Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Sociocracy (response to "blocking consensus" and long)

[Tree Bressen (tree]

Dear Sheila,

Thanks so much for posting all this information about sociocracy.  It's
definitely one of the clearer presentations about it that i've read.  I've
been hearing about sociocracy during the past year as some friends at Twin
Oaks in Virginia (a commune, not cohousing) have gotten quite excited about
it, but i'm still working to understand the ways in which it is and is not
the same as consensus.  What follows here are comments and questions as i
explore that comparison.  If you and/or others have energy to dialogue more
about this i would be delighted as it would help me improve my understanding.

>This may not be much help to consensus-users, but our community uses
>sociocracy, which we find pretty smooth now that we've gotten good at
>it--and let me say in the same
>breath that when we weren't good at it, it was a nightmare, as perhaps any
>vague decision-making process would be. 

Agreed.  From what i've seen, many of the bumps and problems that groups
experience with consensus also arise from lack of training and practice.
And Robert's Rules of Order, while they might seem quite burdensome
nowadays, were in their time a fantastic innovation in decision-making due
to their clarity.

>Generally, we don't seek agreement: we seek "the absence of any reasoned &
>paramount objection."
>
>It works like this: Somebody brings a proposal, and
>then we have some discussion, and then we "do a round" on it, to see if
>anyone has a "reasoned and paramount objection." I've seen this part abused;
>people have said things like, "Because I like him," or "It just doesn't work
>for me," but our trained facilitators no longer let people get away with
>that kind of vagueness. If you don't like a proposal, you must give a
>"reason," something that the proposal-bringer and the facilitator can work
>with in order to
>change the proposal. This doesn't mean that it must be logical, per se, but
>it must be specific and clearly understood (not necessarily agreed with) by
>all.

I love the idea of the facilitator and others drawing out someone who has a
concern, and this seems to me to be the same as consensus.  One thing i am
a bit wary of is the emphasis here on "reasoned."  Yes, of course one would
hope and expect that in general, people's responses would be rational.
However, when someone is not at peace with a proposal, the emotional aspect
of their reaction is often the strongest piece.  If a group *only* engages
with the analytical reasons and doesn't deal with the underlying feelings,
i think they lose out on valuable information.  Our society is conditioned
to only deal with rational analysis, at least on the overt level of
"business" meetings, so people in meetings often try to shove emotional
reactions under the rug because they don't have the skills to deal with
them well.  Part of what i encourage groups to do in my trainings is to
welcome information in whatever form it arrives, e.g. analysis, emotions,
body language, gut instinct.  Of course it doesn't stop there, i'm
certainly not saying it's ok for someone to say, "I block this because i
don't like it," or "When i read this i feel angry," and then have the
discussion end.  But i don't want members of a group to feel like they only
have permission to speak up if they can already articulate their concerns
in well-formed analytical paragraphs, especially because then the less
articulate members may feel too intimidated to speak at all.  

>What if the facilitator screws up, and sets something aside as not reasoned
>& paramount that you feel needs to be heard? There's a relatively easy way
>to get round a facilitator, and that is to bring another proposal
>("counter," perhaps) for consideration by the whole group. 

Whoa, isn't this giving a lot of power to the facilitator?  Given how much
development you say a new proposal has to go through, it seems like a lot
to expect of someone as a participant that their only recourse in the above
situation is to go through all that work to bring a counter-proposal
forward.  Isn't there a way to say that you think the facilitator has erred
in judgment?  What if 10 people are sitting there in the room thinking the
facilitator has messed up and the original objection was sufficiently
reasoned and paramount as to require more work on the proposal?

>Harm to the Community
>
>In all of this, there is no requirement that harm to the whole community
>must be at stake for an objection to be considered. Your objection is
>"reasoned and
>paramount" if it is important to you and if you can explain it to us so we
>can understand it.

I think that is a very interesting difference from consensus.  

>The idea is that, in sociocracy, there is no such
>*thing* as "blocking": there is only a process of raising *objections* and
>having the proposal-writer modify the proposal to meet concerns.
>
>An objection, then, isn't a block to progress. It is a call to intelligent
>people to think carefully and creatively. I'm sure there is a proposal out
>there that simply wouldn't bear enough editing to survive our objections,
>but we haven't met it *since* we have begun clearly to understand this
>process. 

The actual process here, that of modifying a proposal to meet concerns,
sounds the same as consensus.

