SHARED LEARNINGS ON SOCIOCRACY AND HOLACRACY™
The following notes are an excerpt from an audio recording made on June 13, 2006.
Art and Maggie Dutton are Steering Circle Members of Sociocracy In Action in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Brian Robertson is the CEO of Ternary Software Inc. in Philadelphia.
LINKED INDEX – use your back button to return to top of this list
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SOCIOCRACY AND AGILE SOFTWARE
HOW SOCIOCRACY HELPS OVERCOME FEAR
9 BLOCK CHARTS vs OTHER PLANNING TOOLS
A PRACTICAL WAY TO MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN
LEGAL & ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES
TRANSPERSONAL SPACE vs EGO STATE
RECORDING MEETINGS & DOCUMENTING DECISIONS
STRUCTURAL vs INSTANCE LEVEL DECISIONS
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SOCIOCRACY AND AGILE SOFTWARE
ART. Tell us more about Agile Software Development. Was that something that was out in the world before you thought about using Sociocracy in your company?
BRIAN: Yes, absolutely. What is emerging is a new wave of human, cultural development. It is in all sorts of forums and industries and each one has their own name for it. Sociocracy is one instance of this emerging new wave. Agile software development is a major movement in the software industry. It has the same principles and core understanding of the universe with the same values underneath it. There is Ken Wilber’s stuff. The whole integral movement is really big. The same values, principles and core understanding are beneath it. The automotive industry has lean manufacturing, yet another case of the same kind of emerging worldview; each one has a different piece to the equation that they have pioneered. Agile software development is something we used for many years before we ever heard of Sociocracy. Agile took the software industry by storm.
ART. One thing that we have struggled with a bit is coming to decisions. As we come to a decision and try it out, we are finding that it is good enough to move forward and test out later. Although we are still pretty small we are finding that this is a different way of thinking about decisions and is really important. Knowing that a decision is good enough and then seeing how it works is liberating.
I guess in software development you already use this way of thinking. Have you found this as well with Ternary as a company and with the way people have reacted?
BRIAN: It is a mindset shift. In a book written about Agile software, the author says that “XP is about social change”. (XP is the name of a specific Agile methodology). Here is a book written about a software development process and one of the first things mentioned is about social change. Now that is a mindset shift. Moving to Agile software development is not just about adopting a new process. It is not just learning to follow certain steps and then you are “doing Agile”.
It is an entirely different way of looking at and thinking about being in the world. This takes a massive mindset shift in every thing you do and it takes a new culture to support it. Many organizations that I talk to who are doing Agile find that Sociocracy is the same thing. There is a culture that goes with it and supports it. There are tangible processes in Sociocracy that are similar to Agile software development practices. There are individual behaviors and practices that people do. There is a shared language emerging. There is personal development that everyone goes through. And all these things go together. When new people first come in to Ternary and hear things like; any decision can be revisited at any time and we are going to just try it by dynamically steering and adapting, This often brings up fear and reasonably so. In most places in the modern world if you made decisions like that, things could come crashing down and you would get fired. It takes a whole system change to support letting go of the fear.
HOW SOCIOCRACY HELPS OVERCOME FEAR
ART: We have seen some of that just in developing our own Sociocratic process with our small group. When we started out, the whole concept brought up fear and you could feel it in the room. Slowly, over a period of time, as we started understanding the concepts, we have noticed that the fear is going away. Your last audio presentation was excellent in helping us with that. We are starting to feel much more comfortable about working together and coming to these partial decisions.
BRIAN. If fear is present having it arise is actually a good thing and that is why I am sometimes guilty of doing things very intentionally to help fear surface. Once it surfaces you can own it, address it, deal with it and move beyond it. It is now a normal process to allow fears to be addressed. I am helping another company adopt Holacracy™ and it’s the same thing. When you first put either Sociocracy or Holacracy™ into place all these feelings of fear bubble up. It is kind of like the analogy of shaking a soda can. You pop the top when you first put the system into place and all this stuff comes out. It is actually healthy. Eventually it starts subsiding and the pressure starts easing, equalizing, and you’re operating in a new mode.
