 Okay, well This afternoon I wanted to try in 18 minutes to combine the practical with the profound and To reveal the obvious in the unseen so I was gonna do this session without any slides at all Because I wanted to kind of take you on a journey and then I realized but wait there's some quite pragmatic Concrete things that I want to share with you And so the slides are there to assist you with that but not to distract you from what I'm saying, okay Concretely today I'm gonna talk about a Concept from sociocracy 3.0 and for those of you who don't know what that is It's basically a menu of behavior patterns That you can observe emergent in collaboration over time and persisting Because of their usefulness in certain contexts and to take that out of the Very complicated phrase. I just said for example Delegating influence to people in what we call roles, right? That's a pattern. We do it Everywhere. Yeah, because it's useful. Okay, so that's one example So I wanted to talk about a key concept from S3 So she'll see 3.0, which is drivers Can you raise your hand if you've heard of the concept driver from sociocracy 3.0? So Some of you, okay So I want to just clarify for those who don't know what what we mean by that and also to offer you some insight into how to Describe drivers and that will make more sense as we go. The other thing is on the topic of decision-making Okay, is how do we make and evolve agreements harnessing collective intelligence to achieve the best we possibly can with what we have and then act on that and Learn from it and iterate and evolve things incrementally. There's so much investment into agile operations Yeah, like billions and billions and billions But agile governance agile decision-making at the organizational level applying that same mindset Well, this is a this is an emergent realization among organizations that that might be a valuable thing to do It's kind of like the antidote to waterfall governance So and on top of that, I want to reveal what's underneath all of that like what's under the hood behind these things So let's see how it goes. Okay Driver I stopped. Okay. Good a driver the motive for responding to a situation Okay, when we say driver It's a difficult word because it's like what's that like driving the bus or something It doesn't translate into Swedish and it doesn't even work in English because there isn't actually a word to describe what I'm talking about so to Take you behind what we mean a driver is a combination of perception of something happening in the world in a given context that matters to the person or people perceiving it a Driver perception of something happening in the world might not be true But it's a perception of yeah occurring in a certain context that matters to somebody or a group of people who are perceiving it Okay, and all you do as a human being from birth to death is identify Categorize prioritize drivers and respond accordingly. That's all we do. We're like driver spotting entities, you know, the whole systems set up to do that So why is this a concept we have in S3 well It's a useful concept because if you see something happening that you think matters in a certain context One it's useful for you to be able to understand what that might be and what it might mean and Secondarily if you need to communicate it to others, it's useful to have some way of doing it Yeah, and so we have been exploring with S3 like how do you summarize something like that? How do you summarize this thing happening in a given context that matters or maybe matters? Okay, and You can break down a driver summary into approximately two pieces one is to talk about what's happening like objectively It's okay. The water spilled on the floor. It's like something objective And secondarily to talk about what might be needed. There's water on the floor Maybe it needs removing from the floor for example, yeah And if you take that on another layer of granularity You can also then further break down to what's happening part in terms of the situation So the objective situation that's occurring and the effect or the anticipated effect of that situation on the organization So think of this in it. I often hear people give examples of oh well people aren't taking responsibility It's like So what why does that matter? It's like that doesn't tell me anything, right? It just tells me people aren't taking responsibility. It's not even that objective, right? But if someone says you know what last week 50% of the essential work that needed doing on the back low was not done And the consequence of that was we lost half of our customers this week, right? Now I know what's happening concretely objectively and I know what the effect of that is and why it matters Okay, and that's gonna help me with categorization and prioritization of that situation And anticipated effect because sometimes it hasn't happened yet But you see something happening and you think hmm the consequences of that might be really bad or hmm The consequences of that might be really cool if we interact with that situation in some way and on the other side is What's needed right and when I say what's needed I often hear people arguing well We need to do a and we need to do b right but when you get into those kind of arguments You're too much in the strategy space in the solution space, but if you zoom out a bit and say okay Well, what's the thing that's deficit that were we to do a or b would? Help to change that situation to achieve the kind of impact that we would want to see Yeah, when you zoom out far enough you arrive at that point where the person arguing for a and the person arguing for b says Okay, well I can agree with you on that and that is so important because as human beings We are limited in our perceptions, you know we we we have different facts Right, and and it's good to be humble about that and recognize it and when we're trying to navigate complexity It's like you don't know what's happening really actually you can just see certain things occurring right and you can be more or less Accurate about what those things are so being able to Converse with others and say hey look do you see this too looks approximately like this And I think that's the effect or it could be and what do you think and what do you think is needed and? What kind of impact might we want to make on the current state of the universe so it appears up in a different way tomorrow? Yeah, is a very useful mechanism to have drivers is a is a really useful mechanism, and there's two patterns in S3 one is Describe organizational drivers, and the other one is respond to them according to your priorities so Drivers can be Problem-focused or solution focused and usually you can look at a situation either way Yeah, there's going to be optimists in the room. It's like everything's fine And it's all going to turn out great It's an opportunity and there'll be those who are more pessimistic and say this is a damn big problem And if we don't do something in a minute, we're screwed you know and both are valuable perspectives and how you describe a driver Depends on the context you're in and the impact that you want to have right Sometimes it helps to give an optimist a slap and say yeah well maybe mate But the reality right now is it's not looking good and conversely someone who's more pessimistic to support them in seeing how They could have a better tomorrow so a couple of examples just to make it concrete this is from a Customers of ours, so one is ambiguity on how we contract track time and bill Leads to perception of unfairness by people inside and out Okay, this was a consultancy company and this was what was happening because people were billing in different ways They were charging for things that other people weren't charging for and it created all kinds of problems for this company and relationships with their customers and then What they decided was needed was a common enough approach There was an Deficit of a common enough approach so everybody was doing their own thing That everybody adheres to and forgive me looking at this because I have got it by heart to bring clarity transparency and fairness Yeah, and once they got that clear Yeah, and it was a difficult conversation for them because some people Didn't want to talk about it. Some people didn't know about it Others were so angry about it and by getting back to the basics of what was happening and needed They were able then to interact with that and decide how to proceed. Okay, and what came out of that actually was a Collaborative proposal forming where they came up with some basic constraints that would enable them to evolve a more Transparent way of doing these things together and they were very happy about that Another example. I just wanted to introduce a an opportunity focused driver So we have considerable resources and the potential to further utilize our production capacity This is a manufacturing company in Russia that manufactures chemicals and products for the oil and gas industry And by their own admission, it's like it's a pretty a pretty kind of a how can you put it corrupt? environment to be in and they've got a very progressive founder who just recently gave over 90% of the company shares to itself and Created the first company in Russia to own itself It's not people own companies the company owns itself and people become stewards of the company and has found ways to decentralize authority and Invite people to take full ownership of the system to figure out what else can we do in the world? And so they want to develop new opportunities and innovate to make the best use of what they have Again, it was like unclear for them like what's going on and what the problems and what are the challenges? And we had long conversations to unravel things and we condensed it down into two sentences Yeah, what's happening the situation effect or anticipated if it was needed and the anticipated of Impact of responding to that need not the truth, but a starting point Yeah, not the solution, but the thing needed begin there Decide Experiment fail if you need to evolve and learn not just your decisions, but what you thought was happening and needed So that's driver Now the thing about drivers is When you clarify a driver and you agree it's important the next thing is you need to do something or you need to decide something Yeah, so some drivers that you're responding to in your daily work. It's just stuff needs doing right? It's like oh, this is happening. This is needed Yeah, don't know that need to call James for example It's operational stuff and there's organizing work as well, but on the other side is the governance It's the making decisions that govern future decisions and actions right decisions that constrain What happens to guide the creative flow in the way that you want it to go to create value? And and that's another area that's really challenging for people the decision-making Right because when you need to decide across stakeholders with different perspectives opinions biases preferences Interests and so on yeah, you need some kind of mechanism to arrive at something good enough And we've got autocracy. It's like well damn it I'm just gonna tell you what to do because it's so much easier than letting you monkeys or Talk all day about it right? Or you've got majority I've said this on this stage before it's the most stupid idea in the world not in itself because like okay We can dot vote or we can see where the majority opinion is but wisdom always emerges through the minority first, right? So if you concede to the majority always you just got a diminishing set of options over time and consensus Consensus by unanimity. It's like we're all gonna agree with everything And we're just gonna spend our whole lives talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and not agreeing anything I was in an elevator going from a workshop. I ran here with my wife and coach co-teacher Lily Lilliana We're going down in the elevator after this workshop on decision-making. It said learn how to make decisions even in Sweden. I Loved it. It was great You remember that you were in the elevator exactly. Yeah. Yeah, because it's like okay Let's be more pluralistic inclusive egalitarian and not get anywhere, you know Because we're just trying to include everybody and everything. Oh, sorry include everything everybody and everything all of the time so Is there an alternative? Supremacy to the individual of the small group doesn't work especially in complex environments Supremacy to the majority doesn't work. You lose the collective intelligence Supremacy to consensus with unanimity doesn't work because the first person who says I block I don't like it and it's not gonna happen. Even if it's unreasonable Becomes the dictator and you're back to autocracy So supremacy to people groups and individuals is a problem in decision-making, right? So I want to introduce the principle of consent. Can you raise your hand if you've come across the principle of consent from a sociocracy point of view Yeah, okay, so let's see if I can define this for you consent the absence of an objection, okay So the principle of consent says raise seek out and Respond to or raise seek out and resolve objections to decisions and actions. Okay, so that begs the question then, okay? What's an objection? so It's an