Sociocracy and Catalyst: what we’ve learned since 2020

Sociocracy is “...a governance system, just like democracy or corporate governance methods. It’s best suited for organizations that want to self-govern based on the values of equality.” -  Sociocracy for all.

Catalyst has been using sociocracy since 2020. We’ve reaped lots of benefits from this, and encountered many challenges. 

Sociocracy: key features

Sociocracy’s main features are:

• circles: small groups of people with a shared aim. Circles have a specific area of responsibility within a bigger whole. They make, implement and evaluate decisions that fall within their area
• double linking: an overlap between circles that makes sure information flows in all directions
• consent-based decision making: sociocracy looks for consent, not consensus, in decision-making. Members can bring proposals for activities to circles. Proposals are approved by consent when everyone thinks they are ‘good enough for now, safe enough to try’. Even if it’s not everyone’s preferred action
• continuous improvement: regularly making the time and space for feedback, growth and learning.

Organisations can choose to use some, or all, of these elements.

Sociocracy has strengths and weaknesses

Organisations can use sociocracy:

• to support behaviour and culture change
• to avoid reproducing biased patterns of behaviour
• to address unequal power dynamics.

But sociocracy is only one way of making organisational decisions and sharing power. It’s not a quick and easy solution to organisational problems. As Kate, one of our Co-Directors says:

“...sociocracy is a great starting point for thinking about distributing power and distributing resources. But it is not, in and of itself, going to be enough to create the kind of world we want to see.”

There’s also decolonising work to be done in sociocracy. Hannah, another of our Co-Directors highlights the approach's eurocentric roots and says, “...there’s room for us to think about, and draw on, what circular leadership looks in indigenous communities." 

And governanc systems alone can't create just, liberated, equitable and compassionate workplaces:

"To achieve the kind of workplace that holacracy and like systems promise to enable, we must be mindful of the implicit biases, explicit prejudices, intergenerational/historical traumas, microaggressions, and multiple other forces at play in most workplaces." - Autopsy of a failed holacracy: lessons in justice, equity, and self-management.

Why we use sociocracy

At Catalyst we want to model the sort of world we want to see. So we use, and experiment with, practices and processes that liberate people and distribute power more equitably. 

What sociocracy looks like at Catalyst

Sociocracy aligns with our values and our focus on supporting technology that liberates people. We want to use, and experiment with, practices and processes that distribute power more equitably. But Catalyst doesn’t operate in a purely sociocratic way. We use all the elements of sociocracy, except for double linking.

Circles

Since 2020 Catalyst has been using circles to oversee and make decisions about elements of our work. At one point in 2023 we had 6 active circles. Currently we have 3: 

• Impact Circle: leads on evaluation and learning
• Co-Directors’ Circle: acts as the ‘general circle’, coordinating strategy and management
• Tech Justice Circle: supports the design and delivery of 3 community-led tech justice activities

All our circles use consent-based decision making for some, but not all, decisions.

Continuous improvement

At the beginning and the end of each trimester, Catalyst’s Co-Directors meet to discuss progress, learning and their intentions for the next trimester. We also use different activities within circles:

• Check ins and check outs as a very small and accessible way to learn and build deeper understanding of each other
• A 'satisfactions, dis-satisfactions, discoveries, learnings and surprises' section at the end of circle meetings - to reflect on how the meeting went and what came up for the members
• The core sociocracy support team runs internal retrospectives on specific milestones to check how we are supporting activity across circles.

We have also:

• run an Action Learning Set to develop peer support for approaches to enabling DEIJ in the workplace
• run an open feedback session with previous circle leads to feedback how they experienced the co-budgeting process in their circles. We used feedback on what didn't work to inform a more traditional approach to distributing budgets.

Our challenges implementing sociocracy

Our network structure

Although it has many benefits, our structure has made putting sociocracy into practice difficult. Traditional organisations have fixed teams but we're a remote-first, networked organisation. Relationships across the network are fluid. As are members’ connections with us. This, and the frequency of changes to circles’ memberships, make it difficult to distribute power in a sociocratic way. For example remote, asynchronous decision making is much harder to implement than real-time decision making in a meeting. 

Organisational change

Catalyst was originally a network incubated by CAST. Between 2020-23 it focused on:

• building networks
• improving digital practice
• identifying tools and services to support the not for profit sector’s digital capabilities.

