Does sociocracy scale, and if so, how? This presentation shows different patterns of organizing with sociocracy for larger organizations. It covers distributed leadership and authority, centralization, decentralization.

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Does sociocracy scale?
And if so… how?

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What kind of scale?

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What kind of scale?
Many different circles Many (uninvolved) members
Many similar circles
Examples
● Large operations
(complex org)
● Town management
Examples
● Regional/national
departments
● Franchises
Examples
● DAOs
● Members coops
● citizens
Plus combinations

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Many different circles
● Large depth of circles, many layers
● Centralization vs.
○ Information
○ Budget
○ Strategy
Decentralization
○ Distributed authority
○ Internal competition?
(Rendanheyi)

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Many different circles
Possible issues:
Fragmentation, less coherence & trust, hard
to make budget decisions
Possible solutions:
Well thought-out structure, strong purpose,
identity & culture, good information flow

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Many similar circles
● National, regional, local structures
● Centralization vs. decentralization
○ How much is in headquarters, how
much is in chapters/franchises?

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Many similar circles
Possible issues:
Duplication of efforts, lack of coherence,
lack of support
Possible solutions:
Help desks concept with clear domains, clear
agreements

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Many uninvolved (!) members
● Platform coops, DAOs, membership organizations
like professional associations
● Centralization vs. decentralization
○ How much is decided by people in
operations, how much is decided by members?
Membership

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Many uninvolved (!) members
Possible issues:
Lack of feedback by operations, lack of informed
input from the membership
Possible solutions:
Clear distinction betw. operations and membership;
appropriate place for membership decisions
Membership

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Many uninvolved (!) members
Decision-making vs. feedback
decision-making feedback
Support group
(community of practice)

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Side note: Scale through inter-organizational collaboration

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Side note: Scale through inter-organizational collaboration
Image from
Rau/Koch-Gonzalez. Many
Voices One Song (2018)

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Side note: Scale through inter-organizational collaboration
Image from
Rau/Koch-Gonzalez. Many
Voices One Song (2018)

14. CC-BY-SA | ted@sociocracyforall.org
Side note: Scale through inter-organizational collaboration
Image from
Rau/Koch-Gonzalez. Many
Voices One Song (2018)

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Side note: Scale through inter-organizational collaboration
https://jenrau.medium.com/towards-a-gover
nance-protocol-to-enable-inter-organzational
-collaboration-e8df8b40b0e2

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Side note: Scale through inter-organizational collaboration
https://jenrau.medium.com/towards-a-gover
nance-protocol-to-enable-inter-organzational
-collaboration-e8df8b40b0e2

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?
Group of groups
Group
What’s next?
connective tissue?
super-organism?

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We know how to decentralize.
Do we know how to centralize in
a distributed system?

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Adding coherence
Strategy, budget,
information
Information flow
● Often overwhelming
● Hard to summarize in depth
(example: harvest on
sticky notes)
● Hard to maintain
>> Technical solutions

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Adding coherence
Strategy, budget,
information
Budget and strategy
● What’s strategy?
>> What are our priorities
>> Who decides that?
>> How detailed of a
prioritization system
>> limited tech solutions

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Strategy
Top-down vs. bottom-up

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Strategy
Level of detail?

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Summary

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Summary
We need to be specific: what kind of scale? What do we want
to scale, operations, members, chapters, people supported?
Issues depend on design:
● Appropriate decentralization - centralization
● Alignment, sensemaking and coherence