Triple Bottom Line

Sociocracy: Inclusive Organizational Teams

July 06, 2022 Taylor Martin / Ted Rau
Triple Bottom Line
Sociocracy: Inclusive Organizational Teams
Show Notes Transcript

Ted Rau, sociocracy expert, advocate, author, consultant, and co-founder of Sociocracy For All—a nonprofit with a mission to equip people with the skills and knowledge to self-govern and self-organize. He has written many articles and two books on the topic, Many Voices One Song, and Who Decides Who Decides. Ted explains that governance is part of the systems that help us be better humans: living interdependence in our daily lives and relating to ourselves, others and our environment with respect and equity. A truly remarkable organizational system that's been around for decades. This podcast can bring you up-to-speed on the gravity of its capabilities. https://www.sociocracyforall.org
 

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Triple Bottom Line | Episode 23 | Ted Rau |

[Upbeat theme music plays] 
Female Voice Over 
[00:03] Welcome to the Triple Bottom Line, where we reveal how today’s business leaders are reaching a new level of success with a people-planet-profit approach. And here is your host, Taylor Martin!

Taylor Martin 
[00:17] Welcome, everybody. I have Ted Rau on today. He is an advocate, a trainer, a consultant for self-governance, for sociocracy. He was born in Germany, now lives in Massachusetts. Ted, when you and I first connected, I was – I don’t know a lot about this space but I’ve been trying to get up to speed on stuff. Can you tell our listeners about how you got to be born in Germany, came to the United States and living in Massachusetts while you’re teaching people something that came from the Netherlands?

Ted Rau
[00:48] [Laughs] Yes. So I came to the US really for completely different reason in my previous career. I thought I had left it behind. I was in academia and linguistics. I thought what I’m doing now is something completely different until I realized just recently how it all actually does come together. So I came here for a research project in linguistics and then I simply got stuck, as these things happen. When we decided to stay in this country, in the US, and we looked to how could we settle here and what would it need for us to feel completely comfortable here, so we looked for intentional communities. I don’t know if you know what that is. But it’s basically the idea that several people, in our case 70 people, live together in the same space and share a lot of things. This is where I got exposed to sociocracy because this has helped this place to start. And then I learned that you can also use this for companies and then I was completely hooked. And that’s when I dived in and left behind what I had been doing before and did that. And this system, yes, happens to come from the Netherlands. But that is completely coincidental.

Taylor Martin
[01:56] [Laughs] Of course. So how can you define sociocracy for people to get their heads wrapped around it a little bit there?

Ted Rau
[02:06] So the idea is that those who work together can make decisions together. And that sounds super trivial. And yet, if you think about it, typically what happens in a company is that the people who are higher up the ladder make the decisions and the people who actually have to carry out the work don’t really have much of a say. So we’re trying to bring those together again. And those who do the work get to decide. And what that means is that we have a system in sociocracy that both gives us a sense of who decides what and then also, once we know that, how do we decide as a group. And those are the two big pieces that sociocracy is trying to answer. And it has a framework of how we can do that so that people can not only talk about it but go ahead and do it.

Taylor Martin
[02:53] Well let’s get into the weeds here because I know that it’s not like an even flat playing field where everybody is in the same room doing the same thing having a conversation and getting everybody’s vote on something. Let’s dive into how things are broken up into different groups, or you call them circles.

Ted Rau
[03:10] Yes. So again, the idea is that those who work together get to decide, which means we are now grouping people and clustering people according to what they are doing. It might even be that one finds in oneself in different parts of the organization and that is not untypical. So for example, for me, I help my organization in training and producing and carrying out the training or delivering that. I also am part of the people who take care of the budgeting. And I’m also taking care of some other parts of the organization. That’s where I do my work, which means now I am a decision maker on budget. I’m a decision maker on how training works and the other pieces. And that is true for everyone goes and uses the systems. The people that work together decide together. That’s our structure.
But that sounds like there are a lot of disjointed groups just making things up the whole time. And that’s not what we want. What we want instead is a place where all of it comes together. The way we set that up is if you imagine, let’s say for example, a marketing department. Marketing department will have subsets, let’s say, people who run social media. And a subset of that, let’s say, works on TikTok. So now you might have a TikTok circle that is a subset of the social media circle is a subset of marketing. But we don’t want, let’s say, marketing to have 20 people because then, well, if you have 20 people, they can’t really listen to each other anymore. So that’s why we only take two people from TikTok say, hey, you go to social media and meet with the Twitter and Facebook folks, two of them each. And then we take two people from that social media circle and send them to marketing to talk to the other people who are working on email marketing or whatever. So that way we have manageable groups but it’s all connected. So we have cohesion and alignment but we still have autonomy in the groups that are working together.

Taylor Martin
[05:05] I love how you have the two people going from one circle to the next circle, not being the same people but there’s that connection, that link. And it’s the fact that it’s two people is always better because then when one says something, the other one is listening and checking them to make sure that they’re in alignment. That, to me, was critical. I thought that was really genius.

Ted Rau
[05:25] Yeah. I’m glad you connect with that because sometimes people are like oh, that seems like so overkill. If I’m all by myself, I’m just going to say the truth. Why don’t you just trust one person? But we all know – I mean, we’ve all heard of or experienced what it’s like to be that middle person. Right? Because then you’re in that sandwich position, it’s not a fun position to be in. You’re the bottleneck for a lot of stuff. So having two people there is, I think, a really sane decision tool or design principle to do it that way. And I’ve heard over and over from people, clients are like, oh, no, we’re going to do single link. We’re going to do single link. And then when you gently encourage them to actually have that second person, they’re like, oh, yeah, that was completely different. Wow. Reporting while the other person is also listening is an absolute gamechanger. So yes, exactly what you say is exactly what we hear, too.

Taylor Martin
[06:13] Yeah. Now in each one of those two people, the linking people as I like to call them, they carry different roles. Can you talk to that?

Ted Rau
[06:20] Yeah. The idea is, and that’s hard to do it just readily, the idea is that, let’s say, the social media person or the social media circle is sending a person, so to speak, up, like a bottom-up link, to marketing, while marketing is sending a top-down link down to social media. So one is reporting one way, one is reporting the other way, so that we can be sure that both are really well connected.

Taylor Martin
[06:46] That’s great. I love that.

Ted Rau
[06:47] In practice, they will, of course, complement each other and add and so on and refine and so on. So it’s not super strict but the intention is that we have both directions.

Taylor Martin
[06:57] Yeah. Just to kind of expand a little bit on the circles, each person gets a chance to speak their voice. It goes kind of like round robin and it goes around the table and everybody gets to voice their opinion on whatever matter at hand they’re talking to. Right?

Ted Rau
[07:12] Yes. And that goes into the second big topic of how do we make decisions. So now we zoom into one of those circles. Let’s look at, for example, social media circle. So now we have the people in the room that are deeply involved in social media work and the operations of that. So not just people with opinions but the people who actually do it. Right? So now when they are trying to, let’s say, explore what kind of new – let’s say somebody has an idea about a new strategy. Let’s say they’re not on TikTok yet and somebody says, hey, how about TikTok, reaching other people, blah, blah, blah. And then they could say, okay, let’s see what people are thinking.
And then the most typical thing to do would be what we call a round of talking one by one by one by one and everybody speaks. Nobody gets interrupted because we want to hear everybody’s voice. And that way we can really practice what we’re preaching and know we care about people’s voice, then let’s make sure we actually hear them. Because so many people just say they care but they don’t actually pause enough to listen. The rounds are a way to enforce that we actually listen to each other. Because it’s not even so much that it’s about creating carving out that time to speak. That too. For me, what I appreciate the most is carving the time out to listen. Because if it’s not my turn, I know I don’t have to interrupt other people, that’s not even an option. And you can almost see when people get used to the system. That time at the beginning, they’re like I want to say something. I want to say something, please. And then over time, they settle down more and more. And at some point, they make that switch. And instead of wanting to speak, they just listen. And that’s when they’ve really arrived. It’s wonderful.

Taylor Martin
[08:58] That’s awesome. Just hearing you say that, I’m running through a lot of my memories of let’s just say stories I’ve heard from different colleagues of mine in different businesses where they have had a little round table discussion like that, but it’s usually just a handful of people that are voicing their opinion over everybody else’s. And the other people that might have good ideas and some people are introverts. They don’t want to say something, but they have great ideas. So you’re losing. You’re missing out on their input. That is a big deal. But I think what we’re really getting at is that everybody’s voice is heard, and thereby, everybody is going to be happy with their job because they feel like their voices are being heard and they’re giving back to the group in whatever conversation or means that they’re talking about. Nowadays with the rise in unions these days, I just feel like something like this, I wouldn’t say squash that, but it gives everybody a voice and having a voice does squash some issues with not being heard and not being treated fairly or understood or any of those things.

Ted Rau
[10:13] Right. And then in a place where we have unions, what you have to do is you have your regular structure and then you have the structure that is trying to outbalance again what is – to even out what is out of balance in the original system to do that voice structure again. One fun fact is that in the Netherlands, being a Central European country, unions are pretty strong and really respected and there are requirements that you have to have a union once your company is a certain size and so on. But in the Dutch system, if you’re a sociocratic organization, you can get a waiver on the requirement to have a union because your decisions are already made by the workers. You don’t have to bring the workers back in. [Laughs] They are it. [Laughs] That’s just beautiful to think, oh, wow, we don’t even need that additionally. They’re just building it around the workers from the get go.

