Pattern for Agile Organizations

Read this text to see the idea of sociocracy as a form of organizational design. This is a way for organizations to transcend the traditional approach to organizational change. While the model is primarily applied to software organizations, it can be used by other organizations that want to be sure that information flows to and from the appropriate parties and ensure that experts can participate in the decisions that affect them. The text considers governance, teams, and collaboration internally and externally. The graphics make the complexity of the linkages easy to understand as the author presents consent decision-making, double linking, and governance in iterations.

The Seven Principles

Sociocracy 3.0 is built on seven foundational principles which enable sociocratic and agile collaboration. Since the seven principles are reflected in all of the patterns, understanding these principles is helpful for adopting and paramount to adapting Sociocracy 3.0 patterns.

Practicing Sociocracy 3.0 helps people appreciate the essential value that these core principles bring – both to individuals and to organizations – and supports their integration into organizational culture.

The Principle of Effectiveness: Devote time only to what brings you closer toward achieving your objectives, so that you can make the best use of your limited time, energy and resources.

The Principle of Consent: Raise, seek out and resolve objections to decisions and actions, so that you can reduce the potential for undesirable consequences and discover worthwhile ways to improve.

The Principle of Empiricism: Test all assumptions you rely on, through experiments and continuous revision, so that you learn fast, make sense of things and navigate complexity as effectively as you can.

The Principle of Continuous Improvement: Change incrementally to accommodate steady empirical learning, so that you can adapt to changes when necessary, and maintain or improve effectiveness over time.

The Principle of Equivalence: Involve people in making and evolving decisions that affect them, so that you increase engagement and accountability, and make use of the distributed intelligence toward achieving and evolving your objectives.

The Principle of Transparency: Record all information that is valuable for the organization, and make it accessible to everyone, unless there is a reason for confidentiality, so that everyone has the information they need to understand how to do their work in a way that contributes most effectively to the whole.

The Principle of Accountability: Respond when something is needed, do what you agreed to do, and take ownership for the course of the organization, so that what needs doing gets done, nothing is overlooked and everyone does what they can to contribute toward the effectiveness and integrity of the organization.