Sociocracy: Thinking outside the box on governance for CHT
Incorporating as a cooperative requires you to embrace being different.
As members of a cooperative, we all need to be ready to educate others about cooperatives. There are fewer professional services providers (accountants, lawyers, etc.) who understand cooperatives, which is teaching us to advocate for ourselves and seek support from other cooperatives and from amazing resources such as the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives and the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives. There are rules to follow about how to structure your organization. There are rules that govern decision-making. Despite all these rules, we decided to add a further layer: Sociocracy.
We examined a variety of governance models before settling on Sociocracy. As founders, we all brought different perspectives, and, to a degree, different goals to the table. Sociocracy was something each of us felt strongly about adopting, making it an easy decision. We were excited about the circle structure, the consent-based decision making, and the rounds approach in meetings. Even with all this excitement, we realized we didn’t know how to begin!
After reviewing https://www.sociocracyforall.org, listening to podcasts, and considering our options, we decided to complete a training video course recorded by Ted Rao, a key leader in the Sociocracy movement. Not only did this training reinforce for us our commitment to Sociocracy, it also helped us get to know each other as co-founders of Cooperative Healthtech, rather than just as former colleagues and acquaintances. We quickly found the time we spent on our Sociocracy training to be the highlight of our professional week. We were excited to better understand the structures of conducting a meeting, developing proposals to shape our decision-making, and achieving consent across the four of us, even when we faced challenging situations. And we’re excited to share the advantages of Sociocracy in both our personal and professional lives.