Taylor Martin
[11:13] My case in point. I had no idea.

Ted Rau
[11:16] Yeah. [Laughs] I know.

Taylor Martin
[11:17] But when I was reading your material and watching some of your videos on your website, which are great, by the way, I was thinking, man, this sounds like something that would be great for companies that are fearful of unions because it is a whole other step. It’s a financial cost. There’s so many different things involved and you lose some of your own power. What I think is very interesting is, like I said, having everybody have their voice. They get their voice, their vote, and they get to say what they need to say about it. But also that you can just create these circles on top of circles or expand as a company grows or shrinks. And that flexibility, that was like an a-ha moment because being able to fluctuate as the market fluctuates or the growth of the company fluctuates or as different opportunities become available to the company, there’s just so many different things you could break out these circle groups in.

Ted Rau
[12:07] Yes, exactly what you’re saying, that’s what we see. And it’s fun because it’s a little bit, like how I compare it when I explain it to people is, like roots of a plant, they grow where there are nutrients and where there’s energy. So just like that, an organism like this company organism or organization organism will grow when there’s energy around something. And then if something fades to be, let’s say, for example, let’s say, we didn’t, but let’s say we had a circle that is all around online training. And then people are starting to go back in-person, then okay. We let that online training be and we go back to other formats. Like as things happen around us, we can always respond to that very directly. And it feels very organic and fun to just pop up a circle or fold a circle. I was just yesterday part of folding a circle because some things had shifted and we realized, oh, we could actually do it differently and then we folded the circle. It wasn’t a big dramatic thing. It was just one of those little shifts that form everything.

Taylor Martin
[13:10] So when somebody – when some company decides to take this on and to implement it, how long does it take for them to really get in the groove and to see the value of it?

Ted Rau
[13:22] Yeah. That’s an interesting one.

Taylor Martin
[13:24] Is there a range?

Ted Rau
[13:26] Yeah. It really depends. To me, it depends on how close the culture is already, because in a way, in a system, everybody needs to learn. If you have a system, and that’s a little ironic. People are not so okay about that. So let me walk you through that. If you have a very hierarchical system, for example, it’s obvious. Right? Oh, now all of a sudden, people can just – the person on top, so to speak, will have to get used to seriously having to share power and responsibility and figuring out more together how we can go about things. But there’s the other side, too. The people who could easily defer to other people and pass on, oh, you’re responsible. You decide. They have to step up and that’s also not easy for many people. So finding that middle ground of a healthy use of power and of collective decision making, that’s typically not so easy for either side. So depending on how close or how far away that is for the culture that people already have, it might be harder. That’s the first thing.
I find that also there’s a learning curve in the beginning and then some moment of settling in. So typically, it takes a year to really arrive in the new system and really find your way around it. The first three months might be the steepest and then you still notice those shifts. For example, one very, very interesting one is, in the decision making that we use, not only do we use rounds but also every circle member, if there’s a decision, and if it’s an overarching decision, like a general agreement about how we do things, then every circle member will have to give their consent to the decision. Okay. So let’s say, going back to the TikTok example. I like to reuse my examples. So we have the social media circle and they are deciding to build a certain budget and a certain number of hours on what [inaudible] now there will be a proposal and everyone on social media circle will need to consent to it for it to move forward.
[16:03]Now if you’re the one who wants to not get their fingers dirty and defer to others like, oh, you guys decided that. It’s your risk. You screwed it up. If that’s how you think, that’s tough luck because in consent, if you consent, that means you’re now co-responsible. There is no standing aside. Standing aside is not a thing. You’re either consenting or you’re objecting. And if you don’t have an objection, that means you are moving forward together. But that is very uncomfortable and some people are squirming and really trying to find their way out of it. [Laughs] I noticed it for myself. I’ve been running this way for seven or eight years. Yeah, eight years. And still, there are moments where I’m like, oh, I just want the easy way out, please. [Laughs]
But what’s the grown-up way of dealing with this? Okay. Am I willing to go for this or do I have to object? Maybe I just have to object because I’m actually not comfortable with the decision. But then you have to say it, otherwise you really have that decision going. And that, from my experience, comes in waves. Sometimes you have these aftershocks of the old mainstream system that is still baked into us. And then it wants to come out again and we’re like, no, please, I don’t want to be responsible of making another decision and where we are just crossing it again and again. And then we finally arrive on more solid ground together. That’s what I see in groups.

