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 Patterns

Bringing in S3

Adapt Patterns To Context

Adapt and evolve S3 patterns to suit your specific context.

Ensure that everyone affected:

understands why changing the pattern is necessary (or helpful)
is present or represented when deciding how to change it
uses S3 principles as a guide for adaptation.

Run experiments with adaptations for long enough to learn about the benefits and any potential pitfalls.

Share valuable adaptations with the S3 community.

Phases of adapting patterns to a specific context

Create a Pull-System For Organizational Change

Create an environment that invites and enables members of the organization to drive change.

Change things when there is value in doing so:

Bring in patterns that help to solve current and important problems.
Don't break what's already working!
Meet everyone where they are…
…and let them choose their own pace.

Be The Change

Lead by example.

Behave and act in the ways you would like others to behave and act.

Invite Change

Clarify the reason for change and invite people to participate.

When making the invitation:

be transparent about the reason for the change
clarify expectations and constraints
avoid coercion or manipulation
acknowledge any skepticism and doubts

Include the people involved and affected in regular evaluation of outcomes.

Open Space For Change

Invite everyone to create and run experiments for evolving the organization.

clarify the driver for change
schedule regular open space events:

invite all members to create and run experiments
define constraints for the experiments that enable development of a sociocratic and agile mindset (e.g. S3 principles)
review and learn from experimentation in the next open space

Continuous Improvement Of Work Process

Reveal drivers and establish a metrics-based pull-system for organizational change through continuously improving and refining the work process.

introduce the principle of consent and Navigate via Tension to evolve work process in a team
consider selecting a facilitator to guide group processes, and choosing values to guide behavior
initiate a process of continuous improvement, e.g. through Kanban or regular retrospectives
members of the team pull in S3 patterns as required
if valuable, iteratively expand the scope of the experiment to other teams
intentionally look out for impediments

Waste And Continuous Improvement

Waste is anything unnecessary for - or standing in the way of - a (more) effective response to a driver.

Waste exists in various forms and on different levels of abstraction (tasks, processes, organizational structure, mental models…)

Establishing a process for the ongoing elimination of waste enables natural evolution of an organization towards greater effectiveness and adaptation to changing context.