The structure where members only list concerns about a proposal and not why
they support it sounds similar to CT Butler's Formal Consensus process.  As
i mentioned recently in another post, that aspect of FC is sometimes
criticized as focusing too much on the negative.  Also it could potentially
allow a proposal to pass that no one had big objections to but that
actually doesn't have enough group energy behind it to get carried out.
Have you ever observed this problem in sociocratic groups?  If not, can you
say how you think it's avoided?

>Writing Proposals
>
>The need for a clear proposal with a well-thought out rationale rules
>sociocracy's functioning. For example, I can't propose that we have a
>swimming pool. A proposal like that would be dismissed almost immediately
>for more work. I have to say where, when, how much it costs, what kind of
>water, etc. While I'm writing that proposal I am visiting with other
>community members garnering ideas & thoughts because I want my proposal to
>pass. If I tell Sue over dishes in the common house that I plan to propose a
>swimming pool, and she tells me that she not only doesn't swim in
>chlorinated water, but feels it is harmful to wildlife, then I know I'd
>better do some work on those issues (fresh water?). If I've done the
>front-end work properly, then by the time the proposal gets to the GC I know
>what's going to happen, and all I have to do is tweak it a little ("if it's
>not built by 2004 then then allocated funds revert to the common house
>basement fund...." or whatever).

This basically sounds the same as consensus to me.  It's also good process
in most political structures--i suspect effective city council members
operate the same way.  However, i do usually make the following distinction
when i talk with groups about how much work to do in committees vs. with
the whole group present.  

For something like "Should we build the swimming pool?" i think the process
outlined above sounds great.  However, if the issue under consideration is
one that's broader, deeper, more long-term, and so on, i usually recommend
a group go back and forth between doing the work in committee and doing the
work in plenary (plenary = whole group there).  For example, if the
community is trying to write a vision statement, i'd recommend
brainstorming by small groups or the whole group at a meeting, then a
committee takes what was generated and creates a draft, then brings it back
to the whole group, then maybe back to the committee for more tweaking.  I
think it's a more inclusive process that way, and that for big things a
more inclusive process is necessary and appropriate.  Of course that is
just my opinion, and sociocratic practitioners may have experiences that
lead them to think or feel otherwise.  

>o) This model does not assume that the heart of a community is meetings. It
>assumes that the heart of the community lies primarily in what happens
>*between* meetings. I guess this can be a good thing or a bad thing.

I think this is a fascinating issue.  As a meeting professional, i am
naturally somewhat biased toward meetings.  But i think it could equally be
said that the heart of a community lies in shared dinners, or the
interpersonal relationships, or probably any number of other things that
someone might make a good case for.  Caroline Estes, a consensus
facilitator whose reputation is justifiably quite high, does a *lot* of her
work with groups outside the formal sessions.  One time we were hired
together for a job and we shared a dorm room; i watched a continual parade
of people come through for mini-consultations at her initiative.  People
who only saw the plenaries could easily marvel at their smoothness, not
realizing how much outside work contributed to it.

>Structure
>
>At the bottom of the organization you have committees; next up the heirarchy
>is the the "General Circle," which elects the committee chairs and ensures
>that
>committees are being run properly (committees can use any kind of
>decision-making process as long as the decision to *use* the different kind
>of process was made sociocratically, with no reasoned & paramount objection
>from committee members. 

Who is included in the General Circle, is that everyone with
decision-making power?

How is it decided who serves on committees?

It seems odd to me that committee chairs are chosen by the GC rather than
by the people on the committee, is there a rationale for that?

>next you have the functional leader (in
>our case, project coordinator), who guides & assists the General Circle to
>make decisions about day-to-day operations. 

This position seems extremely important, and i don't think there is an
analogous role in consensus-based structures.  I mean there might be
someone in charge of a particular project, but there is no Leader at most
cohousing communities.  Can you say more about this role?

Who facilitates the meetings of the General Circle?  How about at the Top
Circle?

Thank you so much for taking time to answer these questions, or hopefully
at least some of them!  I am glad to see another decision-making mode come
along, i think the more options groups have available the better, then they
can select what system they think works best for them.  I am personally
rather dedicated to consensus, but i am still very interested to learn more
about sociocracy and see if there are aspects of it that i should be
incorporating into my consensus practice.

Cheers,

--Tree



-----------------------------------------------

Tree Bressen
1680 Walnut St.
Eugene, OR 97403
(541) 484-1156
tree [at] ic.org
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