To review:

• Sociocracy: Democracy as it might be
• Sociocracy: Rules of Engagement
• How sociocracy works
• About sociocracy
• Sociocracy.info
• Sociocracy Wikipedia page

Additional agreements besides the four main principles:

• No secrets should be kept.
• Everything is open to discussion.
• Everyone has a right to be part of a decision that affects them.
• Every decision may be reexamined at any time.

To review:

• An inside look at Holacracy
• Holacracy: A New OS for Organizations
• Intro to Holacracy video

On a quick thought, I would love some structure that combined:

• "Tension" (Holacracy)
• Separation of Governance from Tactics (Holacracy)
• "Braintrust" feedback groups (Pixar)
• "Sponsors" (Gore/Lattice)
• Circle structure (Sociocracy)
• "Personnel with a sense of management" (Amoeba)

Kyocera's Amoeba Management

"I earnestly longed for a business partner with whom I could share the joys and sorrows of work, as well as the heavy responsibilities of management. This led me to divide the company into small, organized units, which I called "amoebas." Leaders selected from within the company were entrusted with the management of individual amoebas. In this way, I developed many leaders with the managerial awareness — in other words, business partners." — Dr. Kazuo Inamori

Three objectives of Amoeba Management:

Establish a Market-Oriented Divisional Accounting System

The fundamental principle for managing a company is to maximize revenues and minimize expenses. To implement this principle throughout a company, the organization is divided into many small accounting units that can promptly respond to market changes.

Foster Personnel with a Sense of Management

Divide the organization into small units as necessary, and rebuild it as a unified body of discrete enterprises. Entrust the management of these units to amoeba leaders in order to foster personnel with a sense of management.

Realize Management by All

Realize "management by all," where all employees can combine their efforts to participate in management for the development of the company, as well as work with a sense of purpose and accomplishment.

How is an Amoeba organization structured?

Simply subdividing an organization into small units is not sufficient.

It is not an overstatement to say that the major points outlined here will determine the success or failure of Amoeba Management.

The issue is how to subdivide a complex corporate organization into amoeba units. A good understanding of the true state of the business is essential, and the organizations must be subdivided accordingly.

In my view, there are three conditions that must be met when dividing an organization into successful amoeba units:

1. Amoebas must have clearly definable revenues and cost of sales in order that they can be fiscally self-supporting.

2. Amoebas must be self-contained business units.

3. Subdivision of the organization must support the goals and objectives of the company as a whole.

An amoeba can exist as an independent unit only if these three conditions are met. It is not an overstatement to say that the formation of amoeba units determines the success or failure of Amoeba Management.

Lattice organization

Principles: Fairness, Freedom, Commitments, Waterline

Everyone will:

• Sincerely try to be fair with each other, suppliers, our customers, and all persons with whom we carry out transactions.
• Allow, help and encourage associates to grow in knowledge, skill, scope of responsibility and range of activities. (Freedom)
• Make his or her own commitments—and keep them.
• Consult with other associates before taking actions that might be “below the waterline” and cause serious damage to the enterprise. (Boat analogy: shooting the boat below the waterline—damaging the reputation or financial health of the business—could result in sinking it.)

Associates

• All employees are "associates".
• Every associate has a sponsor who guides him/her in growing in contribution.
• Leadership evolves based on knowledge, skill, experience or capability in the particular activity in which a team is involved.
• Leaders are associates who have developed followers.
• Each person in the lattice interacts directly with every other person.
• Teams or groups formulate their own plans of action rather than having them dictated to them.
• Each associate self-commits to projects or responsibilities.

Leaders:

• focus on business objectives
• coordinate activities
• align teams to meet goals
• many different types with different areas of focus

Leaders offer associates:

• Assistance in problem solving
• Acknowledgement of team accomplishments
• Encouragement
• Definition of problems
• Help in strategy formulation
• Explanation of business practices
• “Big picture” viewpoint
• Role model behavior

Sponsors:

• Engage in a one-on-one relationship
• Focus on the development and growth of the associate

Sponsors offer associates:

• Encouragement
• Guidance on principles and practices
• Feedback on performance
• Help in securing resources
• Advocacy for the associate in compensation discussions
• Guidance in personal development planning
• Role model behavior

Sponsoring vs. Leading:

• Sponsoring is a one-on-one relationship. The focus is on the individual, helping them grow in their contribution.
• Leading is with a group or team. The focus is on the business opportunity, helping the individuals align with team and business goals.
• Sponsors and leaders are not necessarily two different people.

Gore, Inc. is well-known and often cited as being free of hierarchy.

Gore describes its structure as a lattice organization:

"A lattice organization is one that involves direct transactions, self-commitment, natural leadership, and lacks assigned or assumed authority. Every successful organization has a lattice organization that underlies the façade of authoritarian hierarchy. It is through these lattice organizations that things get done, and most of us delight in going around the formal procedures and doing things the straightforward and easy way." — Bill Gore

"The simplicity and order of an authoritarian organization make it an almost irresistible temptation. Yet it is counter to the principles of individual freedom and smothers the creative growth of man. Freedom requires orderly restraint. The restraints imposed by the need for cooperation are minimized with a lattice organization." — Bill Gore

Each person in the Lattice interacts directly with every other person with no intermediary.

Bill aimed to create a work environment that he believed would free people from the constraints of bureaucracy and hierarchy, enabling them to maximize their inherent potential.

His theories were inspired by Douglas McGregor's book, The Human Side of Enterprise.

Paradox 1:

• Organizations should be as fluid as possible to empower people to make constant improvements.
• Fluid organizations can hide unhealthy behavior and true power structures, and leave to confusion about "the rules".

Paradox 2:

• Constraints are necessary for creativity.
• Unnecessary constraints inhibit creativity.

Paradox 3:

• Information should be as transparent as possible.
• Too much information makes it impossible to be truly transparent because the most important information is hidden.

Paradox 4:

• People should be empowered to make decisions.
• Decisions should be informed by the desires, wisdom, knowledge of the team.

So, what's the right way to:

• Structure an organization?
• Set constraints?
• Channel information?
• Make decisions?

Holacracy has software specifically for identifying roles, groups, and their structure and relationships.

Here's Holacracy's visualized and explorable "org chart" using their software, GlassFrog.

Holacracy's approach seems to clearly separate:

• Choosing who is responsible and what they are responsible for.
• Working through decisions and actions within the scope of those responsibilities.

I very much appreciate the notion of "sensing dissonance between what is (current reality) and what could be (the purpose)."

Reminds me very much of the Dee Hock line of thinking:

"What if we set aside all discussion of as things were, as they are, and as they might become, and immersed ourselves in how they ought to be?"

Holacracy seems to be a more formalized, proprietary version of Sociocracy.

"How it works" summary:

Distributed Authority

Unlike conventional top-down or progressive bottom-up approaches, it integrates the benefits of both without relying on parental heroic leaders. Everyone becomes a leader of their roles and a follower of others’, processing tensions with real authority and real responsibility, through dynamic governance and transparent operations.

Address tensions

Sense dissonance between what is (current reality) and what could be (the purpose): the feeling of a “tension”.

Unprocessed tension festers into frustration, burn-out, and disengagement. Tensions are only useful to the extent the organization can process them into meaningful change.

Governance and Governance Meetings:

Regular governance meetings structure and evolve how the work gets done – everyone leaves with clarity on who is accountable for what, with what authority, and what constraints. These change dynamically with every meeting, based on the real tensions sensed while doing the work.

Governance meetings:

• Generate explicit and light-weight role definitions that are actually meaningful
• Give everyone a voice, without the tyranny of consensus
• Apply clear rules that prevent egos or politics from dominating
• Focus a team on fast, incremental improvements in light of real data
• Continually restructure the organization, one tension at a time

Operations and Tactical Meetings

Governance clarity enables most work to get done by clear roles using clear authority, outside of painful meetings and group consensus-seeking.

On the ground, a team’s operational flow is synchronized by regular Tactical Meetings that facilitate rapid-fire triage of key issues. Anything in the way of getting the work done gets identified and processed into clear next-actions and target outcomes.

