When it comes to collective leadership, simply having the willingness to work in this way is not always enough, and trying to ensure everyone is heard without systems and structures to support this aim can become messy and unworkable.
A growing number of co-ops are exploring how the governance system of sociocracy can help them to ensure those involved have a say while still getting things done.
Sociocratic organisations are made up of small, semi-autonomous working groups called circles, connected by members who ensure the flow of information between them. Roles within circles are selected via an open, transparent selection process rather than a secret ballot.
Decisions are made by consent, on the basis of “good enough for now and safe enough to try” – so rather than everyone having to agree on a proposal to move forward (consensus), there simply needs to be no major objections. During the decision making process, circle members are invited one by one to give their view – a method known as a ‘round’ – ensuring everyone has an equal opportunity to be heard.
This system and its underpinning values make sociocracy an attractive option for a range of organisations within the social and solidarity economy, from intentional communities to children’s parliaments, as well as a growing number of co-ops.
Jerry Koch-Gonzalez, who had previously worked in co-operatives, and is now a director at the educational nonprofit Sociocracy For All (SoFA), says that when SoFA was founded, the co-op movement seemed like an obvious fit for sociocracy.
“We didn’t really have much of an ‘in’ at the beginning, but there were a number of us who were interested,” she adds.
SoFA connected with co-op development centres in the US, participating in their conferences and delivering sessions on sociocracy at their co-op bootcamps, as sociocracy became more well known across the co-op movement.
Over the years SoFA has worked with co-ops around the world across a range of sectors, from education to catering to tech. Though still a relatively small percentage of the types of organisations SoFA works with, the clear overlap between co-op and sociocratic values and principles prompted SoFA to set up a co-op circle within its organisation, to explore these links further.
In 2019, SoFA published a Manifesto for Wholesome Cooperation, which lays out three key elements of sociocracy upon which a co-operative society could be formed: intentionality, equivalence and transparency, and aligns them with the seven co-operative principles.
“We call this framework for co-operation ‘wholesome’ because it integrates all these values and principles, tools and concepts, feelings and ideas, into one pragmatic whole,” says the manifesto.
“Without preaching it as a panacea, we hope sociocracy serves as a light in our path towards a co-operative society, as we continue to make the road by walking. As we strive to create another world: a world where many worlds are possible.”
As well as common ideology, there are a number of practical reasons co-ops might be prompted to look into sociocracy, such as a need for greater clarity around teams and roles, or better systems for dealing with distributed remote workers.
“I think it’s very often symptomatic of people really wanting to live collective governance and collective leadership, but not really knowing how to do it,” says Abbie Kempson, sociocracy trainer and co-founder of People Support Co-op.
“I quite often see co-ops [and other organisations] who have really strong principles around sharing power and working together. They base a lot of it on trust and giving people autonomy to act and so on, but just don’t really have the processes to support collective accountability worked out yet – or maybe they have them a little bit, but it’s not fully developed.”
Kempson first discovered sociocracy while working for Unicorn grocery, a worker co-op based in Manchester, UK. Unicorn was growing quickly at the time, and its members were looking at different ways co-ops had adapted their structure to handle such growth.
She says she found sociocracy “very accidentally,” at an online workshop about co-operative learning, and quickly became excited about its potential to help Unicorn. “What really attracted me to sociocracy, and what I loved so much at the beginning, was that it offered a blueprint for how to do things that brought structure into what was a little bit of a looser system for the team-based decision making at Unicorn.”
At this point, Unicorn had a good system in place for making big, membership-wide decisions at their general meetings, but needed a system for decision making within its different worker teams which were growing in size.
“When I first joined the deli team, there were about 21 of us, without much of a process in place for how we were working on the agenda and making decisions together,” says Kempson. “And our veg team was over 20 as well. … So it was about thinking through ways to help the co-op have better meetings at the team level.”
This was made easier by the fact that Unicorn was already working with a collective management structure where small groups were trusted to lead on different parts of the co-op’s work.
“We were quite sociocratic before we started, without using that terminology,” adds Kempson.
This has been the case with other co-ops, as US-based co-operative organiser John McNamara points out.
“Sociocracy offers a different form of hierarchy,” he says. “The format is often considered a ‘hierarchy of work, not a hierarchy of power.’ It turns out that worker co-ops create this concept even if they don’t follow all the standard formats.
“Two large co-ops, Union Cab of Madison and Rainbow Grocery Co-op both use systems of autonomous management groups linked to a steering committee or team. Again, Rainbow and Union don’t use ‘sociocracy’, but one can easily see the connection between these organic co-op structures and the official format of sociocracy.”
Related: Why Unicorn Grocery is using sociocracy
The “official format of sociocracy” is not always possible for co-ops to follow however, since some elements of co-operative governance, such as the board of directors and members’ meetings, hold key positions of power within co-operative law.
An example of a co-op that has successfully written sociocracy into its official society rules is Middleton Co-operating in the UK. The community-led co-op mentions the use of circles, and lays out a process for making decisions by consent, in its governing documents registered with the Financial Conduct Authority, a move described by Kempson as a “game-changer”.
Though this shows what is possible for bringing together the sociocratic and co-operative models, Kempson doesn’t believe a UK based co-op could ever be a “true sociocracy” – nor that it needs to be.
“Our general meeting is always going to be the sovereign body of the co-op,” she says, “so we’re always looking for something that is a co-operative flavour of sociocracy, rather than trying to completely squeeze ourselves into a shape that doesn’t work with our legal structure here.”
Related: ‘Crazily ambitious’ plan to make Middleton a co-op town
Kempson now sees sociocracy as a way of understanding governance, and a set of tools that can be more or less useful in different circumstances.
“Fundamentally for me, it’s very much about the co-operative principle of democratic member control and thinking about how we do collective leadership and collective management well. Which tools work for that might vary in different contexts.”
In her role with People Support Co-op, Kempson is often contacted by co-ops asking for advice on implementing sociocracy.
“When people find sociocracy for the first time, they often get very excited (I did exactly the same thing) and think this is going to be the magic solution for everything. It definitely won’t be! But it could be part of the picture for them as they continue to design and develop their governance systems and processes collectively.
“It’s really, really important that when you’re making changes to remember who you are, what you’re doing and what you want, and use tools as they work for you.”