Taylor Martin
[17:01] Understanding what you just said makes me feel like, once they get over what you just described, that hurdle for them, I feel like that’s when they’re going to have that click moment personally for them, not throughout the whole company but just for them. And then I think it’ll be, and again, this is my perspective. I feel like they’re going to have a better attention at addressing the issues, listening to the issues, and then contemplating and running through their mental filter to give feedback. I just see it as something that forcing them to have to consent or not consent on the decision of whatever is at hand. I feel like just putting that pressure on them, it makes them invested. It makes them part of it so they take ownership, just like you said. Speaking of the consent, what happens if you have – I’m just going to give a number. Like what happens if you have 12 people and two of them don’t give consent? Do you hammer it out more or do you just move on to the next thing and push it to the table for the next time? What are some of the mechanisms you have in place for some of that?

Ted Rau
[18:05] So the first one is the definition of an objection really. You can – so the rules of the game or not that you can just object because you don’t like it. You need to bring something a little bit more substantial than that. So going back to our TikTok example, let’s say somebody says, well, whatever imaginary company we’re using now, let’s say you have some reason to believe that the people on TikTok are too young to even be interested in your product. It’s just a waste of money. So now you would object and say, no, I’m not willing to pour $80,000 into this little child thing. I’m not willing. I have reason to believe that that is a waste of resources. So you would object. And I think if you have reason to believe that, you should object. I would say in order to protect what it is that your group is doing, you should object if you see that the group is making a mistake.

Taylor Martin
[18:58] Yeah. Because you’re bringing something to the table that other people may not be seeing.

Ted Rau
[19:01] Yes. Exactly. And that’s even how I – I love how you phrased that. That’s how I teach it of really the person who objects is not the person manufacturing the objection. They are the person who happens to see the thing that you should have seen too. Right? [Laughs] Because it should really exist outside of us. Right? And the question of, well, is that our target audience? Is that not our target audience? That is an answerable question. So now what we’re trying to get people to do have that mindset of trying things out of, okay, that’s the objection. This is too big of a budget for such a risky kind of thing. Okay. Now what do we do? And there are several things we can do. The typical three rounds that we go through is, well, can you modify it? Like, for example, okay, let’s only do half of the budget. Okay.

That’s typically where people go but it’s not all that interesting actually. I mean, it can be interesting, but it’s not where the innovation typically is. The innovation is in the other two strategies. One of them is can we simply put a time on it. Can we say, okay, let’s try this for three months, but in three months, we need to whatever. In three months, we’re going to evaluate it. So then you put it into your notes and we say note to circle, in three months, we’re going to run over this. It’s definitely going to come up again.

The third option that often gets combined is to turn exactly what the person brought up in the objection into something that you can track. So okay. By when should we have increased our audience by how much? That is an answerable question. And instead of sitting around having tons of discussions about what would happen if we ever did something, we could say, okay, there was an objection. Thank you. And then you basically as a facilitator or however you draw from the group, that the facilitator would do something to the effect of, okay, what is the metric here? By when? Let’s put it in our document so that we don’t forget that in June we’re going to check this and that, and if it drops below this or whatever, you make up your own system of what you’re comfortable with. And then the objector typically actually very wholeheartedly consents because you now took exactly what they brought, the wisdom that they brought, into something. You took it seriously, seriously enough that you’re paying attention. And they delivered to you exactly what you should be paying attention to.

So it’s this beautiful win-win situation that I absolutely love of consenting is fine and objecting is fine and everything just makes it much better. And we are always in the same camp because it’s not I want this and you want that. It’s more, okay, we all want the same thing. We want to do good social media marketing for this thing that we care about. So how can we do it so that we can really notice what is working and what is not so we’re always in the – we’re learning together and figuring it out together camp. We’re not falling into these factions.

Taylor Martin
[22:13] Oh, I love that, learning together and working together. A few things that crossed my mind as you were talking about that is going through all these processes, it has to change the culture of the company in some profound way, doesn’t it?

Ted Rau
[22:30] Yeah, in so many different ways. We’ve already talked about the responsibility. Then there was a big aspect in there in terms of power. If you’re learning and creating together, then being the person in power is not really a thing anymore. You have a circle that is taking care of something that is a broader umbrella of social media, like for example, marketing. So but these are not the people overpowering social media because social media makes decisions on social media and marketing makes decisions on the wider strategy. And you have those two links going back and forth. So the whole idea of somebody overpowering somebody else in consent with linking these connected circles just completely falls flat. In addition, even the people who are those links, like who is the leader of the delegate, like the top-down or bottom-up link, they declare consent from both of the circles that are coming from and going to. So you only have people that are trusted all around in those key positions. So in that context, all those power behaviors that people go into just don’t apply anymore.

Taylor Martin
[23:38] Yeah. They disappear.