In Tactical Meetings:

• Every agenda item gets processed every meeting, on-time every-time
• The focus is on next-actions, not endless analysis
• Metrics are surfaced and checklists are reviewed – quickly
• No one hides – radical transparency shows all progress, or lack thereof

"Key principles to keep in mind" from The Tyranny of Structurelessness:

1. Delegation of specific authority to specific individuals for specific tasks by democratic procedures. Letting people assume jobs or tasks only by default means they are not dependably done. If people are selected to do a task, preferably after expressing an interest or willingness to do it, they have made a commitment which cannot so easily be ignored. 2.Requiring all those to whom authority has been delegated to be responsible to those who selected them. This is how the group has control over people in positions of authority. Individuals may exercise power, but it is the group that has ultimate say over how the power is exercised.
2. Distribution of authority among as many people as is reasonably possible. This prevents monopoly of power and requires those in positions of authority to consult with many others in the process of exercising it. It also gives many people the opportunity to have responsibility for specific tasks and thereby to learn different skills.
3. Rotation of tasks among individuals. Responsibilities which are held too long by one person, formally or informally, come to be seen as that person's "property" and are not easily relinquished or controlled by the group. Conversely, if tasks are rotated too frequently the individual does not have time to learn her job well and acquire the sense of satisfaction of doing a good job.
4. Allocation of tasks along rational criteria. Selecting someone for a position because they are liked by the group or giving them hard work because they are disliked serves neither the group nor the person in the long run. Ability, interest, and responsibility have got to be the major concerns in such selection. People should be given an opportunity to learn skills they do not have, but this is best done through some sort of "apprenticeship" program rather than the "sink or swim" method. Having a responsibility one can't handle well is demoralizing. Conversely, being blacklisted from doing what one can do well does not encourage one to develop one's skills. Women have been punished for being competent throughout most of human history; the movement does not need to repeat this process.
5. Diffusion of information to everyone as frequently as possible. Information is power. Access to information enhances one's power. When an informal network spreads new ideas and information among themselves outside the group, they are already engaged in the process of forming an opinion -- without the group participating. The more one knows about how things work and what is happening, the more politically effective one can be.
6. Equal access to resources needed by the group. This is not always perfectly possible, but should be striven for. A member who maintains a monopoly over a needed resource (like a printing press owned by a husband, or a darkroom) can unduly influence the use of that resource. Skills and information are also resources. Members' skills can be equitably available only when members are willing to teach what they know to others.

When these principles are applied, they insure that whatever structures are developed by different movement groups will be controlled by and responsible to the group. The group of people in positions of authority will be diffuse, flexible, open, and temporary. They will not be in such an easy position to institutionalize their power because ultimate decisions will be made by the group at large. The group will have the power to determine who shall exercise authority within it.

Key points from The Tyranny of Structurelessness:

The myth of "structurelessness"

"Structurelessness" is organizationally impossible. It does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones.

Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion.

Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power. It is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not).

As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.

The rules of decision-making must be open and available to everyone, and this can happen only if they are formalized.

Elites

A Structured group always has formal structure, and may also have an informal, or covert, structure. It is this informal structure, particularly in Unstructured groups, which forms the basis for elites.

An individual, as an individual can never be an elitist, because the only proper application of the term "elite" is to groups. Correctly, an elite refers to a small group of people who have power over a larger group of which they are part, usually without direct responsibility to that larger group, and often without their knowledge or consent.

Elites are not conspiracies.

Very seldom does a small group of people get together and deliberately try to take over a larger group for its own ends.

Because elites are informal does not mean they are invisible.

Consequences

1. The informal structure of decision-making will be much like a sorority -- one in which people listen to others because they like them and not because they say significant things.

2. Informal structures have no obligation to be responsible to the group at large. Their power was not given to them; it cannot be taken away. Their influence is not based on what they do for the group; therefore they cannot be directly influenced by the group.

3. "Stars" — people who can't be removed from positions of power, nor can they leave them without being visibly toppled from their pedestal. (This has a negative side for the group and the individuals, who also experience backlash for their unaccountable popularity.)

4. Unstructured groups may be very effective in getting people to talk; they aren't very good for getting things done. It is when people get tired of "just talking" and want to do something more that the groups flounder. (Possible for an informal structure to "work" on small scale, but not on a big one.)

5. Harder to aim: "The more unstructured a movement it, the less control it has over the directions in which it develops and the actions in which it engages."

Idle hands in unstructured groups

When a group has no specific task, the people in it turn their energies to controlling the group. This is not done so much out of a malicious desire to manipulate others as out of a lack of anything better to do with their talents.

Able people with time on their hands and a need to justify their coming together put their efforts into personal control, and spend their time criticizing the personalities of the other members in the group.

