I've been asked to speak a bit about sociocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy and how it works. It is a huge topic, but I'll attempt (perhaps foolishly) a summarization. Sociocracy is a framework for self-governance of a group of people. This could be anything from a book club with your friends to a large corporation. In my mind, the main pillars of sociocracy are: consent, circles, and feedback. 1. Consent: sociocracy takes "consent of the governed" very seriously. Every decision of a sociocratic circle must be made with the consent of everyone that is a member of that circle. Lots of people think this is impossible, but I assure you it isn't. The key to making this work is to try to find a course of action that is within everyone's "range of tolerance." That is, the decision doesn't have to be everyone's preference, they don't have to like it, they just have to be "okay with it." Finding a solution within the area of "I can live with it" is a LOT easier than finding a solution that makes everyone happy. Indeed, the later is often impossible. 2. Circles: a sociocratic circle is the fundamental unit of organization within sociocracy. A circle can optionally have one or more Child Circles, if the organization is large enough to warrant it. Each circle in sociocracy has an AIM (a reason for existing), a DOMAIN (area of authority), a TERM (how long it exists), and MEMBERS. A circle also has ROLES: 1) _Lead_: think "project manager" for the circle. Doesn't actually make the decisions (remember that is by consent of the members of that circle) but rather supports the circle so that it is still headed towards its AIM. 2) _Facilitator_: simply someone who ensures circle meetings run smoothly and are in service of the AIM. 3) _Secretary_: the person tasked with "making sense" of the circle's activities, recording minutes, logging decisions, etc. and 4) _Delegate_: see below. 3. Feedback: The Delegate is the circle member tasked with pairing with the Lead to ensure the free flow of information from a Child Circle to a Parent Circle by virtue of being members of both circles. With this free flow of information and consent from "top" to "bottom" an organization becomes very aware of how well things are working at all "levels". Paring this with circle (and policy, and role) TERMS, sociocracy enables a dynamic, self-healing, and fluid structure of self-governance. If you'd like to learn more about sociocracy, I highly recommend "Many Voices, One Song" by Ted Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez https://www.sociocracyforall.org/ And I can give a talk about it, if folks are interested. Thanks! 🙂

It sounds deceptively simple. :) Seems like a good framework for open source organizations, among other things. Have you seen it in action on very contentious topics? Relatedly, have you seen it break down and maybe even recover?

Whoa — this seems like a really compelling framework for decision-making. Something I've been puzzling over for the past, oh, two and half years… is how to change the evolving role of stewardship in this community so that it's not yet another lineage of white dudes, or a self-selecting board of mostly-white mostly-dudes. I could try to "hand the reins" to someone from an underrepresented group, but that feels like a token gesture, or like virtue signalling. It wouldn't, by itself, contribute to substantive change in our field more broadly, and changing our field is explicitly what we're here to do. The most common wisdom that folks have shared with me here is that any attempt to improve the social conditions of our industry / culture will require building coalitions, not just inserting underrepresented people into the very seats of power established and defined by, well, folks like me. (Yes, there's also the spectre of capitalism here, but I think the sweet spot is making a move that's bigger than "ask non-male PoC to lead the group until someone says yes" but smaller than "rebuild the economy writ large".) It feels like sociocracy would be a meaningful improvement with respect to the above, since (AFAICT) it's a framework with the goal of reversing the power imbalance inherent in hierarchical decision-making. It's about empowering individuals who would otherwise be drowned out. Are you able to (briefly — want to respect your time) add any thoughts about (A) how sociocracy specifically can contribute to the broad goal of diversifying the social makeup of the community, and (B) how we might be able to implement it here, with that goal in mind?

@Andrew F so difficult decisions are always going to be difficult, and compromises must still be reached. I've never seen a group completely break down due to a "block" (someone doesn't consent), but I can imagine some scenario where people come together, consent on an AIM, but then later on down the road, realize that they have different ideas of what the AIM means. That's the only scenario where I could see it completely breaking down. Because if the group has consented to the AIM, then really any disagreement is how to achieve that AIM. And if someone flat-out blocks a decision, their reason for blocking is going to be that the proposal in question is fundamentally opposed to the AIM in some way. @Ivan Reese yes, you've hit on something that is very alive right now: inclusion. And that's exactly what sociocracy provides in a non-hierarchical way, as you pointed out. So to answer your questions A) a sociocratic organization is going to be much more attractive to members of underrepresented communities due to its participatory and non-hierarchical nature. Giving people a sense of agency and a real voice (and real power) is a massively powerful tool for community-building, and can keep people around and engaged for a long, long time. B) really all it takes is a group of people who consent to being members of a circle operating under sociocratic rules, by defining the AIM, MEMBERS, etc. This could take many forms. We could consent to creating one giant "Future of Coding" circle, with everyone in the server being a member. But since that circle is so big and thus decision-making would take so long, we might instead decide to create multiple, smaller, independent circles like a "Systems Thinking Circle", and a "Cybernetics Circle", and a "Blue Sky Circle" and then each of those circles has 2 members that are also members of an overarching "Guiding Council of FoC Circle." It would really depend on what everyone is okay with. And since every circle and every decision comes with a term, we can always say "I propose we do X, for a term of 3 months" and then when the 3 months are over, we review and re-consent to the same structure if things are working, or we consent to a completely different structure if not.

Thanks @David Brooks for this succinct summary! I have seen references to sociocracy before, but it's your summary that got me interested in digging deeper. My first question (as with nearly every new idea I see) is: what are the limits? In which situations would sociocracy not be appropriate? I always ask myself such questions early on because (1) nothing is perfect and universal and (2) it's best to explore some space being aware of where its walls are. Something that does look like such a wall to me is decisions requiring expertise. How would consent work if 90% of the circle do not understand the impact of the decision they are making? Our FoC community also looks like an inappropriate place for sociocracy, though I may well have overlooked something. We are a low-stake community for everyone involved. There aren't that many decisions to take, and they are mostly about how to deal with exceptional rather than regular situations. Any organized form of decision taking then looks like overkill. A benevolent dictator (which is how I see @Ivan Reese's de-facto role, although I expect him to protest) is probably a pretty good arrangement in such cases.

@Konrad Hinsen another thing that came to my mind when you mentioned "exceptional situations" that might be a wall is the speed of decision-making. At least I conjecture that larger circles (larger than say half-a-dozen people) might take too long to converge on a necessary decision especially in an unclear and somehow "controversial" situation that demands fast solution. Maybe some hybrid structure can be employed with "emergency management expert groups" for various kinds of emergencies pre-established or something.

@Konrad Hinsen so the difficult thing about sociocracy is the wonderful thing about sociocracy, and that is: everyone has a say, everyone has a voice. Consent. What this means in terms of limits and where it breaks down, is that the members of a circle must be willing to engage in civil discourse. They must be able to express themselves freely, openly, and with vulnerability. Holding back a frustration or anxiety because you don't want to "rock the boat" will cause problems down the line. Everyone in a circle needs to be able to bring themselves fully into that space. Something that is highly recommended in sociocratic literature is something called NVC or nonviolent communication. It is a toolbox for supporting open and honest communication with minimal conflict. The de-facto "texbook" on NVC is appropriately titled "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall Rosenberg. For the question of expertise, it essentially boils down to, as usual: "are we okay with it?" If the members of the circle don't understand the impact of the decision they are making, then the expert needs to make them understand. Not the details, per se, but the impact. No one should be pressured into accepting a decision that they don't understand. Alternatively, highly technical decisions could also be delegated to a child circle. If the members of the parent circle consent to the creation of a child circle that makes highly technical decisions without their direct involvement, that is perfectly valid as well. Since 2 members of the child circle are also members of the parent circle, there should be regular reporting of its activities, and since consent flows both ways, there should be solid information flow (feedback) such that the parent AIM is still the guiding star. @Alex Chichigin the speed of decision-making is a fascinating story from my experience. If sociocracy is a new thing for the group, then decision-making does take longer initially. There is a learning period. However, once the group really understands and puts into practice the philosophy of "good enough for now, safe enough to try" and really adhere to the idea of "I can live with it" rather than demanding their preference, then decision-making (and meetings) amazingly gets shorter! And yes, larger circles (20 or more) do indeed take a long time, so if a group is huge, the first order of business is for that large group to consent to the creation of an array of child circles to delegate some of the authority and responsibility to. In my coop, we do have a rather large "member circle" that is the parent of all other circles, but it hardly ever makes decisions, because we've created a Team circle, a Delivery circle, a Marketing circle, etc. The only time the main parent circle needs to meet and deliberate is with monumental decisions like changing the bylaws or changing the name of the coop, or something like that. Another thing to note is that each circle, parent or child (or grandchild, etc etc) is a group of people that consent to how that circle is run. So if that group of people all agree and consent to meeting once a week for an hour, that's what happens. If they consent to majority voting for decision-making, that's what happens. If every member of the circle consents to a single member doing all the work for that circle, that's what happens. It's a very flexible and dynamic system, and with TERMS for circle / policy / roles, it ensures nothing is ever "set in stone" since everyone must consent to the TERM as well.