MAGGIE: We should probably warn new people about the fear factor when implementing Sociocracy or Holacracy™. Revealing fears often seems to create chaos but out of chaos often comes something good. When you’re in the chaos it is hard to remember that.
BRIAN: Sociocracy is a new level beyond the modern organization. Moving beyond is often like a process of death or dying. You need to let go of what you already know and what already is, to move beyond to something new that is more encompassing, more embracing. That process can be painful, challenging, and yet it is needed.
MAGGIE: I have noticed that the fear comes in a lot of questions. The “what-if’s?”
BRIAN. Yes, it often comes up as fear about the future. What might happen? It also comes up sometimes as anger directed at someone else in the system. It is anger that is based in this fear. There is no need to be angry and yet there is anger there. It comes out in all different emotions. It is really important that it does come out. Those emotions can be embraced, worked with and understood. That is part of the path of moving beyond them.
BRIAN: Where we have gone with Holacracy™ is to add many other systems that interplay with and extend the basic governing structures of Sociocracy. We have integrated models that help people understand themselves and their own fear better. There are models that help us understand and work with the culture we have at Ternary. All of these things help. It is not just; here is a new governance system and the rest of the people figure out what that means to them and what it means to the culture. What new behaviors do they have to engage in? If you put models all around it, it is more supportive.
MAGGIE: Sounds great. So are you going to document some of this on your new website?
BRIAN: Yes, I am hoping within a week or two we will have it launched. We already have a good chunk of content written and I think it is going to be really powerful.
9 BLOCK CHARTS vs OTHER PLANNING TOOLS
MAGGIE: Does Ternary use 9-block charts for planning?
BRIAN: We don’t. We don’t for a reason. I do think they can be useful. We talked with John Buck (certified Sociocracy consultant) quite a bit about them. We tried them for a little bit and then we threw them out. We use some of the concepts in them. We talk about them and use the language “input, transformation, output”. We talk about “leading, doing and measuring”. The trouble I have with the 9-block chart is that it has that chunk feel to it, not a flow feel to it. Take what we do, software development. In the traditional model of software development that would have worked fine. The input is a bunch of facts. The transformation is that you write a bunch of code and the output is working software. There is a clear boundary and you can talk about policies for each of them, but with Agile anything that has this big chunk nature to it, is not actually aligned with the nature of reality. The nature of reality is more of a constant flow. I think this is the same principle that goes into Sociocracy and the idea that you reach any decision as new information arises. It is not just that you make a decision, you execute and then you measure. You are doing some of all of those constantly.
The challenge to me is that it is difficult to try to map an Agile software process to the 9-block chart because there is no distinct input, transformation and output. They are happening on such a miniscule scale that we do all of those every hour that we spend doing our work. It happens in a state of flow.
Sometimes we use a similar concept that comes from the lean manufacturing industry called a value stream map. A value stream map captures more of that state of flow. It looks more at a higher level. An overall process and how things move through a process without making it into more discreet chunks to fit “input, transformation, output”.
The concept is useful but not for mapping our practices.
ART: One of the things I like, about Sociocracy and Holacracy™, is the whole concept of staying in the moment. Talking about now, not the past and not letting fears drag us into the future. That point seems really important.
BRIAN: There will be a lot of content about that posted on the holacracy.org website. There is an absolutely major focus on surfing the wave of what is arising now. Not; what might come up down the road or what happened yesterday. But looking at where are we now and how do we align with what is naturally trying to emerge in reality now. Holacracy™ has a very present focus.
Part of the core understanding that we are trying to document now for the website is the idea that there is a natural creative impulse. At the heart of reality there is something. Things are moving. There is this moving wave. Stuff happens. Time advances.
MAGGIE: Life happens.
BRIAN: Yes. Suddenly atoms emerge, then molecules, then cells. There is this wave of what is arising now. The present is actually the only moment that is removed from the stream of time. It is timeless and it is real. Everything else is a made up construct, a projection. The present is now. It is real. It is what is arising. There is a strong focus on surfing the edge of the moment. Noticing what is emerging. Aligning with that and helping consciously to create an impulse towards whatever is pushing to come forth.
