People sometimes ask me what the difference is between sociocracy and Holacracy. I set out to create a table summarizing the answer to that question. My direct knowledge and experience are solely with sociocracy. What I know about Holacracy is from reading and from talking with Holacracy coaches and people who are in organizations using…Continue reading
What if you could use a decision process that makes your organization smarter than any individual leader or leadership team? Leaders often ask for honest feedback to help them make better decisions. This feedback could be from people at any level of the organizational hierarchy. But what if the organizational culture discourages people from speaking…Continue reading
“When someone deeply listens to you, your bare feet are on the earth and a beloved land that seemed distant is now at home within you.” –John Fox in Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem-making If you prefer listening to reading, this blog is based on a podcast interview by the same name. In…Continue reading
“Everything we do depends for its quality on the thinking we do first. Our thinking depends on the quality of our attention for each other.” –Nancy Kline, Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind If you prefer listening to reading, this blog is based on a podcast interview by the same name. Have…Continue reading
People who first hear of sociocracy often ask, “Can that help with conflict?” My short answer is usually, “Yes, it can help, depending on the cause of the conflict.” A better answer is, “Yes it can, but better yet it can help prevent conflict in the first place.” Lack of clarity can contribute to conflict…Continue reading
We’re all spending so much time in online meetings, that it’s worth a little effort to use a virtual platform in the best ways we can. Here are some tips. You probably already know that it can help a meeting if everyone has their video on when possible (see key #2 in 7 Essential Keys…Continue reading
In ordinary times, meetings can run the gamut from dismal to invigorating. There is possibly even a wider range in this time of economic upheaval and physical distancing, when many of our “normal” practices for productive meetings are disrupted. Now with so many virtual meetings, how do we keep some of the spirit and function…Continue reading
Remember in-person meetings? When we would be in the same physical room with in-the-flesh people? If we’re fortunate, we had meetings where people established trust and rapport, respected and were curious about each other’s ideas, and thought creatively together. Or maybe meetings were occasionally like that, or we hoped they would be. Now with so…Continue reading
This is the third in a three-part series, and is an excerpt from a white paper by the same title. Part 1 and part 2 listed four pitfalls of a top-down organization: (1) communication goes one-way, (2) the person who makes the decisions creates a bottleneck, (3) management and workers become adversaries, and (4) workers…
This is the second in a three-part series, and is an excerpt from a white paper by the same title. Part 1 listed two pitfalls of a top-down organization: (1) one-way communication, and (2) decision bottlenecks. Here are two more. Pitfall #3. Management and workers become adversaries. We all know of companies where relations between…