@David Brooks The fundamental issue I see with expertise is that it comes with its own biases. Experts have not only a better understanding of technical issues, but also the biases of their professional communities. Example from a discussion I had last week in the first (virtual) meeting of a decentralized workgroup: when we had to agree on a means of communication, the two software engineers insisted on "state of the art" tools and proposed setting up a Zulip server. I am pretty sure that e-mail would have been a better fit, because it's the one technology that everyone was already familiar with.

@Konrad Hinsen definitely! Bias absolutely has to be taken into account. In your example, if the group was run sociocratically, then if you were "not okay with" a Zulip server, then you would have raised the block and explained your reasons why. The other two engineers might attempt to change your mind with their own reasons, or maybe they themselves would be persuaded to go with your email idea. The important thing is that everyone in the group understands the consequences of the decision, and is at least "okay with" the final decision. And since all decisions in sociocracy have a term, it is a lot easier for people to be "okay with" something if they know the group will re-visit the decision in X months or so.

So let's take this name change as an example, and make it a bit contrived (to help me understand the mechanisms and process and such). What would happen if everyone active in the Slack wanted to change the name of the community, and all decided on a single name that they loved, but one person steadfastly didn't want to change the name. My sense of it is that this is working as designed, and the name would not be changed. And I imagine these sorts of situations come up in practice, not just in contrived examples — some people just don't like change, no matter the nature of it. That seems like a natural human tendency.

@Ivan Reese the scenario you bring up touches on the concept of AIM. Every circle has a reason for existing. If every member of the circle has consented to that AIM, then it is the "guiding star" for where the group wants to go. If one individual absolutely blocks the name change, they have to have a REALLY good reason to do so, not just "I don't like change" because that reasoning doesn't match with the group's AIM. At that point, if there is just one member of the circle, who, despite consenting to the AIM, still wishes to block a proposal for a reason that has nothing to do with the AIM, then more than likely that person realizes their AIM doesn't match the group's AIM, and will resign from the circle. If they don't, then everyone else in the circle can always re-consent to forming the circle without that individual. In practice, I have never seen this happen. When people consent to an AIM of a circle, that generally means that they all agree in a direction, and they all want to see the circle succeed in whatever its goals are. Again, we want to gather consent, not preference. So if changing the name of the community is something that someone doesn't prefer, more than likely, they will at least be okay with it. They can at least live with it, even if they don't like it. Hard blocks like what you describe are extremely rare, and usually come with a very good reason that, once it is explained, is in preserving the AIM of the circle, and thus a good thing.

So if we wanted to use this endeavour to rename the community as an exercise in sociocracy (which, IIRC, you offered to help us do — which is very generous and I'm keen on that), what sort of a circle would we set up? Would we put out a call like "If you'd like to participate in the renaming of the community, please let me know and we'll form a circle to do so"? And then the circle would get together, select an AIM, and then proceed from there? (Apologies if this is already well explained in the above thread, which I've been following but it usually takes me a few passes over a subject before it sticks).

No worries @Ivan Reese it's a lot to take in 🙂 So the AIM of a circle is much more important than its name. In fact, I think finding an appropriate name is going to be a lot harder without a clearly defined AIM. Once you have a reason for existing, the name usually comes almost naturally. So my advice would be to propose the existence of some unnamed community circle, with version 1 of the AIM for that circle, membership being anyone on this server who wishes to be a member of the circle, with the first order of business being selecting people as Lead, Facilitator, and Secretary, followed immediately by "what should we do about the name" as agenda item 1.

I love the idea of doing an experiment with sociocracy!

Yes exactly @Konrad Hinsen 👍 🙂 You got it perfectly right. When groups work together to achieve a goal, rather than individuals telling everyone else what to do, you get massive buy-in and investment from the members of the group. But that does indeed come with an attitude shift. It's the same type of shift in attitude from a Dictatorship to a Democracy, this is just one more step in that direction.