ART: I like that fact that if you stay in the moment it squeezes the fear out. The present is happening around you and that is what it makes sense to talk about.
BRIAN: Yes, fear is always there when you are talking about the future and what might be. When you stay grounded in the present there is no need for fear because the present (just) is. Another core understanding that we are documenting, is that the present is inherently perfect. What is arising now is inherently perfect. There are no problems and nothing wrong. I think that is a key understanding that helps in Sociocracy as well. There is nothing wrong with what is, there is only the opportunity to be a fuller embodiment of that inherent perfection. We have an opportunity to make ourselves and our organizations more perfect, moment by moment.
Failure is another interesting concept. We use failure as one of the key principles in our software development. We embrace it. Failure is beautiful. Failure at any level of scale helps you succeed at a broader level of scale. So we might have a failed project but that is a learning opportunity so that the whole company can succeed. We might have a failed company. That is a learning opportunity, so the whole industry can succeed. Ultimately the human species might go extinct and that is a learning opportunity for the Cosmos to make a broader level succeed.
ART: That opens it right up. Back to the now.
BRIAN: Yes, Failure is a meaningless concept. It needs to be looked at as information. Inherently perfect information that gives us the information we need to adapt, to learn and to be more full embodiments of that perfection in the next moment.
A PRACTICAL WAY TO MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN
MAGGIE: What I like is that there are a number of us out there in the world, “cultural creatives” who understand these concepts. Now with Sociocracy and what I hear about Holacracy™ there is a concrete way of achieving these things and making them happen in a way you can feel great about.
In our booming economy in Alberta there are still employers who think that more money will fix whatever people have on their minds or are complaining about. Employee retention is a huge issue here but still when someone quits they become just another disgruntled employee. These employers just don’t “get it” and waste a lot of talent and creative energy.
ART: That is fairly common with hierarchy in larger corporations. We have been considering how to take this concept to big corporations. It is a challenge because there is often an immobile structure in how corporations do business.
Where do we break in? Who do we talk to?
MAGGIE: We are planning to approach companies at the CEO level. Because of the oil industry the economy is booming to the degree that they are desperate for workers. They haven’t figured out how they can get them or keep them. In the past it was an employers market but not anymore. So even though a lot of companies here are very large, they now have an even larger problem. One example is that some home builders are going out of business even though the demand for housing is very strong. They can’t get trades people and so houses can’t get built. They are taking orders two years ahead. Finally some said they had to stop taking orders. And this is really all about their inability to attract and hold workers.
BRIAN: Something you said really resonates with me. Sociocracy is a concrete tangible system that allows change. Instead of a bunch of folks going off complaining; “Wow this whole modern corporate things sucks.” Sociocracy offers a way of being productive.
It reminds me of a really interesting story. A colleague of mine spoke at a big leadership conference many years back. It was one of these big things where they had ex-presidents, Jack Welsh and other big names and leaders. The people attending the conference had an evaluation sheet to determine the speaker with the most impact. The person who won with by far the most votes, was Mother Theresa. She just happened to be in town that week so the conference organizers asked her to stop by and say a few words at the end of the conference. She listened for a while to all of these leaders of major corporations, talking and talking about how do we change our people? How can we get them to focus on results?
At the end Mother Teresa went up to the podium and said something like “I don’t know much about leadership, but I do know this. You want to change your people? Do you know them? And, do you love them? If you don’t know them and you don’t love them, you are not going to change them.”
I think the same is true when we look at the business world around us. We look at the world of these corporate structures and everything that is sometimes frustrating to be involved with. But if we want to move that world forward, we are not going to get very far by going to them and telling them how awful they are. We are going to get there by going in and embracing it. Saying, “Hey, what you have done, this corporate thing is amazing”. Look at the history of human evolution. We have got these new organisms, corporations, that have only recently emerged. That is just beautiful, wonderful. We can have a real chance of moving them forward if we can embrace that. And they do need to evolve because they are not sufficient for the world we live in today.
