Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Survey About Community Governance

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

After responding to the survey, I initially planned to respond directly to the 
authors but decided the points I want to make would be helpful to others and 
are not just criticisms of the survey.

If someone answers “no” the the question does your community use sociocracy in 
its governance, the survey ends with Thank you very much for your time.

The question "does your community use sociocracy" isn’t a “yes" or “no" answer. 
Sociocracy has had a major influence on all of cohousing and its governance 
methods. It has greatly contributed to the definitions of consent and 
consensus, and to expectations in the resolution of objections. Discussions of 
sociocracy have been active since at least 2002. Many communities are not even 
aware that what they are doing is completely in line with sociocracy. Others 
are using sociocracy in ways that few, if any. experts would consider correct. 
Should that be a yes or a no?

So first, you need a definition of sociocracy, I think best based on the 
objectives, the reasons for using sociocracy. This gives you a sense of how 
equitable the community governance intends to be.

Second, you need to specify specific principles and practices that are 
considered key to ensuring that objections are resolved before action is taken. 
All of the principles and practices of sociocracy have been accepted as best 
practices in all kinds of organizations. Sociocracy is unique only in that it 
ties all of them together in a system that requires that everyone in a domain 
can expect their objections to taken seriously and be resolved so that person 
is still able to function comfortably in the organization.

It would be most helpful to measure what a “yes” means and to allow a “no” that 
still measures the influence of sociocracy on communities.

For example: Takoma Village members would almost unanimously say that we do not 
use sociocracy. But there are few things that we would have to implement in 
order to be ‘certified’ sociocratic. We define consent/consenus as “no 
objections” or all objections resolved. And that standard is applied in all 
areas of community functioning. We have tons of overlapping teams, pods, 
working groups, study groups, and impromptu groups that all function according 
to this standard. 

We have a Board with a President, Secretary, and Treasurer elected by the 
membership and team reps chosen by the 3 main teams.

We don’t use the elections process but there are questions about whether it is 
an essential part of sociocracy. We have so many opportunities for leadership 
that it is more a question of finding someone who will fill them. But it is 
also true that we work to have people in place that everyone consents to at 
some level. And all policy decisions by a team have to be consented to by the 
larger group as well. If people object to this or that, it would create 
problems with adherence. In practical terms, we do what works and what works is 
what has overt but not necessarily formal consent.

We are getting better at soliciting feedback after an event or major 
maintenance job. We don’t have an ending date for policies or specific 
evaluation processes but we often discuss it. We have so much overlap in the 
membership of teams and working groups that feedback is pretty much perpetual 
without a formal process.

For me, the essential element is consent and we had established that before we 
ever heard of sociocracy. But sociocracy has greatly contributed to the 
clarification of what consent means and to the expectations of evaluation of 
results, reflective analysis of how things have worked, etc. 

I would be hard-pressed to say that the community would function better if it 
formally adopted sociocracy except in one way — there is resistance from the 
facilitators to using rounds. “It takes too long.” Our meetings are often 30-40 
people so it does have some validity but my argument is that if we used rounds 
more regularly, people would be more focused and feel comfortable passing if 
they have nothing new to say.

The problem with the survey is that there is no place to record those 
qualifiers and for me the influence of sociocracy is much more important than 
the technicalities of names and technical processes.

Sharon
------
Sharon Villines, Washington DC
Founder of Sociocracy.info
Coauthor with John Buck of "We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy,” 
A Handbook for Understanding and Implementing Sociocratic Principles and 
Practices. (2017)
Now in Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean. 
ISBN: 978-0-9792827-3-7
https://amzn.to/30owgWN