Sociocracy vests the power to rule in the “socios,” that is, in the people who regularly interact with one another and have a common aim.

Each member has a voice that cannot be ignored in the managing of the organization.

It is based on four key concepts that let everyone participate in decisions on an equivalent basis:

1. Consent — A policy decision can only be made if nobody has a reasoned and paramount objection to it.

2. Elections — Persons are elected exclusively by consent, after open discussion.

3. Circles — The organization consists of circles of semi-autonomous groups of individuals. Each circle has its own aim and performs the three functions of leading, doing, and measuring/feedback. A circle makes its own policy decisions and maintains its own memory system through integral evolution.

4. Double Link — The connection between two circles consists of a double link. This means that at least two persons from one circle participate in the decision-making in the next higher circle: the circle’s leader and one or more elected representatives.

No matter your title, it is your job to make the people around you feel cared about, empowered, encouraged, and humanized.

Just like everyone, you ask, 'Do I have what it takes?' The answer is yes. Every other answer is a lie, an excuse or a distraction. The call itself is enough of an answer. What you think you're capable of is completely irrelevant—and you're very likely the worst judge anyway. You prove yourself “capable” by simply doing.

Nothing can ever stop you from making things better than they are right now.

Encouragement is the only force that can change the world with words in the only way that matters: one person at a time. They say energy cannot be created or destroyed. Encouragement gives physics the finger.

Our own defensiveness usually shows as fear, while others' defensiveness usually shows up as anger. Anger is just fear in broadcast mode. Most people have no idea that their anger is just their fear with a megaphone. So much strength is gained when we instead speak our fears out loud.

People deeply desire permission — to be themselves, to pursue their hearts, to grow to be their best. Screw permission. Don't ask permission: give it to yourself. Even better: give it to others. Manufacture and distribute it.

Tiny leaders build on other tiny leaders to make tiny powerful fearless societies.

Two-part definition of a leader:

1. a person who decides to do things (and does them);

2. a person who encourages people who decide to do things.

Leadership is about responsibility, not authority.

Most problems are a problem of leadership. Problems get solved because someone who cares takes responsibility for making them better.

"Are you a person—with volition and maybe some stubbornness and at least the capacity if not the actual determination to do something surprising—or are you a tool? A tool just serves its user. It’s only as good as the skill of its user, and it’s not good for anything else. So if you want to accomplish something special—something more than you can do for yourself—you can’t use a tool. You have to use a person and hope the surprises will work in your favor. You have to use something that’s free to not be what you had in mind." — Thomas Covenant (in Stephen R Donaldson's The One Tree)

"No one will ever be a better version of you. Not ever in this lifetime. So be more of who you are." — Stephanie Maier

"Only those who are willing to take the risk of writing code that’s not perfect ever write code." — Gar

"Never apologize for who you are or how you feel, always always apologize for what you do." — Gar

"When we listen—really listen—we reveal respect, support, understanding, empathy. All things that often cannot be expressed with words alone." — Stephanie Maier

"Treat a person as they are, we make them worse. But treat them as they could be and we make them capable of becoming what they should be." — Johnann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Be kind—everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." — Ian Maclaren (paraphrased)

"Where does the compulsion to control come from? Let’s pretend that I can take my desire for control and develop it to the ultimate. What would that mean? I’d have to know every event that ever happened in the past and everything that could possibly happen in the future. I would have to go, along with desire, hope, love, and hate. If I [were to] reach that state of total and complete control, what would it be like? I’d be dead! Life is mystery. And uncertainty. To wish absolute control is to wish you were not alive. At bottom, desire for control is a death wish." — Dee Hock

“You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea” — Pablo Picasso

"You are more likely to achieve your outcome if you don’t feel that your ultimate happiness and success depend on it.” — Shirzad Chamine

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." — Marianne Williamson

"If you think you can't, why think?" — Dee Hock

"If you automate garbage, you get fast garbage." — Bear's dad

"If you want to make the world a better place, you have to teach people they are valuable. When people value themselves, everything changes." — Jenn Turner

"Over the years, I've learned the best way to make sure your experience doesn't go to waste is to invest it in the people around you." — Julie Ann Horvath

"What if the only things with sides were coins and courtrooms? Everything else had only aspects. Would we need sides at all?" — Nate Vander Wilt