Sociocracy and Holacracy™ provide a tangible way for people to shift from just railing on them saying; “Oh they are just bad, they are awful, they are terrible.” That approach isn’t going to change them or do any good. Although they have achieved some amazing things, there is a next step to propose. It is a real, concrete and tangible step that we can do something with.
Sociocracy embraces the value in the modern corporate structure. It doesn’t just say “Oh that is all just terrible. Throw it out.” Rather, it says, “Wait a minute, you have realized some really cool stuff, like the importance of results, and some basic things about organization. There is some stuff in there. Some real value.” Implementing Sociocracy and/or Holacracy™ just overlays with what they have now and takes them to a new level.
MAGGIE: Many corporations have mission or value statements that reflect good intentions. It is as though intentions are not enough without a system that supports them. Sociocracy will give them a way. What we need to do is to get in the right doors. There is a national organization of CEOs in Canada and we hope to make a connection there. If we can convince one, then that person may take it to the others.
BRIAN: Once one or two organizations or even a division in a big organization latches on and sees the tangible value, it is going to provide some powerful momentum for others.
LEGAL & ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES
MAGGIE: What legal structure do you have at Ternary? Do you have shareholders? Stocks? How is your by-law revision going?
BRIAN: We are in the process of revising the by-laws so we can actually make the Holacratic structure legal. That will be really cool. We are moving on that. The legal vehicle we will use is an LLC. The way the laws work it is much easier to adopt Holacracy™ legally with an LLC than it is with a traditional corporation. So that change in US law turned out to be really good. LLC laws are recent and they are much more progressive than the corporation laws which have sat around for a long time.
MAGGIE: What does LLC stand for?
BRIAN: Limited Liability Company. It is basically an entity that has the same legal treatment as a corporation in that the company is a legal “person” with the same shielding that a corporation has for shareholders, but it is a pass through tax entity, like a partnership. The really cool thing is that you can write virtually any by-laws you can imagine to govern them. Unlike a corporation which must have certain things in place and has a lot of restrictions and a very defined structure. An LLC is an open book structure. You write your own by-laws. Whatever you get creative enough to write, more or less, you can put in place. So it is a very nice vehicle for legalizing a structure like Sociocracy or Holacracy™.
MAGGIE: We are just researching the legal aspects and I am not sure our corporations are as restrictive as that. In any case, I think we are looking at a non-profit corporation as opposed to a charity or a for-profit corporation.
BRIAN: I don’t know enough about Canadian laws and legal systems to comment intelligently there. It was a little bit of a challenge for us but once we found the LLC it helped.
We do not have any significant focus on the investment structure. We do have some plans but right now we don’t have a lot of external investors. It is pretty much just the founders who invested earlier on and one other advisor guy we have. So we haven’t put much thought into the investment structure. We do have a structure in mind for it and it should work nicely. It is similar to the Sociocratic model.
The actual structure then is that we have a top circle which is equivalent to a board of directors.
MAGGIE: Are they mostly from outside the company?
BRIAN: Yes. It has been difficult to find directors that know a little about what we are doing. The goal is to have about four directors from outside of the organization in addition to myself as the down link from the top circle to the general company circle (our executive team). And then the final person is the uplink elected from the general company circle to the top circle. The four external directors would represent the needs of the environments we play within (our industry, our social context, etc.).
MAGGIE: Many corporations have large legal departments. This leads one to believe they must sue and get sued often. Do companies that operate sociocratically have the same need for a big legal department?
BRIAN: That is an interesting question. I suspect when the whole world starts moving in this general direction, the legal system is going to need to change pretty dramatically. Not that there won’t be a place for some of the things we have now. It will just be that when everybody has a voice, when everybody’s views are integrated you suddenly do not need that kind of enforcement. You don’t need that system quite as much.
MAGGIE: For instance if companies just listened to employees and contractors reasonable objections they could avoid a lot of the need to settle things in the courts.
