Sociocracy and Chaordism
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010I recently made a note to myself, in the midst of my sociocratic musings, to go re-read Dee Hock’s book, “The Birth of the Chaordic Age.” When I did (well, okay, I just skimmed it – it’s laid out to make that easy), I came up with this mapping of concepts (all of which might be useful material for picture-forming when putting together a new organization):
- Purpose: in sociocratic practice, this would be expressed as the vision, mission, and aim.
- Principles: actually doesn’t necessarily show up in sociocratic practice, per se – I like what Gilles Charest says about this: “you can put your values on the wall, where they don’t do much good, or you can put them into practice by making decisions.” In a sociocratic context, you can know your values by looking at your aim, by looking at your decisions, and by examining what objections you raise (and which of them are considered paramount). In a chaordic context, principles tend to be a bit fuzzy (until you develop what Hock calls “structure” – at which point they risk losing some dynamism).
- People: this step doesn’t necessarily show up systematically in the sociocratic organizing method… yet. It’s a useful tool for application during the picture-forming stage. I see it as analogous to what my friend Shava Nerad teaches as AOA Analysis – Allies, Opponents, and Actions (not the “analysis of alternatives” that you’ll find through google). You consider who has reasons to be (or is known or speculated to be) interested in the success or failure of the project at hand, and then look for actions that would neutralize opponents and activate allies.
- Concept: in sociocratic organizing, this is the circle structure of the organization, and its strategic plan.
- Structure: in a sociocratic context, this would be the bylaws and adopted policies of the organization, all the way down to detailed workflows (regarding which you might enjoy reading my blog post last week).
- Practice: putting all of this into effect. In a sociocratic context, the practice is not separated from the development of the organization. Organizing the work produces the organization, and vice versa.
Again, generally, I’d say that the process described by Dee Hock, of pulling these threads together to create an organization, would likely be useful in the picture-forming (and possibly also the proposal-shaping) stage when putting together a proposal to create (or maybe even to transform) an organization.