocratic method
to be lawful effective. as sociocratic organized and certified companies
are freed from certain laws in the Netherlands.
afaik only available in paper form, at least atm or to me.
i could lend you mine, but as i lost them i ll get my new ones on the 14.11.
or could find out what they cost, as we get em for our certification process,
if you are interested in them.
Additional material, you may consider:
"Jacque Fresco - Decisions"
https://youtu.be/wbIh68giRsM?t=235
"Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y
Hey there, Christoph and I want to propose to use https://www.loomio.org to integrate the backers into decision proposing and making into the development path for the apertus project.
Further more we should design and install a consortium where representatives of the community and the development teams are final decisions for the next SPRINT (read: agile development).
Who is against it?
If no one is against it, we should integrate loomio.org asap into the apertus website (or use their website? pro/con discussion?) and send an email to all backers to invite them to contribute their wishes, ideas and solutions.
There we can discuss and find community driven, supported and elaborated solutions for our future.
Best wishes from the lab
Christoph and Walter
We tried loomio for the team a long time ago (before we had phabricator) and nobody kept using it after an initial interest so at some point we had to shut it down again.
I hope it will work better this time, I guess if the community is nursed/encouraged enough it could work.
What I am skeptical about though is creating another parallel communication channel - we have too many already - adding another one wont solve that problem :)
since then a loooot changed, right now the community demands more openness and power and this is a way to meet their needs.
I hope it will work better this time, I guess if the community is nursed/encouraged enough it could work.
that is exactly what we think as well and are doing right now :)!
What I am skeptical about though is creating another parallel communication channel - we have too many already - adding another one wont solve that problem :)
the people are complaining about missing information, thus they are not using the existing channels.
thanks for pointing this out, we will make sure people will use this channel more than the others, by informing them per direct email, a newspost with a videomessage, so they will feel heard, seen and they get a tool and a path layed out how to make a change, not just by putting money into it and then being silent bystanders.
like we said, we have to react to their voices and show them that we are adopting to their needs!
how much work is it to set up loomio and integrate the link in our website?
Christoph and I would love to write and formulate the E-Mail and send it to all community members!
reflections on our discussion on monday the 17th of april on IRC:
for me it is not question if there are problems within the (non formally existing) governance structure right now for the everyday business, there are no BUT as walter an i see it there are a lot of points and unclearness that will lead to huge confusion and problems as soon as the project accelerates.
i hope that we can follow up the discussion we had on IRC here in the forum..
here i found an governance example from the software world: https://liri.io/community/governance-model/