BRIAN: Yes, I think the shift will be pretty dramatic. At Ternary we even have a different justice system which is a shift from a punitive justice system like what we are used to in our broader world. Our system is a “restorative” justice system where the focus is on “rebalancing” whatever was done that knocked the system out of balance. A punitive system would punish the person to try to prevent it from repeating and instill fear in the future. For us, when there is some imbalance or injustice in the system two things happen. Firstly, whoever is accountable for the injustice (including anyone who was involved in it and that is actually a lot of people), needs to step up and say “here is what I am going to do to restore the balance to the system”. It’s taking accountability personally by saying, “I recognize my part in this. What can I do to bring back balance?” The second thing is how to determine what the system can learn from this. Asking; “What can we learn from this and what new policies, new feedback, new measurements, will enable us to transcend this so that this would never need to have happened in the first place?” There is no blaming quality in our justice system but there is a recognition of what caused the imbalance.
It is pretty powerful for the people involved. I read a really cool article about how justice is done in some Native American tribes. An old woman had her house broken into by some teenaged kids and they tore the place apart. What they didn’t know was that she was actually hiding in a closet, saw them and was able to identify them later. She was obviously terrified. Everyone who was connected to the kids came together in a tribunal. Parents, extended family, the woman, some teachers, everyone who was involved. Each person including the old woman was asked; “What did you do to contribute to this situation?” In a non-judgmental, non-blaming way they start asking, “What can we do to restore the balance here?” The focus is on the kids stepping up and taking responsibility for their actions and saying“Why don’t we help you rebuild your place and try to raise some money to cover some of the damages?” Meanwhile everyone is asking, “What can we learn from this?” It is a very powerful system, much different than a punitive model. It embraces both the victim and the wrongdoer and still has a strong focus on the injustice needing to be restored. If justice is not restored, people are going to hold resentments. Releasing unhealthy emotional baggage openly allows those feelings to be resolved and people can move beyond the incident in a healthy fashion.
ART: Could you tell us more about dealing with emotions when they arise?
BRIAN: This is where we added a lot to Holacracy™ that Sociocracy did not address. Emotion is such a lynch-pin in making all this work and sustaining what some of the Sociocratic community calls “sense of meeting”, from the Quaker tradition.
If you deny emotion, it gets in the way. If you pretend it is not there, which is what the modern business world does, it can be paralyzing. An attitude that says; “Check your emotions at the door. Pretend they are not there” does not work. At the same time, emotions can’t be the main focus with everyone wanting just to feel good because narcissism can come out from that. What is really needed is neither of these. It is to embrace emotions, allow them to exist, arise, be seen, heard and validated and yet at the same time recognize that we are transcending them. We are moving beyond them, embracing them for the sake of a larger whole. That is what makes sense. For the sense of what needs to happen. There is more understanding now and tangible systems that make that okay.
The reaction round in the decision making process is a great place to validate feelings. This allows people to express their personal emotions so that they can, by the objection round, get into a transpersonal state.
The justice system must honor emotions as well. Without a justice system of some sort, people will hold emotions and resentments and that gets in the way of everything. There needs to be a way for people to get their emotions out and see justice honored. At the same time keeping a focus on whatever happens is just perfect. What is needed is recognition and an opportunity to restore the balance without getting into blaming.
MAGGIE: We see evidence that trust comes out of the process. Someone can even be skeptical, but if open to just seeing how it goes, find that trust develops as the experience with Sociocracy unfolds. The justice piece you describe must really help with that too. When you know that there is a way to address your concerns, you can relax and make your best contribution.
BRIAN: Yes. When everyone involved can say “Here is how I contributed and here is what I can do to help restore the balance.” It is very liberating. It’s powerful. For example; recently one of our guys at Ternary made a few mistakes on a project that he was involved with. It cost us a lot of money. First, we made up for it for the client by asking; “What can we do to restore the balance?” We did a ton of free work and made sure the client’s needs were met.