Between 2020-22 we scaled rapidly to deliver a large-scale digital transformation programme helping charities adapt to the pandemic. In 2022 we began an 18-month review. Then in April 2024, we became an independent community interest company and shifted our mission to supporting tech that liberates people. From April 2025, we’ll become a lean organisation supporting the tech justice movement. These rapid frequency of these transitions has challenged our attempts to implement sociocracy consistently. 

Beliefs, feelings and emotions

Sociocracy requires more openness, vulnerability and emotional labour from people than traditional governance approaches. This is challenging in any context, especially in the workplace. For example, people usually need to unlearn traditional power dynamics. Sometimes people struggle not to take objections to a proposal personally. 

Circle members may assume that liking each other as people is enough to work together sociocratically. But sociocracy requires higher levels of trust to work (and when it’s implemented well, also serves to increase people’s trust). Trust was one issue that arose in our governance design experiment.

Grant requirements

Our funding has never been for the purpose of exploring and learning about different governance systems. We’ve done this exploring alongside delivering projects that align to our grant agreements. So sometimes we have had to compromise on our approach to sociocracy. 

Perfectionism

We’re all products of the dominant white supremacy work culture. This culture holds perfection as an ideal and encourages us all to overcommit and overvalue excellence. But perfectionism isn’t sociocratic. We’re learning to turn away from perfectionist thinking and instead do what’s good enough for now and safe enough to try.

Our sociocratic successes

One of the challenges that many organisations face is circular conversations – ones that go around and around without reaching a conclusion. This can happen when people don’t have enough information to make a decision.

We’ve built a strong proposal-based culture that helps people make informed decisions. It gives people agency to introduce new ideas and activities. The practice of everybody separating reactions from concerns helps us make better, quicker decisions. The discipline of speaking in rounds (taking turns to talk without interrupting, talking over others, having side discussions or responding) is a simple thing that we do a lot. And we do it outside of formal consent processes. It makes for better discussions and helps with power sharing. 

Kate explains that the Co-Directors circle has:

“...done some great generative, and generous, decision-making on setting up policies and allocating money. One example is our wellbeing support bursary fund. We identified a need, one of the Co-Directors brought a proposal, we discussed it and decided it was good enough for now, and safe enough to try.”

The reflective and learning practices built into sociocracy support more open working between circle members. This internal practice then supports external practice. For example, publishing open working blogs about what’s happening in Catalyst, and our Inside the Tech Justice Road Trip co-produced blogs.

Tech Justice Road Trip

We're successfully using sociocracy in our Tech Justice Road Trip project. And sociocracy practitioners have offered guidance and support. We’ve provided circle members with sociocracy mentors and training sessions where they could practice bringing and responding to proposals.

We make major decisions during circle meetings using a sociocratic process. And minor decisions using consent on Slack. This type of decision-making helps ensure that all member voices are heard. 

Similarly, allowing all members to propose ideas and changes has helped to prevent situations where people feel unhappy about how decisions were made, while sharing responsibility for each decision. 

The project's circle also manages a shared pot of funding. They use consent-based decision-making to decide what to spend it on. This has allowed circle members to request funding for ideas as they arise and others to provide feedback and raise concerns in an open and collaborative way. As a result we’ve been able to implement new ideas without lengthy application processes. 

How to bring sociocracy to your organisation 

Abi Handley and Kayleigh Walsh are facilitators in sociocracy and other collaborative approaches. They work with Catalyst. Here are their recommendations for getting started with sociocracy.

Start small

Aim to introduce sociocracy gradually and iteratively. Find specific projects and teams who have capacity, time and energy, and are willing to experiment. Move quickly where things are working well, and devote more time and care to what’s difficult.

Focus on honesty and self-reflection

Sociocracy only works if there’s openness and honesty. So you need to work on exploring your own biases and attitudes, and building up trust with the people you work with.

Commit to behaviour change at leadership levels 

Leaders must dedicate the time and space to unlearn old habits and adopt new sociocractic ones. This includes being willing to let go of some  control (which can be scary). 

Invest time and get ready for the long haul

Organisations often want to solve problems quickly, but changing behaviour and culture is a long-term, ongoing commitment. You need to be ready to invest consistently in improving the ways you work and how you relate to one another. 

Where to find out more about sociocracy 

• Sociocracy’s basic concepts and principles are laid out in this introduction to the approach.
• This video provides an overview of Sociocracy 3.0. 
• And Sociocracy 3.0 has a selection of posters, templates and guides for organisations who want to use sociocratic processes.

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Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash.