Organizational structure is the actual arrangement of domains and their connections. It reflects where power to influence is located, and the channels through which information and influence flow.

Continuously evolve your organization’s structure to:

  • support the continuous flow of value
  • enable effective collaboration around dependencies
  • ensure information is available to those who need it
  • distribute resources and power to influence as required

The basic building blocks for organizational structure are interdependent, connected domains.

Domains can be linked to form a hierarchy or a heterarchy (a.k.a. complex adaptive system, or network, where multiple functional structures can co-exist).

Sociocracy 3.0 describes a variety of structural patterns to grow organizational structure.

  • S3’s structural patterns apply to different layers of abstraction
  • different structural patterns fulfill different requirements
  • structural patterns can be adapted and combined as needed
  • more patterns are out there and will be discovered