Ted Rau
[23:39] Yeah. They disappear. And some people don’t get the memo and they ultimately tend to leave in those organizations. They just do not know how to transition their old behaviors into this new system and they can sometimes get really disoriented or upset because they don’t see how the strings that used to be strings or pseudo strings, the behaviors that were counted as strings in previous systems, all of a sudden just get them in trouble again and again and they get so much pushback. So that’s a really interesting one how the whole power of relationships, how they play out. I just love the fact that you have to work together without being stuck together because you’re in those small groups.

Taylor Martin
[24:20] What about the managers? I feel like there’s a lot of, I hate to use this term, but bad managers out there that are people that are just put into a managerial position just because they’ve been at the company for a long time. And they’re not really good at it but that’s just where they’re shoved and they’re made to make the decisions. I feel like this type of structure would help those type of people and help them be better “managers”.

Ted Rau
[24:45] Yeah. There’s one aspect of that is, let’s say, how does the term manager even translate here? I would say it’s the leader of the next higher group kind of thing. That’s how I think about it. Well, how did that person get into that position? Well, they were selected by the people by consent. That’s one thing. Another piece is, for example, that goes down to a little bit of the nitty gritty, but it’s important of if we select somebody, that is the election process but we call it selection to be a little bit more clear because we don’t vote. What we do is let’s say you and I and three other people are the social media circle and we want to select the delegate or whatever, some kind of linking role. Then what we would do is let’s say five imaginary people in this imaginary circle, we would do one round where each of us says who do you nominate. I might say I nominate Taylor because I really like his listening skills and so on. I think that’s important in this role. And so we go around. So what happens is that people hear what kind of skills really stand out to people. What are you appreciated for? In this particular process, it’s typically the affirmative things. You’re nominated for a reason. You’re typically not nominated for something you’re bad at. It’s typically something you’re good at. But then overall – I mean, it might be that somebody objects and then you get to hear those things, but that would be important. Right? For example, we’d make somebody treasurer of our nonprofit that is known to not be good with money, I would want somebody to object, please. [Laughs]

Taylor Martin
[Laughs]

Ted Rau
[26:20] That doesn’t sound like a good idea.

Taylor Martin
[26:23] Right.

Ted Rau
[26:24] Or somebody who is a notetaker who doesn’t know how to use a computer, that also doesn’t seem like a good idea. So we’re trying to create many systems in place, like the selection process, that create that feedback rich environment so you get feedback on how you’re leading, people will tell you how they want to be led, you make agreements about how that’s happening. So again, neither is the manager solely responsible nor the people being managed – I mean, it’s always hard to talk about this in these terms. One could say neither of them is fully responsible. Both of them are 100% responsible depending on how you see it, whether it’s a zero-sum game or not. But ultimately, nobody can just say, oh, that’s such a shitty manage because then you didn’t deliver that feedback which means you are colluding. You are enabling that behavior because there are plenty of opportunities to say it.

Taylor Martin
[27:21] Right. Like we’ve been talking about, there always seems to be opportunities to voice your concerns, voice your input. Wow. We have covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time. I’m blown away because I know how incredibly detailed and intense this can be. How hard is it to set up a system like this? Like what are some of the biggest challenges for companies?

Ted Rau
[27:41] The biggest challenge is an ironic one that I wouldn’t have seen coming. [Laughs] So it’s this.

Taylor Martin
[27:49] Okay.

Ted Rau
[27:50] It’s this. How do we make the decisions that we adopt?

Taylor Martin
[27:56] Oh, everybody’s got to agree.

Ted Rau
[27:58] Right. But how do we make that decision? In a way, one has to use the old system to decide that there’s a new system. That’s typically okay-ish. But let’s imagine. Let’s imagine a client of mine [inaudible] from the past, it was 40 people, a software company. He was the founder and CEO. Liked by most people, but it had been many years, enough years that now there was starting to be some resistance. So now this guy encounters sociocracy and is like, oh, that’s how I want to do it, okay, and has the power to implement it in a top-down way. Yet, can you imagine that the dynamics that creates and the people that are working for him, they’re like, well, now he wants that. Well, do we trust it if it comes from him out of all people? How good can that be?

[28:56] So it’s just completely mindboggling sometimes because then you get [inaudible] consultant who just goes how do I untangle that nest now. Because now you have to really do the whole community organizing around, well, basically, I want the other people to implement it with his consent or do I want him to implement with their consent. But then, of course, they’re saying we don’t even know what we’re consenting to. We don’t know the system yet. Right. We need to train you first. But then they’re like, well, why am I getting trained if I don’t know that that’s what we’re going to be using? Then you’re just completely tangled up in the whole chicken-egg business of it and have to find your way.