The individual involved then said, “I am going to skip my pay this month to restore the balance for my part in this.” He said being able to do that was so liberating. He had been feeling terrible and was beating himself up about it. He was so happy he had that opportunity.
The ability to say, “I screwed up.” in a space where you know you won’t be judged or punished for it enables you to take responsibility and that lifts the burden of guilt. The rest of the community can let go of any held resentments they might have as well. This is so powerful.
MAGGIE: That’s amazing. What a great thing to be able to do. To take responsibility but not be fired. So many times, in other situations, it seems that there really isn’t anyway you can make good.
BRIAN: Yes and what happens too is there is a certain contagiousness that happens. So it wasn’t just him. He might have started that process but then everyone else who was involved, his managers and coworkers, came forward. Everyone came forward saying “Here is how I was involved and here is what I can do to help balance the system.”
His manager said “I didn’t provide enough coaching. I didn’t provide him enough structure to help him really succeed at this as well as we needed him to. What I can do is to come in on the weekend and help make this right. Help him get the stuff done and take on a little extra burden.”
Everybody steps forward and says, “What can I do to help restore balance.” They are coming from a non-judgmental, transpersonal place.
TRANSPERSONAL SPACE vs EGO STATE
ART: I wanted to come back to that transpersonal place, can you say more about that?
BRIAN: It is such a powerful thing when people are able to get to a place beyond ego. That is important. It doesn’t mean denying ego or pretending it is not there or repressing it. It means embracing it and yet moving on at the same time with a higher level focus on just what needs to happen. What makes sense. Sometimes what needs to happen is that the system needs to be restored. Getting into a transpersonal space allows people to bear more of a burden with less suffering.
Suffering is often mistaken to be about the stimulus that causes the pain. It is not. Suffering is the resistance to the stimulus. The resistance to whatever is arising. The more you can flow with what is arising in reality or in the moment, the less suffering there is.
An analogy is when parents have new babies. They may have to sit up all night taking care of a crying infant. There is a lot of burden that they are bearing and yet when you get healthy parents they bear that burden with joy. What actually happens is that the more people are able to shift through to a transpersonal space, where; it is not just about me, it is about something broader and more important of which I am a part. It is not about sacrificing myself. It is about identifying with a broader whole that includes me. The more people are able to get to that kind of transpersonal space, the more they are able to turn suffering to a joyous burden. Actually their capacity for suffering increases.
It is not that people at this level of development, like some of the great sages and saints of the world didn’t suffer and were happy all the time. That is a mistaken impression. It is that the capacity for both joy and suffering is dramatically increased. They can bear more burdens on behalf of something larger than themselves without it being a sacrifice. It is not about sacrificing themselves.
ART: At first we found some of the circle meeting process tedious. Lately, because the group is relaxing into decision making we are finding the circle’s voice. It is amazing how good that makes you feel and how good the group feels.
BRIAN: Yes, and when it is done well the feeling in the decision making meetings is that nobody made the decision. It is not that I decided. It is not even that all of us decided. It is just that we were the vehicles or the conduit for what needed to emerge through us. It just happened. It emerged through us. Even if the decision that emerges puts burden on some people there, it increases the capacity because of the transpersonal space to own that burden gladly. To take on that accountability or to bear that burden joyously.
ART: We have found that too. We have loaded ourselves with more work than we could possibly get done. Yet, we feel good about it.
BRIAN: Sociocracy and Holacracy™ powerfully help people to move beyond ego, beyond narcissism into a space of doing just what is needed and to do it with joy not sacrifice. There is a sacrificial aspect to it from the outside point of view but from the inside point of view it is not. This view is about; doing it for myself…suddenly I define myself…my sense of self expands to include the entire organization and beyond that. I am doing it for a larger version of myself. It is no longer about me, in this physical body. Nor is it about sacrificing myself for somebody else. The larger good is all part of me and I can bear a burden because of that.
