Sociocracy & Social Technology
Sociocracy
An approach for organizing together where people affected by decisions can influence them on the basis of reasons to do so.
Social Technology
Any process, technique, method, skill or any other approach that people can use to influence social systems — organizations, societies, communities etc. — to support achieving shared objectives and guide meaningful interaction and exchange.
Why is this page here?
At PerfectlyFlawed, we utilize a sociocratic governance model. Simply translated, sociocracy means “people govern”. It is a way of structuring collaborative authority utilizing consent-based decision making.
We have adopted the more modern form of sociocracy known as Sociocracy 3.0
Sociocracy 3.0 – a.k.a. “S3” – is social technology for evolving agile and resilient organizations at any size, from small start-ups to large international networks and multi-agency collaboration. It is technology licensed under Creative Commons and available to any organization or company wishing to incorporate more collaborative efforts into an existing structure or creating something totally new.
Sociocracy does NOT refer to nor endorse any kind of political views or parties.
Rather, it is the internal structure and operations flow of an organization or company.
S3 offers a pattern-based approach to organizational change.
A pattern is a process, practice or guideline that serves as a template for successfully responding to a specific kind of challenge or opportunity.
Sociocracy 3.0 is built on seven foundational principles which enable sociocratic and agile collaboration. Since the seven principles are reflected in all of the patterns, understanding these principles is helpful for adopting and paramount to adapting Sociocracy 3.0 patterns.
S3 focuses on 5 key concepts for making sense of any organization, making it a universally available technology.
Principles and Concepts of Sociocracy
7 Principles
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Devote time only to what brings you closer towards achieving your organization’s overall objectives, so that you can make the best use of your limited time, energy and resources.
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Raise, seek out and resolve objections to proposals, existing agreements and activity, to reduce the potential for decisions leading to undesirable consequences and to discover worthwhile ways to improve.
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Test all assumptions you rely on through experiments and continuous revision, so that you learn fast, make sense of things and navigate complexity as effectively as you can.
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Regularly review the outcome of what you are doing, and then make incremental improvements to what you do and how you do it based on what you learn, so that you can adapt to changes when necessary, and maintain or improve effectiveness over time.
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Involve people in making and evolving decisions that affect them, so that you increase engagement and accountability, and make use of the distributed intelligence toward achieving and evolving your objectives.
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Record all information that is valuable for the organization and make it accessible to everyone in the organization, unless there is a reason for confidentiality, so that everyone has the information they need to understand how to do their work in a way that contributes most effectively to the whole.
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Respond when something is needed, do what you agreed to do, and accept your share of responsibility for the course of the organization, so that what needs doing gets done, nothing is overlooked and everyone does what they can to contribute toward the effectiveness and integrity of the organization.
5 Concepts
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An organizational driver is any situation where the organization’s members have a motive to respond because they anticipate that doing so would be beneficial for the organization (by helping to generate value, eliminate waste or avoid undesirable risks or consequences).
A requirement is a need or desire considered necessary to fulfill to respond to an organizational driver, adequately or as a suitable incremental next step.
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A domain is a distinct area of responsibility and authority within an organization.
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An agreement is an agreed-upon guideline, process, protocol or policy designed to guide the flow of value.
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An objection is an argument – relating to a proposal, existing agreement, or activity being conducted by one or more members of the organization – that reveals consequences or risks that are preferably avoided for the organization, or that demonstrates worthwhile ways to improve.
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Governance in an organization (or a domain within it) is the process of setting objectives and making and evolving decisions that guide people toward achieving those objectives.
Operations is doing the work and organizing day-to-day activities within the constraints defined through governance.
For more information, please visit: https://sociocracy30.org/
Our Structure
We have adopted our own version of a fractal organization:
Multiple constituents (organizations or projects) with a common (or similar) primary driver and structure can share learning across functional domains, align action and make high level governance decisions (e.g. overall strategy).
This structure allows for us to essentially have two different governance structures merged together; one that is hierarchal and one that is decentralized to domains.
Relating to the tiers you can see outlined in the graphic above, we have three tiers of hierarchy: executives, team leaders, and team members. Relating to the groupings of circles in the graphic above, we have 9 primary councils: executive, planning, business, technology, coalitions, trainings, initiatives, voice, and support.
Every job position is assigned various councils with which to participate. Their primary council directly relates to their job responsibilities; however, the other councils they participate with are closely related to their initial domain, making the flow of information more efficient and effective.
We encourage you to check out the main page for S3 and learn more about this technology:
For more detailed information, you may want to also view the S3 practical guide: