Sociocracy at Los Portales
In October 2015, we discovered sociocracy in a six-day workshop led by Gilles Charest, a Canadian business consultant with over 25 years of experience in sociocracy, and by Mauge Cañada, a psychologist and facilitator with over 30 years of experience in collective and community management.
Gilles Charest was trained directly by Gerard Endenburg, the «father of modern sociocracy» and, in addition to being one of the managing partners of The Sociocracy Group, he is responsible for its education department; he has given specialized workshops on this method for more than two decades. He is also the author of Democracy is dying, long live sociocracy!
During those six days, we worked on the «internal sociocracy», listening to our «internal voices» to negotiate personal decisions. We also explored the «external sociocracy» with groups of people of any size, to manage them organically. We familiarized ourselves with the different leadership profiles, using «The Talent Wheel», a tool designed by Gilles Charest; that tool gave us very valuable information about our leadership style and allowed for a more conscious collaboration within the team.
From a dream…
Auguste Comte (1798-1857), French philosopher and father of sociology, was the first to use the word «sociocracy», meaning government by partners, which, according to him, was the only fair way:
«We come forward then, avowedly, to deliver the Western world from an anarchical democracy, and from a retrograde aristocracy. We come forward to constitute, as far as practicable, a real sociocracy one which shall be able to combine wisely, in furtherance of the common regeneration, all the powers of man, each of course brought to bear according to its own nature. In fact we, Sociocrats, are as little democratical as we are aristocratical. » («The Catechism of Positive Religion», 1852, p. 2)
But it was just a theory, an academic dream that never led to concrete actions…
The modern sociocratic method was developed by the Dutch electronic engineer Gerard Endenburg (1930-). He was influenced by the cybernetic theory and the values he had received in his childhood at «The Factory», a school run by Kees Boeke. A Dutch pacifist, Kees had brought the wisdom of the «quakers» for consensus decision-making between teachers and students. When he had to take over the management of the family business, he decided to adapt these values of equivalence and transparency to the management of Endenburg Elektrotechniek. Modern sociocracy was born.
… to a reality
«The sociocratic method is based on four basic rules: decision-making by consent, structure based on specialized and interconnected circles, two-way flow of information between these groups, and open elections with no prior candidate,» explains Gilles Charest. According to him, in order to implement sociocracy in an organization, it is first necessary to create a pilot group which, once formed and having acquired the basic rules, will be able to design a structure with the support of a sociocratic expert.
Our path to a new organization.
A few months after this first contact in October 2015, the tool was presented to Los Portales and a working group was created to design a sociocratic structure for the collective. It was presented and approved in March 2016. Shortly afterwards, we were lucky enough to have Gilles Charest and Ghislaine Cimon at Los Portales to give a short training to the whole group.
We organize ourselves into circles for the management of the different domains. Each circle manages its area autonomously and every month there is a meeting of the General Circle which brings together all the coordinators and the double links of each circle to present their progress and to make decisions that go beyond the scope of a particular circle (for example, decisions on the distribution of budgets).
We keep adapting the sociocratic model to our reality and our vision and we continue to shape it as we go along. We also continue to train. Some of us worked with John Buck, author in collaboration with Sharon Villines of «We the People: Agreeing on Deeper Democracy. A Handbook for Understanding and Implementing Sociocratic Principles and Practices» a tireless traveler and «ambassador» for sociocracy. Others went at a workshop with James Priest, to study and disseminate Sociocracy 3.0 or S3. This training led to the organization of two S3 workshops in Los Portales and Amalurra.
Finally, we are currently sharing our sociocratic experience through workshops, trainings, consultations and coaching.
Más información :
Charlie P. Lenglez
Consultor certificado por el Consejo Internacional de Certificación en Sociocracia (ISCB)
charlie.lenglez@yahoo.es
