How to Change An Organization Using Sociocracy 3.0

00:00:10: Johannes Schartau: Welcome to episode 16 of transform together, the Holisticon podcast meetup. I'm Johannes Schartau, and today I'm talking to Lili David. 2

00:00:19: Johannes Schartau: Lili's one of the co-developers of Sociocracy 3.0, a practical guide and collection of patterns for evolving organizations. 3

00:00:28: Johannes Schartau: It combines ideas from Sociocracy, Agile, Lean, and organizational development to help people collaborate more effectively, make better decisions, distribute authority, and respond to complexity without having to redesign the whole organization overnight. 4

00:00:43: Johannes Schartau: A while ago, I attended a Sociocracy 3.0 training by Lili and James Priest. It was hands down one of the best learning experiences I've ever been part of. So I couldn't wait to get Lili on the podcast and dive deeper into some of the topics that are relevant to organizations today. Lili, welcome to the podcast. 5

00:01:01: Lili David: Hi, Johannes, it's great to be here. 6

00:01:05: Johannes Schartau: Okay, just to start out, for people who are not familiar. 7

00:01:08: Johannes Schartau: With Sociocracy 3.0. Could you give a brief summary of what it is and why people should care about it? 8

00:01:16: Lili David: Yes. So you already mentioned it's a collection of patterns that help people to collaborate more effectively. 9

00:01:26: Lili David: And when I say patterns, I mean either a process, a guideline, or a practice. 10

00:01:33: Lili David: You can think of these patterns as templates, or LEGO pieces that you can use to, in your organization, kind of plug them into the places where it's needed to address a certain challenge that you're facing. 11

00:01:51: Lili David: And these patterns came about through… 12

00:01:55: Lili David: Initially, through breaking down certain methodologies, like, 13

00:02:01: Lili David: the Sociocratic Circle Method, that's, one of the main ones, but also, Scrum and other Agile frameworks and Kanban. Basically, my colleagues, Bernhard and James, when they came together initially. 14

00:02:17: Lili David: They wanted to put together a set of resources that brings 15

00:02:22: Lili David: Sociocracy to the Agile and Lean. 16

00:02:25: Lili David: World, you know? 17

00:02:28: Lili David: Because… 18

00:02:30: Lili David: I think still to this day, what Sociocracy brings as a concept, is a way of making decisions and a way of, addressing the topic of governance. 19

00:02:46: Lili David: That fits very well with 20

00:02:49: Lili David: You know, the Agile way of thinking and doing things. 21

00:02:54: Lili David: So when they started to put together these resources, they realized, wait a minute, is there somebody who does all the things, like, all the steps, all the different practices at once? And the answer is no. Actually, what people do is they… 22

00:03:13: Lili David: Kind of try some things out. 23

00:03:16: Lili David: They keep what works, they discard everything else. 24

00:03:22: Lili David: And they carry on doing things. So… What's… 25

00:03:27: Lili David: Sociocracy 3.0 is encouraging is doing precisely that. 26

00:03:33: Lili David: but in a more conscious and intentional way. So rather than kind of, okay, we're just gonna… 27

00:03:40: Lili David: try things out and see what sticks. The idea is more that you are… 28

00:03:47: Lili David: Identifying and responding to priorities in your organization, and you're pulling in patterns to 29

00:03:57: Lili David: address them. So obviously, right now, I think there are about 70-something patterns, so it's quite a big collection, and over time, we've developed a body of free resources, so you can learn about, like, read about it online. 30

00:04:14: Lili David: And… 31

00:04:17: Lili David: one key element to understand about these patterns is that they are tied together by seven principles, which I would say are the basis. I kind of imagine a world, a future world, where 32

00:04:33: Lili David: there will be no 33

00:04:36: Lili David: patterns needed anymore. And what would happen is that people would kind of have an embodied experience of Those principles and act accordingly. 34

00:04:50: Lili David: So I'm just going to mention the principles, which are probably familiar for the people in the Agile world, continuous improvement and empiricism, and then there is equivalence, which refers to involving people in decisions that affect them. 35

00:05:08: Lili David: Consent, which is a way of making decisions, 36

00:05:13: Lili David: by checking and… by inviting and resolving objections. Transparency. 37

00:05:21: Lili David: Accountability. 38

00:05:23: Lili David: And I think there might be another one. 39

00:05:26: Lili David: Which, did I say six or seven? I'm not sure. 40

00:05:32: Johannes Schartau: I find that reassuring, because I… whenever I speak about subjects, it's very similar, that I'm the expert on this. 41

00:05:40: Johannes Schartau: I'm missing something here. 42

00:05:43: Lili David: Totally, totally, totally. Yeah, yeah, I mean, definitely. I think if there's more than 3 things, I'm for sure gonna forget. 43

00:05:52: Lili David: something. I think the one I missed was accountability, which is interesting, because it says… what it says is that 44

00:06:02: Lili David: you respond when something is needed in the organization, and you accept your share of responsibility for the whole. 45

00:06:12: Lili David: So that's it. 46

00:06:14: Lili David: Maybe a good one to forget, because I can emphasize it a bit more. 47

00:06:20: Johannes Schartau: Wow. That sounds… I'm signing up for this world, so whenever. 48

00:06:25: Johannes Schartau: With that, just give me a sign. 49

00:06:27: Johannes Schartau: I'm happy. 50

00:06:28: Johannes Schartau: So you just mentioned that, organizations will generally pull in patterns based on their priorities, or based on some kind of need that they identified. Are there any… 51

00:06:42: Johannes Schartau: typical paths that organizations might… 52

00:06:47: Johannes Schartau: walk? Or what do they frequently start with? 53

00:06:52: Johannes Schartau: How do they scale, or, like, how do they pull in a bit more once they've experimented a bit? Is there any… 54

00:06:59: Johannes Schartau: Is there anything that you've seen over the years that might be called typical? 55

00:07:04: Lili David: Yeah. 56

00:07:05: Lili David: I kind of could lump many different cases that I know of in two different categories. One is a situation where you have somebody in a team who have some degree of authority and influence in their own domain, who are… 57

00:07:25: Lili David: kind of finding resonance with the principles and this way of working, and they're trying to bring some of these patterns in. So it happens, so to say, so to say, locally. 58

00:07:38: Lili David: And there is an experimentation more on a kind of team level, maybe with like, smaller things, like decision-making and so on. 59

00:07:47: Lili David: And… 60

00:07:48: Lili David: The other category is when people that kind of have authority over the whole organization are interested in pursuing a path where they want to kind of live more these principles, and they're looking to S3 to… 61

00:08:06: Lili David: kind of offer guidance in terms of the patterns. What I find, 62

00:08:14: Lili David: interesting is that there are pitfalls in both cases, right? I think I've seen a lot of success in situations where, in the context of a team or a department, there's amazing progress being done. 63

00:08:32: Lili David: And there is this sort of glass ceiling that you reach at some point, where the rest of the organization is not ready… is not ready, in quotation marks, or, 64

00:08:47: Lili David: There's a change in leadership, and from one day being supported in their experimentation, the other day, the next day, they're shut off. 65

00:08:56: Lili David: And so there is an increased pressure from the outside, and sometimes experiments kind of are stopped, or reversed. So that is something that I see happening. And the other one, when there is a… 66

00:09:16: Lili David: top-down approach, let's say. Then you have all the other problems of people are like, wait, but I don't know what this is, kind of sounds weird, is this another framework? 67

00:09:28: Lili David: They have resistance to the terms and so on. 68

00:09:32: Lili David: So that has its own challenges, and I would say that there are many cases that I'm, you know, working with sometimes with leaders in organizations, and they're saying, it doesn't work. 69

00:09:48: Lili David: it doesn't work because people don't get it, because… 70

00:09:54: Lili David: I don't know, we're too stuck in old patterns and old ways of behaving and so on, and I think all of these things are true. I think the challenge is that people… 71

00:10:08: Lili David: kind of associate the fact that 72

00:10:11: Lili David: it's not working with the idea that the problem is with the tool that you're trying to use, not maybe with the way you're trying to use that tool, or, 73

00:10:22: Lili David: yeah, some of the… sort of unaddressed issues. 74

00:10:26: Lili David: that are revealed by using the tool. Sometimes you bring in this idea, okay, let's do consent decision-making. Let's ask people if they have any objections. And then, 75

00:10:40: Lili David: it's kind of like pulling the rug and realizing there's a lot of dirt underneath. You're trying to hide the whole time. 76

00:10:51: Lili David: And then, yeah, that can be problematic. So I would say that, kind of, anything and everything that can happen will happen. 77

00:11:01: Lili David: And… Yeah, the confusion is sometimes to think that the problem you're having is the… 78

00:11:09: Lili David: specific pattern you're trying to use. 79

00:11:14: Johannes Schartau: All of what you're describing sounds oddly familiar, and it's also what I hear. Any kind of method, but any people I talk to, they're describing very similar things. 80

00:11:24: Johannes Schartau: Just to check, do you have the perfect solution for this? And do you know how to make people do whatever we want them to do, or, like, how do we… how do we solve this, Lily? Can you… can you… can you help me? 81

00:11:40: Lili David: Yeah, I'm gonna take out my magic wand and make it all better. 82

00:11:47: Johannes Schartau: That's what I was hoping for. 83

00:11:50: Lili David: So… I mean… So what comes to mind is that I have a lot of compassion. 84

00:11:59: Lili David: for where we are, as people, and where we are in our organizational contexts. And in a way, I think more of that is useful. 85

00:12:11: Lili David: Because if we bring in compassion and we understand that most of the time, not all the time, people are doing their best with what they know, with what they've learned, with what they have. 86

00:12:22: Lili David: then the conversation can… it's a little bit more peaceful, and can be a little bit more productive. 87

00:12:30: Lili David: So I would say… a radical acceptance of where we are. 88

00:12:37: Lili David: can help us, can free us up of the burden of needing to be anything different than that? 89

00:12:44: Lili David: And if we… open ourselves fully to what is present and what is happening, then… 90

00:12:54: Lili David: We can sort of accept reality in a different way, and maybe have a more realistic idea of what's possible. 91

00:13:03: Lili David: Sometimes what needs to happen is for the organization to stop, to end. 92

00:13:10: Lili David: What happens… what needs to happen is for a project to die. 93

00:13:14: Lili David: Sometimes what needs to happen is maybe a more radical transformation, and… 94

00:13:23: Lili David: I don't know, I'm just… that's kind of the thing that comes to mind. 95

00:13:28: Lili David: S3's not going to save anyone, and… Unfortunately. But also, fortunately, because 96

00:13:38: Lili David: If… whenever we put our hopes and dreams and expectations into something that is external, like, 97

00:13:47: Lili David: a tool we want to use, a pattern, or whatever, however you want to call it. 98

00:13:53: Lili David: we are giving away some of our power. 99

00:13:57: Lili David: We are giving away some of our agency, our autonomy, our power to decide. 100

00:14:05: Lili David: And be… and it's… many times unconscious that we're doing this. 101

00:14:12: Lili David: But I think each one of us makes a decision, whether it's conscious or not, on a daily basis, to stay in an organization, to continue doing the same things that they're doing, or to do something different. 102

00:14:27: Lili David: And whenever we decide… I recently found out that, the root of the word 103

00:14:36: Lili David: to decide means to cut, decidere, so, which is to cut alternatives. 104

00:14:44: Lili David: That's a way of interpreting that. And that speaks to me a lot, because when we choose a path and we make a decision, that means we're doing this, and all the other options kind of fall down. And sometimes, whenever you make a decision, you need to kind of 105

00:15:03: Lili David: you need to follow it through to see the results and persevere when it's difficult, but also you need to know when to kind of stop and give up on that. 106

00:15:14: Lili David: I might be digressing, but that's just what came for me to say. 107

00:15:18: Johannes Schartau: You're right on point. That's exactly what we're here for. Thank you so much. And I think what you just mentioned, starting from a place of 108

00:15:27: Johannes Schartau: let's just accept what is happening here, and… 109

00:15:30: Johannes Schartau: just sit with that emotion, and maybe we don't immediately need to change anything, or we don't need to jump from one method to the next. 110

00:15:38: Johannes Schartau: Maybe that, that is… 111

00:15:40: Johannes Schartau: one of the more powerful interventions, and it's also independent of any tool that you choose, right? 112

00:15:47: Lili David: Totally, yeah. And I have to say, you know, I… 113

00:15:53: Lili David: I've arrived at the point where I don't mention Sociocracy 3.0 anymore with my clients. I mean. 114

00:16:02: Lili David: obviously, all of them know about it, because… and that's why they call me in. But in my work with people in organizations, I hardly ever mention it. 115

00:16:13: Lili David: Because I see that whenever you start using a term that people don't use, or they have already an association with what it means, 116

00:16:24: Lili David: they're… they're… it becomes an impediment. 117

00:16:28: Lili David: And so what I've… what I am doing is… I've learned by reflecting on it, what I'm doing is applying many, many of the patterns and a lot of the principles without… without doing it, kind of. 118

00:16:48: Lili David: So to say, by the book. 119

00:16:50: Lili David: or without using that terminology. And I find that that works best, and… 120

00:16:59: Lili David: there are obviously some limitations in terms of scaling, you know, because I am only one person. 121

00:17:06: Lili David: And whenever I have the chance to work with a team or with an individual, then there is a lot of… 122

00:17:15: Lili David: transformation that can happen. However, the topic of scaling, I have to say, I haven't quite figured it out yet. Because when we're talking about scaling, then people do need to learn. 123

00:17:30: Lili David: they do need to learn, and then that's when it kind of gets tricky. But… 124

00:17:38: Lili David: I have to say, when I am patient enough, there is the moment that comes when my, you know, client or another person says, oh, I think we need to learn, you know, I think this team needs to learn 125

00:17:51: Lili David: this, or more of that. I think we don't fully understand how this works. And then, it's pool. 126

00:17:58: Lili David: You know? Okay, there is a need, they identified the need, they figured out it's a priority, and now there is an openness to… 127

00:18:07: Lili David: to take that step. 128

00:18:12: Johannes Schartau: Great, so let's… I would love to explore this a bit further with maybe an example. So a lot of organizations that I work with they're kind of changing their style, or they have been changing their style over the years, and they notice that collaboration is important, including people in decision-making is important. 129

00:18:30: Johannes Schartau: And now what they do is they open everything up. 130

00:18:34: Johannes Schartau: And then, after a while, what I hear are a lot of complaints about now everybody feels like they need to weigh in with their opinion at every point. 131

00:18:42: Johannes Schartau: And… 132

00:18:44: Johannes Schartau: we don't really make decisions anymore, it's just everybody gets so afraid because everybody's involved now. How do you respond to that? How do you deal with that? 133

00:18:54: Lili David: Yeah, I see this too, Johannes. I see this too, and I see… it's kind of… it's a shame, because I think it's very well-intended, you know? It's like, okay, we're gonna do it all together now, and then it's kind of more or less obvious that you're gonna bump into those kind of situations. So… 134

00:19:12: Lili David: What people often don't understand is that when it comes to collaborative decision-making, about… 135

00:19:20: Lili David: Okay, I'm gonna make up a number right now, but about 75%, that's a very subjective number, right, of… 136

00:19:29: Lili David: The success of this collaborative process is what happens before you get to the point where you ask people if they have any objections and concerns. 137

00:19:43: Lili David: So… things like… 138

00:19:48: Lili David: Who decides? Who has authority to decide who is affected by this decision? Who should be involved in this decision? To what degree should they be involved? 139

00:19:59: Lili David: What is the problem that you're trying to solve? Is that problem agreed by everyone, or is it just somebody's idea that that's a problem? How did that proposal… how was that proposal created? Was it created by one individual that has a lot of authority and, you know… 140

00:20:17: Lili David: good ideas, but hasn't considered alternatives from the team? Or was there a collaborative process where people had a chance to bring in their perspective? 141

00:20:31: Lili David: And so on and so forth. And… 142

00:20:34: Lili David: I would say even things like, what's the purpose of the organization? What are the values under which you operate? What are the, goals you're pursuing, short-term and long-term? All of this information is relevant for… because what it does, it's kind of… 143

00:20:52: Lili David: Putting in place some constraints in terms of how that decision-making process will take place. 144

00:21:01: Lili David: And what qualifies as an objection and what does not, you know? What is it that, 145

00:21:10: Lili David: is within the scope of consideration when you're going to maybe evolve the proposal and so on. So… 146

00:21:20: Lili David: That's what I see. I think there is a lot of confusion when you're just saying, okay, we're gonna decide this all together, and basically, there's no… there's no… 147

00:21:30: Lili David: boundaries. 148

00:21:32: Lili David: Even though I would say ev- 149

00:21:35: Lili David: there are always boundaries whether you make them explicit or not, and if you don't make them explicit, and you say, well, you can bring whatever you want, and then somebody brings something that you don't like, you're gonna be like, oh, wait a minute, I think we need to clarify this bit and this bit. And it's very unfortunate when it happens in that order, because then people feel disenfranchised. 150

00:21:58: Lili David: You know what I mean? 151

00:22:00: Johannes Schartau: Oh, absolutely. You just hit on one other point that I would be really interested in, and just to slightly nerd out for a moment, because I'm… 152

00:22:09: Johannes Schartau: often interested in just the way organizations are structured, and in typical, traditional organizations, we would see a clear hierarchy that is displayed in an organizational chart, which kind of shows what the power dynamics are. Essentially, the higher up you go, the more decision power someone has. 153

00:22:27: Johannes Schartau: And… What I kind of like… 154

00:22:32: Johannes Schartau: about Sociocracy 3.0 is that it… to me, it… it's not that it just goes in the opposite direction, that we say we completely flatten everything, and just… because you just mentioned there's always a boundary, and we need to be explicit about this, and so it sits somewhere in between, I would say, in the way I would interpret it. 155

00:22:52: Johannes Schartau: What's the experience in organizations? Because, in traditional organizations, we see that there is a view on… 156

00:23:03: Johannes Schartau: power dynamics, but in reality, decisions often get made in different ways, or in informal ways, or it really depends on how long someone has been in the company, for example, or, like, if you know someone else, and you can talk to the right people. Is there any way that… 157

00:23:22: Johannes Schartau: Sociocracy 3.0 addresses this, or, how does it… how do you handle this topic of… 158

00:23:31: Johannes Schartau: decision-making power, which might be visible and formal, or invisible and informal. 159

00:23:38: Johannes Schartau: Any ideas on that? 160

00:23:43: Lili David: So I would start by saying… if it works, 161

00:23:47: Lili David: having it informal and not explicit, then carry on. 162

00:23:53: Lili David: The issues… there are issues that come up, though, when it's not explicit who can decide about what, or you have something on paper, but it's happening something else in reality. So… 163

00:24:11: Lili David: One key aspect is that whenever you, let's say. 164

00:24:18: Lili David: you know, let's say I delegate some responsibility to you for, you know. 165

00:24:24: Lili David: a new product that we're developing in our organization, and I'm going to put together, 166

00:24:31: Lili David: domain description that clarifies what the purpose is of this new role you're taking on, what are the key responsibilities you have, and there I'm also gonna explain any constraints that 167

00:24:45: Lili David: you should be aware of, which might be things about, okay, you can decide about these kinds of things, but when you bump into decisions about X, you need to consult with this person, or whatever, you know, so… 168

00:24:59: Lili David: So we clarify all these aspects, and we say… I say, okay, it seems like a… 169

00:25:06: Lili David: good idea, or, like, good enough for me, what do you think? Because you're the one who's gonna do it. So we have that conversation, we evolve it together, we reach an agreement. 170

00:25:19: Lili David: And then you get on and do stuff. And often, when you start doing things, you're gonna… basically, it's gonna be, like, 90%. Well, in some cases, okay, it's exaggerated, it can be up to 90%, quite different to our initial estimate, especially if it's something new, and it's a role that hasn't existed before, and so on. 171

00:25:38: Lili David: So we're going to set an evaluation date. We're going to say, okay, you do this for one month, and let's check in in one month and see, how's it going, what did you learn, what should change? 172

00:25:51: Lili David: And so on. So… 173

00:25:53: Lili David: And let's say we're kind of more clear on where the boundaries are, or we added some things, we removed some things. 174

00:26:02: Lili David: And then we check in again, maybe in 3 months, or 6 months, or 1 year. So I would say one of the key… 175

00:26:13: Lili David: Key… the key to, 176

00:26:18: Lili David: Effective distribution of responsibilities and authority in organizations is to regularly review and evolve your agreements. 177

00:26:30: Lili David: Because what that allows you is to… 178

00:26:35: Lili David: always have an accurate 179

00:26:39: Lili David: representation of who does what, and who can decide on what, that is representative of the reality of what people do. 180

00:26:49: Lili David: and you have the chance to formalize this, or to say, actually, I've seen you, you sort of made those kinds of decisions on your own, but there is a reason why that's not appropriate in this case, and we should change it, or in other cases, well, you know. 181

00:27:06: Lili David: you could decide this on your own, or with your team, and I don't need to be included anymore, so it just allows… what I was saying in the beginning, more conscious, more conscious… 182

00:27:18: Lili David: way of collaborating. You might do exactly the same thing that you're doing it… you're doing already, but it's more intentional, more, 183

00:27:28: Lili David: rather than kind of random and… ad hoc. 184

00:27:32: Johannes Schartau: Beautiful. In my experience, that is also something that makes it much easier when we work in a group, because now we can see 185

00:27:40: Johannes Schartau: what it is, and we can talk about it, and then we can ask that question of intentionality, is that what we want, or should we change it? And maybe the informal way is actually the better way, and then we maybe make it the formal way, or keep it informal, whatever. 186

00:27:53: Johannes Schartau: Or maybe we explicitly say this shouldn't be done. 187

00:27:57: Johannes Schartau: But at least then we can kind of have insight into it and make a… make an actual decision. 188

00:28:04: Lili David: Yeah. You know, when you say this, what comes to mind is a few experiences I had where… 189

00:28:10: Lili David: Teams had a lot of resistance to actually put down on paper. 190

00:28:15: Lili David: what their responsibilities are, and so on. 191

00:28:19: Lili David: And you know, with some inquiry, I understood later on, even though nobody kind of said it out loud, that there was a lot of vulnerability around sort of being found to… 192

00:28:33: Lili David: have some responsibilities that they didn't take care of, and being blamed for it, or… 193

00:28:40: Lili David: I think whenever there is a vulnerability around making mistakes and being punished, that… 194

00:28:48: Lili David: Those moments when you're trying to kind of pin down the donkey and say, okay, this is… 195

00:28:55: Lili David: where you are and what you're doing, can trigger a lot of vulnerability for people, and I've experienced, at times, kind of all sorts of, inexplicable delays, and, oh, no, but no, we don't need this, and, you know, and this is… 196

00:29:13: Lili David: this is what I mean with sometimes… sometimes you're trying to solve a problem, but then, you know, the things from under the rug come out, because… 197

00:29:25: Lili David: what's… 198

00:29:26: Lili David: I've experienced is that if people try to push, okay, no, we are going to do this, and this is the 199

00:29:35: Lili David: your task to define, you know, your domain and so on. 200

00:29:39: Lili David: It's not very helpful. But if you start the conversation around, okay, what's happening behind, you know, what is 201

00:29:50: Lili David: what the underlying motive is for people not wanting to do that. I've, you know, people in a safe-to-speak environment, they will open up about those things, and… 202

00:30:04: Lili David: So the thing about… I don't like to use the term psychological safety, because so many people are kind of 203

00:30:11: Lili David: trashing it, in some ways. But… 204

00:30:15: Lili David: Being able to say what your experience is in the team or organization without being punished for it, it goes a long way. 205

00:30:28: Johannes Schartau: All right, I'm also very much interested in your own journey, and how you are developing at the moment, so I have two questions about that. The first one is… 206

00:30:37: Johannes Schartau: Has your thinking… about S3 changed over the years, did you have any… 207

00:30:45: Johannes Schartau: I don't know, like, any convictions, or any mental models that you really held on firmly in the beginning that you had to let go of, or that just changed? 208

00:30:55: Johannes Schartau: You already mentioned that. 209

00:30:57: Johannes Schartau: you're much less using the actual term S3, or, specifically mentioning what it is. Anything else that has evolved? 210

00:31:10: Lili David: Yes. 211

00:31:13: Lili David: So I mean, the first thing that came to my mind was this topic of willingness. 212

00:31:19: Lili David: So… I… I already knew… conceptually and rationally, that collaboration only works when 213

00:31:30: Lili David: everybody involved is willing to collaborate. 214

00:31:34: Lili David: And if somebody doesn't want to, then… you have a problem. 215

00:31:39: Lili David: So you need to solve that first before anything. And many, many or none of the… 216

00:31:46: Lili David: S3 patterns would work in a context where there is no willingness to collaborate. 217

00:31:52: Lili David: So I knew this already logically, but I've had, the last couple of years an experience that 218

00:32:02: Lili David: kind of showed me in a… I've, I've kind of… 219

00:32:06: Lili David: yeah, discovered in a very intimate way what that means. When you want to do stuff, there is even, like. 220

00:32:14: Lili David: what seemed to be a common purpose, but there is no… you know, some people, they don't want to put in the effort, they… they're looking to sabotage things rather than contribute, and so on. 221

00:32:28: Lili David: And this is something that… You know, as somebody who… 222

00:32:33: Lili David: always saw and still sees, I think, the best in people. It was a very tough lesson to… to learn, and to kind of accept that, actually, this is a reality for many people. 223

00:32:46: Lili David: You know, many times people are like, oh, but what if, you know, this person doesn't want to, and so on. 224

00:32:52: Lili David: And my answer would be like, yep. 225

00:32:54: Lili David: you cannot force people to do stuff. 226

00:32:59: Lili David: And yeah, it's quite painful, that realization. So the caveat, okay, people need to be willing, it's big. And… 227

00:33:10: Lili David: For those people out there who find themselves trying to make collaboration happen, when, again and again, some people, they just are not willing to do the work, I would say it's a showstopper. 228

00:33:28: Lili David: Yeah. 229

00:33:29: Lili David: So that's one thing. 230

00:33:32: Lili David: And… I think there was another thing. 231

00:33:39: Lili David: Yeah, that I'm not using the terminology and so on. 232

00:33:44: Lili David: I'm not using it because… 233

00:33:49: Lili David: I said, you know, people are resistant. 234

00:33:52: Lili David: to it, but also because I feel like I don't need it. I can communicate in a way that, you know, it still lands with people. 235

00:34:02: Lili David: Those principles are sort of integrated in my being by now. But I don't think this is so easy to achieve for people who haven't 236

00:34:15: Lili David: studied deeply and practiced this. So… What's changed… 237

00:34:23: Lili David: I think I used to be more hopeful in terms of, okay, you know, people come to a training, and they do a few sessions, and they're, off you go, change the world, you know? And I think… 238

00:34:36: Lili David: Right now, I am much more with the question, how do we scale this? 239

00:34:45: Lili David: And I think the thing that can scale easily and has scaled is the resonance people feel with the principles. 240

00:34:54: Lili David: They do, you know, a lot of people say, yeah, I do want to live like this, I do want to collaborate like this. They might even have experiences where they see this 241

00:35:05: Lili David: happening, maybe for a short while, or in a certain project, and they know it's possible, but how to… 242

00:35:13: Lili David: bring it to that scale, I… I still don't know. 243

00:35:18: Lili David: And it's kind of humbling to say this, after 10 years and… or 12, I don't know how many, and… 244

00:35:26: Lili David: After training so many people, and after working with many organizations, it is a humbling place to be. 245

00:35:34: Lili David: Now my… My colleague, 246

00:35:40: Lili David: has hopes that AI can help with this, so I'll see about that. I'm unconvinced, but curious. 247

00:35:49: Johannes Schartau: Is there anything that you're reading or learning at the moment that might influence 248