RECORDING MEETINGS & DOCUMENTING DECISIONS
MAGGIE: Do you find that the need to document everything extensively reduces itself? If there is a log book recording decisions, planning tools to record who said they would do what. Would formal meeting notes still be necessary? It seems as though a lot of documentation of this kind is about fear and lack of trust in others. Does Sociocracy help with that?
BRIAN: Yes, I think you are dead on. We have found that the real important part to capture is the decision because the system needs the information. Everybody needs to be informed so that they don’t have to fear what was decided. They can see what was decided. What they don’t need is all the many arguments and all the many notes that lead to the decision. They can go talk and ask and if the decision is in some way violating a limit of tolerance of the system, they can bring it up in the next meeting. They will get the context of why it was there in the first place and they will integrate their perspective into it.
MAGGIE: With our last meeting the notes were mostly about who agreed to do what. I am not sure why that was really needed.
STRUCTURAL vs INSTANCE LEVEL DECISIONS
BRIAN: There is also another shift that really reduces both the documentation and the quantity and time in meetings. When organizations first adopt Sociocracy they tend to make every decision in the circle. They bring up specific instances, like “What are we going to do about this specific case, this specific project or this specific sales opportunity?” Discussing; what are we going to do and making decisions around that.
Later the focus in meetings becomes setting up the structure, policies, and the accountability delegation that allows people to go and autocratically make those decisions within defined limits. Instead of talking about specific projects in circles, the meetings move to talking about projects in general, or to discussing how to approach projects in general. Determining who is accountable for making what decisions around projects, in general. You don’t talk about specific instance stuff at all. Specifics might be used in a discussion as to what the limits to that general accountability should be.
At Ternary we talk about the difference between structure level and instance level. Circle meetings, ideally, are for defining the structure or the pattern of the organization and not for talking about specific instances of that pattern. For example; Sales will be discussed in general, as a function, and policies established around that. Specific sales opportunities won’t be discussed. Or, a circle would talk about who is accountable for dealing with software design, in general, without talking about specific designs.
This shift in focus is a powerful transition and it dramatically improves the efficiency of the circle.
In a circle meeting, when discussion come up about a specific instance, a key question or key coaching tip to ask the group is; “What specific policy could we have put in place to make it unnecessary to even bring this to the circle in the first place?”
If someone comes to a circle meeting saying; “I propose that we buy a new refrigerator for the kitchen and that I go do that.” Instead of addressing that in the circle meeting, ask, “What general accountability can we set up?” Maybe somebody needs to be in charge of facilities within a limit of spending X amount of dollars. If a policy like that is set up, the person will not need to come to the circle with this kind of proposal again.
ART: Yes, I think accountability is really key. We have said, “Okay, I am accountable for that. You are accountable for that.” Since we are small, our lower circles are really just one person. To me being accountable for something means one thing but to others in our General Circle or Steering Circle it may mean something else. Sometimes we bring certain things to the circle because we are still dealing with fear. “Are you going to trust me to make that decision?” It will be helpful for us to talk about what policies we can put in place so we know what taking responsibility really means. That will allow us to feel more comfortable with those kind of decisions.
BRIAN: You will see a lot of people bringing things back to the circle because they do not know. The trouble with any kind of implicit accountability is that everyone has a different idea of what that means. The more you can make it explicit, which is one of the key goals of Holacracy™, the less it will need to be brought to the circle. Once everyone knows “Okay, I don’t need to, and the circle doesn’t want me to, bring back things unless they are outside of these defined limits”, they are freed to do what is needed.
We also talk about accountability needs to go with control. We use this phrase a lot “accountability and control”. We may say “Joe has accountability and control in this area with the limit that he can’t spend more that $1000 a month”.
Accountability and control need to go together. Expressing it this way makes it clearer that when delegating accountability for a task/project/function, control of it is also delegated.
A huge mistake made all the time in business is talking about to whom people are accountable to. What is useful is to be clear about what people are accountable for. Going hand in hand with that is that they need control to some degree. There can be limits to that control over the area they are accountable for.
MAGGIE: At the same time that doesn’t preclude the person that does have the accountability from wanting to have a brain-storming session with others who may be able to contribute to it.
