Sociocracy For All's Website
The Sociocracy For All (SoFA) website is a great resource for any individual, company, or community looking to learn about and explore Sociocracy.
This is a typical circle structure (or organizational structure) for a group using sociocracy. The center-most circle is the General Circle and all other circles are directly or indirectly connected to it.
What is Sociocracy?
Sociocracy is a governance and decision-making structure that prioritizes equivalence of voice and non-hierarchical management systems. It is often used in nonprofits and intentional communities.
What is SoFA?
According to their mission statement, “Sociocracy For All is a non-profit who’s mission is to make resources for learning and implementing sociocracy accessible to everyone.” They curate resources that are helpful to everyone, regardless of how much they already know about sociocracy. They also often host events and trainings for those wanting to learn about how Sociocracy can be applied.
“Good enough for now. Safe enough to try.”
One of the central ideas in sociocracy is that a decision need only be “good enough for now and safe enough to try” because there are feedback loops baked into evaluating the effectiveness of decisions. This allows for space to try out new ideas and implement suggested changes as they arise.
Helpful Pieces
This is a great place for anyone new to Sociocracy to start. It has a free webinar, introductory article, examples of communities currently using sociocracy, and further reading on how sociocracy works such as their free eBook.
If you already know a little about what sociocracy is, this collection of resources gives you space to explore it in more depth. It highlights some of the central elements of sociocracy including consent-decision making, circles & roles, the sociocratic selection process, and much more .
Here you can access a number of case studies on how sociocracy has been applied in a wide variety of groups and organizations to great effect. If you have a group that you want to try sociocracy with, reading case studies of other similar groups could help you get a jump start and provide some lessons learned that will help you avoid starting from scratch.
Definitions & Acronyms
SoFA: Sociocracy For All
Consent-Decision Making: similar to consensus decision-making, consent decision-making relies on every member of a circle to participate in, and ultimately consent to, the decision. It differs in that it asks members to opt-out rather than opt-in which puts the onus on those who choose to opt-out to provide a valid reason for doing so. To learn more about consent-decision making, click here.
Circles: circles are the committees or task groups of sociocracy and they are the primary people-organizing structure. Circles are formed to address a specific domain and aim (or area of responsibility) and all members of an organization are represented in the circle structure, either through direct participation or through a representative that they have a hand in selecting. Most importantly, all main circles are linked to the General Circle via roles. These links (also referred to as double-links) are a balance mechanism to make sure that every main circle is represented by at least two circle members in the General Circle. To learn more about circles, check out the diagram at the beginning of this post or read about them here.
Roles: roles are the positions held by members of a circle and they a key to thoughtfully delineating responsibilities among team members. There are four roles inherent to any circle (leader, delegate, facilitator, and secretary) and circles may create as many additional roles as they see fit. To learn more about roles, click here.
Keep an eye out for my next post this Thursday, November 25th at 10 am EST.