00:35:55: Johannes Schartau: the further development of S3, or the way you practice it? 249

00:36:01: Lili David: Yeah, in terms of the development of S3, 250

00:36:05: Lili David: I kind of have this sense that, 251

00:36:09: Lili David: S3 has, like, a mind of its own, and a, like, a… 252

00:36:14: Lili David: a direction of its own that is beyond, you know, my direction and what I think, and it should go. It does come about through the synergy of myself and my two colleagues. 253

00:36:26: Lili David: And the direction it has been developed, developing the last years is to kind of… 254

00:36:34: Lili David: sort of write the code, you know, the, the… 255

00:36:39: Lili David: literature that describes some of these concepts and patterns in a way that I would say is quite dry and… 256

00:36:46: Lili David: almost academic, you know? So this is, 257

00:36:52: Lili David: I see it's needed and useful, and at the same time, the thing that is… the question I carry is how to make this alive, and how can people have an embodied experience of what we're talking about, because they… and it's just not possible through reading a text, I would say. 258

00:37:10: Lili David: I am studying organizational constellations at the moment? 259

00:37:19: Lili David: and learning about it, and I've chosen this path because I felt like I need to learn about the stuff that you cannot see, you cannot write, like, on a… 260

00:37:33: Lili David: paper and describe. It's not a process that is logical, but there's stuff happening in the field of an organization that, 261

00:37:44: Lili David: yeah, cannot be explained with my usual mental models. So that's what I am learning, and… it's kind of… 262

00:37:54: Lili David: brings me to a, it's a complement to the structure, the 263

00:38:02: Lili David: the rules of the game, the concepts, the ideas, combined with the actual people's… 264

00:38:11: Lili David: sense of things and the experience they have in the organization. 265

00:38:18: Johannes Schartau: All right, to wrap it all up, is there anything that you could recommend that people could try? Something small? 266

00:38:24: Johannes Schartau: Maybe from S3, or maybe some… something else that you would like people to try, what is something they can do today, tomorrow, to get some kind of benefit, or kind of increase the way people collaborate in an organization? 267

00:38:40: Lili David: Okay, so, one thing that came to my mind is this. 268

00:38:45: Lili David: When you're in a situation where you need to make a decision with others. 269

00:38:51: Lili David: rather than asking them, do you agree with this? 270

00:38:56: Lili David: ask instead, do you have any objections? 271

00:39:00: Lili David: So I mean… 272

00:39:02: Lili David: Most of the time, you might need to explain what you mean by an objection, but even intuitively, people know objection is a kind of… 273

00:39:10: Lili David: a showstopper, because you're seeing something that is a problem, that, some kind of impediment you want to avoid, or maybe there is an improvement that is worthwhile. 274

00:39:25: Lili David: So when you're asking people, do you agree, then it very much invites my personal opinion, my, how does this sit with me, and so on. 275

00:39:37: Lili David: When you ask, do you have any objections, it invites me to think, do I see a problem with this? 276

00:39:43: Lili David: Is this good enough? 277

00:39:45: Lili David: And that in itself is a very easy shift to make, and it can have massive consequences. 278

00:39:54: Johannes Schartau: I just had that conversation with people today, so thank you for mentioning that. 279

00:39:59: Johannes Schartau: Lili, thank you so much for your time. Is it correct that people can find out more about you at lilidavid.com and about Sociocracy 3.0 at sociocracy30.org? Is that correct? 280

00:40:11: Lili David: Yes, exactly. 281

00:40:13: Johannes Schartau: Okay, thank you so much for being here. 282

00:40:15: Lili David: Thank you, Johannes. 283

00:40:18: Johannes Schartau: I hope this session has given you some concrete ideas for your own transformation challenges. At Holisticon, we provide companies with holistic support, from strategy and technology to organizational change. If this sounds interesting, please feel free to contact us. You can find all the information you need at holisticon.de. 284

00:40:35: Johannes Schartau: And don't miss our next transform together session on June 23rd at 1 pm Central European Summer Time. I will be talking to Alexey Krivitsky about his new book, 10x Org, and his org topologies approach. See you then.