BRIAN: Absolutely not. In fact one thing that we are putting into our by-laws is that, within a circle, everybody has accountability and control of using other people on the circle for brainstorming. Getting help from and helping out other people on the circle. So that is explicit now. Everybody knows that everyone in their circle has accountability for helping them out. So if they need to go and pull someone out and say “Hey, can you help me with this? Can you chat with me about this?” They have got that accountability.
MAGGIE: The person who is brainstorming may get mixed up then and think that are actually part of the decision in the end. Just because they threw something up on the whiteboard that it isn’t necessarily going to be incorporated. We are getting it that not being part of the decision doesn’t mean that they couldn’t look at it later and say so if they had any objections to a decision as far as it seemed in tolerance from their perspective. It is sure a thing to have to bend your mind around.
ART: One thing that is a challenge is to break away from the old language and find new ways to express what is occurring without using the old “I agree with that.” Or “No, I disagree with that.”
BRIAN: It is even more dramatic than that. Language is not just a coding system for something that exists. Language actually shapes how we think. The language we use shapes us internally. It is critically important. Shifting the language is one of the most powerful tools we have to shift the mindset underneath it.
That is why in Holacracy™ we have actually shifted a lot of the language used from Sociocracy. The concepts from the root of what Gerard Endenburg wrote about are still absolutely there. The language is pretty dramatically shifted because one of the challenges is that it is all so new that most of our current language pulls us down into a less than transpersonal space, an ego space.
Even the word Consent for example. When going around a circle you do not want people saying, “I consent.” You also don’t want people saying “No objection.”
Saying “I consent”, personalizes it. It makes it about me and what do I think? It pulls away from a transpersonal space. ‘No objection’ is similar. Even the word ‘objection’ still has a feel to it that is more personal.
We talk in terms of tension as in; “I am aware of no tensions.” Even when we use the word ‘objection’ it is “I know of no objection” not “I have no objection.” The subtle shift in language has a profound effect on how this plays out. One of the things I am trying to do is hunt down the language that pulls away from where this could be going and replace it with language that actually enhances understanding of these new concepts. Language that pushes people to something that is more powerful.
ART: You have mentioned using the concept of bringing forward all perspectives instead of objections. For me that is a good way of thinking about consent. Talking about objections seemed too harsh for me.
BRIAN: It is. Having objections shifts people’s feel more to consensus, which is all about the people, the individuals and what they want. Instead of something broader that transcends and yet includes the individuals.
We talk a lot about perspective. I am even shifting the name of the decision making process. Consent still has that quality to it. I am calling it Integrative Decision-Making which really describes what you are doing. You are integrating perspective. It is not about getting people to consent. It is about getting the most accurate picture of reality by integrating as many perspectives as needed. Each one has truth in it. Integrating the perspectives and allowing the decision to emerge from that integration. That language around perspective and integrative decision-making is much more powerful for holding that space than Consent is.
ART: Consent seems so hard. If you don’t get it, it is very hard to figure out and it seems like a solid word.
BRIAN: It sounds way too similar to consensus and people get confused.
MAGGIE: We spend a lot of time explaining the difference.
BRIAN: I am hoping the new language will help a lot with communication and people’s ability to “get it” and also to just practice it, to stay in that transpersonal space.
MAGGIE: The whole concept needs to be North Americanized. I don’t know much about Ken Wilber’s work but I did find Elliott Jacques book in our library. I have been reading the index and realizing I probably don’t really need to know all this because I just know it all feels right and comes from good science. I don’t need to study this. I trust it somehow. It just feels right.
BRIAN: Yes, it is interesting how that works. The language is so important. Ken’s work has provided a lot of guidance there. He has some very powerful ways of expressing these ideas and putting them into a more inclusive, embracing framework.
END
Rick McCosh of Sociocracy In Action transcribed the dialogue from a conference call that lasted for over an hour. Some of the questions and comments from Art and Maggie were not very clear in the audio and may not reflect the original. Maggie did the final edit, revising some portions considerably for clarity.
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