I agreeto Idea Sociocracy: new governance structure for organizations

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I disagreeto Idea Sociocracy: new governance structure for organizations

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Sociocracy: new governance structure for organizations

Length:
3 hr workshop

Companies are relying more and more on people's brain power instead of their physical capacity. From this sprout the creative ideas necessary to maintain a competitive edge. This asks for a culture in which creativity can flourish. A culture that can handle the tension that generate new ideas, differing opinions and the challenging of existing opinions. It must offer room to chaos and order at the same time.

Our existing governance structures have big trouble dealing with these seemingly contraditory demands. The reason for that is that they are based on a linear top down line of command, This limits creativity since it gives leadership the authority to ignore (good) ideas and measurements. Therefore we need cyclical decision making structures. Structures in which feed back from the bottom up has an equivalent position to the top down command structure.

There is a governance structure that can do this: sociocracy or as it is called in the anglo saxon community 'dyamic governance'. This is a governance structure based on equivalence in decision making that offers room for chaos and order. It combines a cyclical structure for policy making at all levels of an organization with a linear command structure for the execution of policy.

With almost 50 years of experience in different countries and organizations sociocray has proven its value. In The Netherlands this has resulted in recognition by the government of sociocracy being an legal alternative to the works council.

Based on four basic construction rules it can help any existing organization to turn tself into a creativity booster. More info www.sociocracy.com, governancealive.com, www.sociocratie.nl.

Brief outline of workshop

1. Opening Round

2. Experience different kinds of decision making incuding a sociocratic one

3. Evaluating the decision making principles

4. Short explanation of how a sociocratic decision making structure can be added to exiting organizations/networks

5. Closing Round

Max. participants: none

Comment

Submitted by pvandermeche 1 year ago

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  1. The idea was posted
    1 year ago

Comments (6)

  1. If you are proposing to take a look at Sociocracy, your title should make that more clear, IMO. The way it's formulated now, I would expect a more general session on possible structures. For example, I would even go so far to question the need for "levels" at all.

    1 year ago
  2. Thank you Ilja, I added Sociocracy to the title. As for the levels topic. This would be interesting to discuss and experience in my workshop.

    Instead of talking about levels one could also speak of decision making domains and how to connect them in such a way that influence (also formally) goes both ways. In our current structures enhancing one decision making domain (let's say that of the EU) cuts the decision making domains of the others (the EU member states). Sociocracy fixes this by making a double link between decision domains. So each decision making domain is represented in the next upper or lower decision making domain which makes decisions on the basis of equivalence in decision making. This makes delegation of decision making upward or downward easier since you donot loose your power to influence decision making.

    1 year ago
  3. I wonder whether there is significant difference between this session, and the one on Holacracy. As far as I understand, the latter is strongly inspired by the former?

    11 months ago
  4. Yes Ilja, you are right that Holacracy is strongly inspired by sociocracy. A big difference is the almost 50 years of experience with sociocracy in different countries and organizations. Which in The Netherlands has resulted in recognition by the government of sociocracy being an accepted alternative to the works council. Another difference is that sociocracy relies on the common goal as the binding factor for an organization where in Holacracy it is the Holon.

    11 months ago
  5. It is unclear to me how this session is going to be collaborative and participative. Will it be a discussion? A fishbowl session? A brainstorm? Something else?

    10 months ago
    1. Thanks Jurgen. I added an outline of the session. It will be a participative experience and a joint evaluation of lessons learned.

      10 months ago