argument We don't teach our kids how to argue we say stop arguing It's like what you did argument like in the sense of Arguing for why something might be the case. Yeah, and being able to do that in a concrete and clear way for people an argument that demonstrates or reveals how an agreement or a proposal or some kind of activity is Leading us to unintended consequences Yeah, if you carry on like that, it's gonna be really bad and here's why or it might be and we don't want to risk it Or an argument that demonstrates that there's a worthwhile way to improve something Yeah, people think of objection like something negative But if you think of it as a gift something that reveals a possible problem like Stop going that way bad things are gonna happen or a possible tool like keep going that way good things might happen And we can improve it. Yeah, this is a more healthy way to think of objections So the question is and well, how do you know if an objection is true? How do you know if the argument is true? And this is the techie bit. I want to try and nail Okay, and I'm gonna run through it and we share the slides afterwards so you can come back to it Okay, so listen to the argument. I'm gonna look at this because I don't even remember how I constructed it So listen to the argument check people understand the argument Reflect everybody. Do you think this argument qualifies as an objection? Does this argument reveal the potential for unintended consequences? we want to avoid or a worthwhile way to improve and Does anybody disagree with this argument totally or partly and this is the question because if you say I've got a Objection and then you just say okay, well you've got an objection So we'll just have to change everything now as a consequence You're missing a point because the person might be a little bit off the rails on their argument Yeah, it could be partly or entirely untrue. So checking to anybody disagree takes us down a layer It's like No fine Qualified seems good enough according to the collective intelligence of the stakeholders involved You've got a point nobody sees a problem with it so we can act on that But sometimes someone says wait, I don't agree with you. I think you're mistaken partly or totally So what do you do about that? Well you fight, right? Okay, fight. Yeah, well another way of doing it. It's kind of fighting but it's saying Let's repeat the process. You disagree. Let's hear your argument Yeah, do people understand the argument? Reflect do you think that argument counts as an objection to the first argument and does anybody disagree with this argument totally and partly Etc etc etc Okay, so you're using the collective intelligence of the people to bring the multiple perspectives to empirically and rigorously Take apart arguments and check that they're robust enough according to the intelligence you have available So it kind of looks like this you've got an argument There's a disagreement you hear it another argument you check and maybe there's a disagreement again and another argument and you check And there's a disagreement again and suddenly you're like three layers of abstraction down and you say oh my god There's another disagreement so your four layers down and and and then somebody disagrees. Well It's a little reassurance in the last 18 years I've experienced never going lower than level four because either you misunderstood an earlier argument or what happens is it comes back up Because the last person says no I disagree with the person who's arguing against me And so a little trick if you're in that situation and you can have the discipline to follow the process then oh sorry You can invite a time box conversation between those two people and say There's something in both of your arguments. Have a conversation and find the both and more argument And then once you've extracted the both and more you come back up the stack again Integrating at every level and finally you want to check Listening to the original argument. Is there anything left of it? And if there is do people understand it? Consider if it still qualifies and does anyone disagree totally or partly and you'll arrive at the point Where there's no more disagreement and you've qualified the objection. Okay, so lastly I just want to move on a little bit because the last thing is okay. Well, we qualify an objection, but then what do you do? Okay, so resolving objections is another pattern from S3 basically you invite the person first to See if they've got any ideas how to change or amend the proposal or the activity according to their argument to resolve the Objection usually a person objecting has a lot to offer in terms of how to constructively evolve something and Then following a very familiar process now check people understand the proposed amendment and Check for any objections to the amendment and if there are Process those possible objections in exactly the same way. I just shared with you in the resolve objections plan So if there's objections propose an amendment to the amendment Check people understand it check for any objections to the amendment to the amendment Etc. Etc. At the end you're going to arrive at a point where Objections have been resolved you zoom out to the whole proposal and you go through the process again and finally you can celebrate some more Because you've achieved a miracle You've made an agreement together where all objections have been heard and integrated into the original proposal And everyone has a sense of peace and reassurance in what it is that you arrived at so The final thing I want to share about that is good enough for now safe enough to try it is the best you can achieve in a moment and It might be completely wrong So evaluate, yeah reflect on outcomes Evolve your agreements incrementally learn through doing and As a way to finish this Maybe with something a little more profound. It's not either or it's both and more I think I said in the talk just now that maybe I didn't last year. Maybe Ken Wilber saying nobody's smart enough to be a hundred percent wrong now, of course We can be mistaken, but what he meant by that was there's something of wisdom in everybody, right? And so what amazes me about Intentionally proceeding with consent decision-making is it says we're going to suspend our biases and our opinions We're going to fully show up with our perspective and what we believe to be true And we're going to rigorously listen to others as well We're going to hold the tension between apparently polarized and irreconcilable opposites and in the creative space that emerges Give birth to holes that are greater than the sum of their parts And that's my presentation to you