Firstly, I should say that I’m a passionate Transition and Sociocracy evangelist (see SociocracyUK.ning.com). I found myself becoming a little defensive of Nick, who I think is fab. I think the cartoon videos are of a really high quality and useful for getting people thinking about group health, which is so important. Nice work Shane & Nick & co! There are so many tools that can support this journey, and I’d recommend people looking into several.

I really want to support the principle of getting people paid. I encourage people to adopt the principle: As much as feasible, only put money in to the hands of people you like.

If you see people who you actually know you like, and you can see them doing useful work, then they’ve probably been hustling along the pioneer’s path for a while. We need to find ways of getting them paid, as much as possible, as often as possible. If we’re not building the Transition Economy, then who the hootenanny will?

In other words, throw as much money as you can at Nick, and people like him (me! Shane! Josef!)

On the other hand, I strongly believe that we need to put the smart 21st century tools into people’s hands as widely, rapidly and accessibly as possible. Our job is to integrate those 2 principles, so we upscale to meet the urgency and complexity, and don’t burn people out or lose valuable leaders along the way to the rent-demons.

Anyhoo, while I want to encourage more curiosity than division, for those that want to go deeper there’s a useful thread about Sociocracy & Holacracy (NB not holocracy!) here, especially the discussion below the line:
http://www.adeeperdemocracy.org/holacracy-sociocracy

For everyone else, I’d say don’t get stuck in which way is best, just try things out and see what works for you. Try anything, try it now, tell others. We can get distracted by the shiny tools, but let’s not forget we have an Ark to build, and we have much more in common than in contrast.

Most importantly, take group health and effectiveness seriously, yet playfully. Because the job is too important to hash up.

With love.

There is a whole UK tour of Holacracy workshops scheduled at http://agileorganisation.eventbrite.co.uk, so do visit this page if you are interested in doing one. And there is another one scheduled in London for 12th November.

Also, the blog post also referred to a set of Effective Groups Resources on the Transition Network site at https://www.transitionnetwork.org/training/courses/effective-groups to help groups collaborate more effectively together. I’m curious why there have been no comments about these resources or the videos- only critical comments about Holacracy…

Yes there are some core practices of structure and governance in Holacracy which are the same and similar to Sociocracy. I understand from hearing Brian Robertson talk recently about it that some of these were taken directly from Sociocracy, and others were derived in parallel and they had come to similar conclusions to Sociocracy anyway, by other routes.

Brian wrote that paper in 2006 which was very early days for Holacracy. It has evolved considerably since then and the actual practice has departed from Sociocracy more in how it works, even though some of the structures look the same.

I am not an expert and Sociocracy as I have just read the book and heard people talking about it, but as I understand it, some of the key differences between Sociocracy and Holacracy are:

– Sociocracy is more about the people, and more orientated towards governance of the people, by the people, for the people, as I understand from the ‘We the People’ book about Sociocracy. The approach taken by Holacracy contrasts with this in that it is governance of the organisation, through the people, for the purpose. The approach is an attempt to separate out the identification of people and all of our attachments from our roles in doing the work. Instead people are considered to be in service of the purpose of the organisation by temporarily energising roles. Holacracy is explicitly not about democracy, whereas Sociocracy is about a ‘Deeper Democracy’ as in the title of the book ‘We the People. Consenting to a Deeper Democracy’.

– In a similar vein I understand the decision-making is founded on the principle of consent in Sociocracy, and that this is fundamental to the practice of Sociocracy. Holacracy doesn’t use this principle in this way. Instead it uses a process called Integrative Decision Making in its Governance meetings. The key difference is in the way that objections are treated in Sociocracy. The part of the book which talks about consent and objections is very different to how in Holacracy there are very clear criteria for what counts as an objection- based not on personal preference, likes or dislikes, but rather on the extent to which a proposal might be harmful for the organisation.

There are others, but this post is long enough already. I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts/notes on this and the video and exploring this more with you at the training tomorrow.

Warm regards, Nick

I do find it challenging to keep going with all this when, when I stand up and try to open up and work with new ideas, people seem to find it very easy to criticise and shoot me and the ideas down. One of my favourite quotes is ‘if you are going to be a bridge, expect to be walked on’.

Nick is one of the core group that initiated the REconomy Project and has spent tireless hours (paid and unpaid) dedicated to Transition and REconomy.

Perhaps more importantly for this discussion, Nick, is by far the most skilled person i have ever met in terms of understanding how to operate as a group. That is pretty important stuff as i’ve said before, IMHO In the new economy the single greatest skill that we need to learn is how to work together in groups. So, i sincerely hope people will support Nick as he tries to support us all in our great Transition.

Shane

There is an extensive Resource Library at http://www.holacracy.org/resources.

A Quick Start Guide is here:
http://www.holacracy.org/resources/quickstart-guide

The key reference document in Holacracy, the constitution is here, although the plain english version is better:
http://www.holacracy.org/resources/holacracy-constitution-v40

And there are lots of free videos and downloads.

But because Holacracy is a methodology for organising which is rooted in a different paradigm to our usual organising paradigms, its impossible to communicate it all through resources like videos, audios and written downloads. It requires an explanation of the foundations of the paradigm, some of which can happen that way, and then experiences of doing things in this way.

Just like you can’t learn to drive a car from reading a book, Holacracy is a practise which requires practice. And there are costs involved in sharing that practice. If you’d like a bursary ticket at a Holacracy training event then please contact me and I’ll be happy to work one out with you.

I hope that helps with your query?

Best wishes, Nick

If we want to create a new local economy, we also need to change the way we organise ourselves and run our institutions, as they clearly aren’t serving us well at the moment. I believe it is a tool that can support social innovation and wider social good if people who are working towards these goals can make use of it. But there are number of barriers to this.

One barrier is financial as it is expensive to get trained in Holacracy. I have paid the money and am now working at making Holacracy training available at more affordable rates in the UK to people working for positive social change such as Transition and REconomy.

Another barrier is about attitudes. The fact that it is sold commercially in some places doesn’t mean that it isn’t a useful tool for social change and I don’t believe it should preclude consideration because of that, but I recognise that there are some people who do believe this. There are many tools/methods/approaches that are used commercially which are also useful for social change. This is a complex issue and not one easily addressed on an online forum!

And it is currently costing me a lot of money to start to deliver Holacracy training! My ambition is that I can one day earn a part of my livelihood through delivering training in Holacracy, rather than it costing me money, so that it can be one method amongst others which helps social innovators work together more effectively.