So the whole thing works the best if you have enough trust that the top and the grassroots level are in good enough terms that they’re not going to just rip apart whatever the other people bring. And it works the best if everybody is willing to go in increments, like let’s learn a little bit and see how it lands on us. Then let’s have a conversation. Does this feel right? Okay. Then let’s learn a little bit more. Let’s have some facilitators train so they’re really good. How does that fit? Okay, great. But then there has to be a moment when you say, and from, let’s say, November 1st, this is how we make a decision. And we might have a fallback that is designed but we are in that new rule set.

So it’s a little bit like a board game. That’s what governance is. You set up the rules and then you have to commit to following those rules that you give yourself or to change the rules by the rules that you gave yourself. Because otherwise your only fallback is your old hierarchical system and that would undermine everything. So it’s a leap of faith that you have to do together in a way and it’s sometimes not so easy. It’s a little bit of a labyrinth or maze to get to that point. So that, to me, is the hardest part from a consulting perspective that I know many people are also inexperienced with. Like how many governance systems have your average person implemented in the organization, right? So this is not typically something people know. That is really useful to call somebody in who has seen this before and is like, all right, these are the dynamics and this is what we can do because people are in this completely overwhelmed and daunting mode quite a bit, which makes a lot of sense.

Taylor Martin
[31:19] Wow. That makes me stop and take pause because if people are going to find reasons why they don’t like it or if it’s too hard for them, those are individual hurdles for everybody. We’ve been talking about how it works going from A to Z and then implementing those out. What about people that come up with issues? They come out and say, well, it’s going to take up too much time because we have to have everybody together and time is money and they’re around the clock and you have all those people around the table discussing matters and the time that’s spent on that. But then on the other side I think, yeah, but you’re making better decisions that are probably saving time later on so there’s a little bit of faith involved with that. Can you speak to that?

Ted Rau
[32:07] Yeah. I don’t feel like I’ve come to the answer of all answers on that. Currently, what I would say is that many people go into the process thinking, well, we have to see whether that’s worth it and so on and so on. And then they get a taste of it and that question fades into the background for them because they’re saying, no, this is what we’re doing. This is what I want to do. And the whole is it economically the best idea and so on all of a sudden doesn’t matter anymore because it’s almost like it’s speaking to people’s hearts and they’re just like, no, this just feels so right. I don’t actually want anything else anymore. This is what I want. And then also to what you’re saying is, if people find issues, are not really seeing that anything is not figure-out-able, if they are within the system, let’s say, for example, if you say, oh, I love rounds, but could we maybe not do rounds in our operational meetings? Sure. Then go ahead do that. Or I don’t know. It’s hard to think of a great example. Let’s say selection process takes a while. Can we make sure we only do it once a year? Okay. Then that’s what you do. But that’s all tweaks and changes within the system.

What’s really hard is when people say this is naïve. I don’t think it’s going to work. I’m like, okay, give me something to work. What exactly do you mean? Because then they are operating from a this can’t work perspective, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because as soon as you say that, it is not going to work. So thanks. What do we do with you now? And I hate to say it that way because that sounds so cultish and that’s the last thing I want, but as you’re saying, there is a leap of faith. And I think I used that same term, too. Right? Because there is something about do I believe that we can figure things out together or don’t I believe that we can figure things out together. That’s what it boils down to, to me. If you believe so, sociocracy is amazing. If you don’t think so, then I would say you’re not going to find anything there that will speak to you because you will find all kinds of things wrong with it and questionable and naïve and maybe this and maybe that. You will not have a good time and people will not have a good time with you either. So then don’t touch it.

But sometimes and that’s where I get a little cynical because sometimes I have people who ask me that. Like, yeah, what if it doesn’t work? And I sometimes want to say, okay, what do you mean it doesn’t work? Isn’t ultimately all we can do as human beings to figure things out together? Like, what other chance, what else would we do? Each find a planet to live on? I mean, [Laughs] we’re here together. We have to figure things out. So let’s figure things out. We’re going to want to be in a let’s figure things out mode together and not in a, well, I don’t know if collaboration really works kind of mode. That is not how I operate. It just doesn’t make sense to me. So then if we’re on different planets, I don’t know. Then I find that that’s not where I want to spend my time.

Taylor Martin
[35:08] Yeah. I think the leap of faith is something that is poignant here. You teased out some ideas of people being able to take baby steps to get into it. What are some of the first two because I can see a company listening to this podcast or a manager or somebody saying, you know what? I want to try something like this in my department. What are some of the best advice you could give them?

Ted Rau
[35:33] Basically, each of those come with something, each of those main points come with something that one can try out. One is rounds that you brought up. And an easy way to bring that in is, for example, just to say, oh, on this new idea, I would really like to make sure we hear everybody. Can we just speak one by one and make sure not to interrupt each other? I really care about hearing each other and making sure everybody has that. So you don’t even have to ever use the word round or sociocracy. This is all just bells and whistles, ultimately, to listen each other. So that’s a thing everyone can do.

