Sociocracy
Sociocracy is one of the many governance frameworks that promote both equivalence and effectiveness. You may think, so is democracy (or is it?), but why should we care about sociocracy?
Most may think that in an organisation, you can only achieve either equivalence or effectiveness. What makes sociocracy different (and better in my opinion) is that it shows to people that there is a way to achieve both. Namely, through consent-based decision making and decentralised circle structures.
Consent-based decision making
One of the biggest pitfalls of democracy as we’ve already seen in political elections throughout the globe is the tyranny of majority. Just because 49% said no, doesn’t mean we should ignore their needs and wants.
Not to mention top-down hierarchical organisations. Just because the board of directors said no, doesn’t mean we should ignore those who are affected by their decision (i.e. employees).
This is where consent-based decision making comes to play. Before that, let’s clear up a few things.
Deciding by consent doesn’t mean that every single person involved must agree on something. That’s consensus which is useful in certain situations but it’s different from consent.
In sociocratic consent, you cannot oppose to something just because you don’t like it. There is an explicit distinction between consent and personal preference in the framework.
Consent-based decision making checks for agreement between everyone involved through integrating objections. This means once there is no objections from every person, then only a decision can be made. You may think by now that this is not effective as hearing objections from everyone will slow down the process.
Truth be told, yes indeed. Deciding by consent can be slower than the typical boss making the decision for everyone.
But does being efficient and speedy necessarily mean effective decision-making? Consider the situation of the typical boss making a company-wide decision. What would happen if the decision was made without considering the voices of those affected by it? How would they feel? Based on that, if they don’t feel psychologically safe (i.e. resentful and unhappy), will execution of the decision work?
Effectiveness trumps efficiency. And sociocracy can achieve both through inclusive consent-based decision making. And really, it’s not as slow as you think. Like the daily stand-up in Scrum, there is a structured process in which Sociocracy follows to ensure consistency and seamlessness, especially during meetings.
That leaves one question however. How would it plausible to integration objections from 20, 30 people? This is where decentralised circle structures come in.
Decentralised circle structures
We all recognise the typical org chart. The white guy at the top and the rest of the organisation representing the faceless (even nameless) blocks as you move down the pyramid. Within the pyramid, you see silos representing factions that are probably going against each other. And the rest at their knees. All for the sake of the white guy.
So how different is the org chart of a sociocratic organisation? There are similarities in the sense that you still have departmental circles that meet a certain organisation need. Like any org chart, an effective one is one that reflects the organisational ethos as close as possible. This involves having clearly defined vision, mission and aims that form parts of the ethos.
Here’s a few things about circles structures that defines the uniqueness of sociocracy:
General circle - the main circle that connects all the departmental circles together. Unlike a board of directors that has the power to simply override decisions and remove people, the general circle rather serves as a channel of communication between the departmental circles.
Double-linking - when two circles are double-linked, this means that there are two representatives representing the interests of their respective circles. In other words, either circle cannot override what the other circle does. This is how sociocracy achieves decentralised authority structures which is why sociocratic governance is compatible with DAOs and coops in this sense.