For example, also we start all our meetings with a quick check-in. Just say three sentences about how you are. To me, that’s just a decent human being thing. So that can also change a lot. It’s a huge culture change for me if we don’t walk into the space and say, yeah, so I’ve got this proposal, but instead you say like, hey, Taylor, how are you? That’s a completely different vibe. So that’s another thing. And one thing that people, especially people in management positions who are not sure is this for me or not, they might define roles with people, carve out those areas of responsibility and see how good people are at picking it up and taking ownership and how good am I in letting it go. Those are little trials you can do. And I know many organizations have a lot of opportunities and might already do that to some extent and then build a little bit of rapport with each other of, great, when I gave you responsibility and power and left you alone, you did it and that was great. So let’s do more of that. That’s a small incremental way into that kind of culture.

Taylor Martin
[37:19] Yeah. That’s great. Because I could see somebody doing that. You don’t even have to tell them what you’re doing. You could just start changing the way you operate and then start to get feedback, hey, I really like how you’re making these changes, and blah, blah, blah. And you could say, well, there’s more. And then they could introduce them to the whole sociocracy idea. And by that time, I think people would be hungry for it. That might be a way to bring it in.

Ted Rau
[37:44] Right. And yeah, I like really how you frame it actually because that’s how I want this to spread and that I’ve seen it spreading. One thing I just want to highlight because it’s interesting because so many people go like, oh, why don’t we just let people self-manage however they want to do it? And why do we even need such a thing as sociocracy where everything is already coming so much packaged? My answer to that is that there is a lot of reinventing the wheel out there and it’s not always the smartest idea. It’s a little bit like, I don’t know. Do we want every town to talk about what could the traffic rules be in this town? There have been some best practices established now. How about we just go with the traffic circle like everybody else? Because they’ve proven to be the best way. So how much – I mean, I’m all in for experimentation, but there’s sometimes a little bit of over reinventing the wheel. So sociocracy is a system that is tried and tested that’s been around for over 30, 40 years. Just take something and see how it fits.

Another piece is, as you’re saying, once people see there is value here and they want to hear more, it is actually good to have a term like sociocracy that you can literally google. And it’s not just, let’s say, I don’t know what people would google, something like meetings where people can hear each other better. You have something very specific that is googleable where you can find the whole treasure box of all the different tools and that just helps people find more that is so specific.

Taylor Martin
[39:24] So your organization is a nonprofit. What kind of organizations do you have as clients that you’re taking this knowledge to?

Ted Rau
[39:34] Yeah. We’re trying to be a little bit of a redistribution organization. So we work with companies. That’s fine. We also work with activist groups that, for example, have zero money. We do a lot of pro bono work and we kind of redistribute internally and make sure that the mix works out to pay our people. We work with schools, for example. There’s a little bit of a movement of sociocracy in schools. We had a colleague of mine published a book about sociocracy with children. It’s absolutely wonderful to think about how can a six-year-old wrap their head around that. And it's surprising.

Taylor Martin
[40:14] Wow.

Ted Rau
[40:15] Maybe not surprising, but it’s amazing how easily children can wrap their head around this.

Taylor Martin
[40:20] Yeah.

Ted Rau
[40:21] So what our theory of change is really that if, let’s say, start with a child in school. A child makes decisions about that in the classroom rules, like around the classroom rules. Now let’s say they go to university and they take a class and that’s how things are run. That’s how projects are run. Student group projects, that’s how they run. Now they go into a company or they are in a volunteer place or an intentional community, like me, at some point all those different sectors, all those different areas of our lives would connect because people will have a different expectation about how things should be run. And I’m appalled so often when I go into meetings in other areas that I’m like how can this be a standard and you’re okay with it. [Laughs]

Taylor Martin
[41:06] Right.

Ted Rau
[41:07] So we want to overall raise the expectation of this is possible. This is possible here and it’s possible there and collect all the different people and all the different examples and so on so people hear more about it and then support people in implementing it and training it when they’re ready.

Taylor Martin
[41:23] So give us some success stories that surprised you. You don’t have to name names of companies or organizations but just certain things that you have experienced that were kind of unexpected or maybe a-ha moments to change for us. Because it seems like it’s so customizable that different organizations can stylize it to the way they want and I could just see some eureka moments happening.

Ted Rau
[41:49] Yeah. And they happen in small and very, very small and they happen in big. I love those moments. I did this one. I was invited to speak in a university where the administration was interested in hearing more about this. We were talking and talking and they were asking me questions. And at some point, they were like, oh, we want to experience something. Do something with us to experience something. So I said, okay, let’s pretend that we’re a circle and do a selection process together. Who would we among us select as a delegate if we had a parent circle? And we did that and it all sounded like pretend until I asked them to nominate each other out loud with reasons. And these were big sharp people in their area all of a sudden being asked…

Taylor Martin
[42:37] Peer to peer executives.

Ted Rau
[42:38] Exactly, and now all of a sudden, I’m asking them to nominate somebody for qualities out loud in front of everybody. But they went for it and it was absolutely beautiful. And then there was a moment that I’m really still absolutely digging. So this was – I did it with four people plus me so I was number five, two men, two women. And as things go, the men nominated each other I think and one of the women nominated one of the guys and one of the women – I don’t even remember. But what we do is we do one round of people nominating and then we do a second round. And then in the second round, several things shifted, and then there was this last woman to speak, last person to speak who was a woman who then, and you could see it in her face, she was like, yeah, I guess I’m staying with my nomination. Actually, and then she paused, and then she said, “Actually, I’m going to nominate myself because I think I match those qualifications.”

And in that moment, I knew that she had gotten the point. The whole thing about self-responsibility, all of it was just absolutely embodied in that moment of somebody was going from, oh, whatever, let’s just do things as usually to like, actually, if I have a choice here, I’m going to go with what makes sense and I’m going to throw my hat into the ring. And I don’t know. To me, this was just so endlessly touching because I loved how she absolutely stepped up. And this was not somebody who needed – how do I say this? For her, it was not about power. She had a lot of power because of the position she was in. It was more about how she was relating to it, I think, that I found so wonderful. It was a clean and empowered energy that all of a sudden emerged in the room. And that, to me, is one of the moments I still carry. This was a bunch of years ago and I still go back to that as one of my favorite memories.

One of the big success stories that is still a little bit too young to talk about but there’s somebody we trained who is a consultant for a town in Europe right now. So there we’re talking 7,500 people in town management where they are now starting to implement here and there. And it’s creeping in everywhere and everybody is starting to be get more excited. That would be absolutely wild. Just imagine that. That’s, wow, how that would change. And they told us that they see changes, I think, in senior care. They’re trying to make everything more responsive also because the [00:45:08] doesn’t have to go up all the ladder to the command chain to get things approved. They can just make decisions right then and there. They are much more able to serve the people that they’re serving and they’re much more empowered to do that. So that changes how they relate to the people that they’re supporting. Just imagine the town fully being there in a responsive way for the people. I mean, that would be amazing.

Taylor Martin
[45:38] That’s awesome. I love this. I love hearing real success stories and following through and listening and pretending that I’m there experiencing it. [Laughs]. Ted, thank you so much for reaching out to me. I have found this talk incredibly exhilarating. I can’t believe how much we covered in less than an hour. I really hope to maybe have you back on the show later at another time because I would love to bring some of these examples back up and maybe dive in a little deeper. Because as I said at the beginning, we could really get into a lot of detail here. And I think we’ve covered an enormous amount today. Is there any way that organizations or people can follow your organization? I know your website is…

Ted Rau
[46:19] Sociocracyforall.org

Taylor Martin
[46:21] Sociocracyforall.org

Ted Rau
[46:24] Yes. That is us. And if you google sociocracy and Ted Rau, you will certainly find something. Yeah. Our main way to communicate is through our mailing list because we want people to actively opt in and give consent to hearing. And so that is also in alignment with how we run. Social media, of course, YouTube, and so on, so there’s plenty of ways to find things. And we have a lot of free and accessible content and case studies and those kinds of things on our website. You’ll find that.

Taylor Martin
[46:54] Yeah. I have to tell you, everybody, the YouTube videos were great. And some of them are on their website. But it really gets you up to speed on more of the details of what we spoke to. And I find that it was really, really helpful to get my head wrapped around this before today’s talk.

Ted Rau
[47:10] And it really showed.

Taylor Martin
[47:12] Thank you again for coming on and just reaching out and having this conversation. I really enjoyed it. I can’t wait to share it with everybody.

Ted Rau
[47:20] Thank you so much for having me.

Taylor Martin
[47:22] All right. Over and out, everybody.

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[47:25] Thanks for tuning into the Triple Bottom Line. Your host, Taylor Martin, is founder and Chief Creative of Design Positive, a strategic branding and accessibility agency. Interested in being interviewed on our podcast? Then visit designpositive.co and fill out our contact form. If you enjoyed today’s podcast, we would appreciate a review on Apple podcasts or whatever provider you are logging in from. This podcast is prepared by Design Positive and is not associated with any other entity. We look forward to having you back for another installment of the Triple Bottom Line.