Today’s update of the Practical Guide brings substantial changes to the foundations of S3, including several revisions that affect many concepts, patterns, and glossary terms, as well as significant changes to several patterns.
Changes to Key Concepts
- Introduction: Added an introduction to the section that briefly outlines all key concepts and their relationships.
- Added Model for Purposeful Action: We consolidated the work that began with the introduction of Requirements (2022) into a single, coherent model, which is foundational for understanding Sociocracy 3.0 in its current form. It introduces Purpose and Interventions as explicit concepts and integrates them consistently with Drivers and Requirements.
- Drivers and Requirements: Refined descriptions to make their roles, differences, and overlaps more explicit:
- Driver: Current conditions (instead of “current situation”) that lead to an effect of relevance to the organization.
- Requirement: Enabling conditions (instead of “need”) expected to lead to intended outcomes (instead of “anticipated impact”).
- Governance and Operations: Revised and extended the chapter, and added a section about distributing governance throughout the organization.
- Renamed the concept of “agreement” to Policy and integrated it into the chapter about Governance and Operations. “Agreement” remains in use throughout the guide as a general term.
- Added examples where possible to support understanding and correct interpretation.
- Added the concept of Complexity.
Changes to Principles
- Principle of Equivalence: Addressed the balance between distributed authority and effective governance in complex organizations.
Glossary Updated
- Changed
- Added: Acceptance Criteria, Current Conditions, Constraint, Enabling Conditions, Intended Outcome, Intervention, Purpose, Tuners
- Updated: Deliverable, Governance, Governance Backlog, Key Responsibilities, Objection, Objective, Organization, Organizational Driver, Requirement, Strategy, Team, Value, Waste
Changes to Patterns
- Revised many pattern descriptions as a consequence of introducing new concepts, renaming the concept of Agreement to Policy, and introducing the Model of Purposeful Action.
- Circle: Updated and extended the pattern; corresponding revisions were also made to Double-Linked Hierarchy.
- Clarify and Develop Domains: Simplified examples, aligned with changes in Define and Monitor Metrics
- Consent Decision-Making: Updated according to the Model for Purposeful Action Purpose, improved overall clarity.
- Define and Monitor Metrics: Expanded and revised the pattern description, added practical examples.
- Determine Requirements: Completely revised the pattern, added new examples
- Evaluate and Evolve Policies: Added a full description of the format and improved clarity.
- Governance Backlog: Revised for alignment with updated concepts.
- Governance Meeting: Updated for clarity and consistency.
- Helping Team: Completely revised the pattern, added examples.
- Planning and Review Meeting: Refined descriptions, improved flow.
- Proposal Forming: Simplified the format by clearly separating information gathering and generative phases, revised the text and added examples.
- Record Governance Decisions: Expanded explanation of benefits, revised the template, and clarified recommendations for record contents.
- Respond to Organizational Drivers: revised and aligned with Model for Purposeful Action
Renamed and Moved Patterns
- renamed Evaluation Criteria to Define and Monitor Metrics
- renamed Record Agreements to Record Governance Decisions
- renamed Driver Mapping to Requirements-Mapping
- renamed Test Arguments Qualify as Objections to Test if Arguments Qualify as Objections
- moved Adopt the Seven Principles and Create a Pull System for Organizational Change to the category Bringing in S3
- moved Continuous Improvement of Work Process to category Organize Work
Removed Pattern
- Clarify Intended Outcomes (now integrated into the concept Requirement)
You’ll find the latest version of the Practical Guide at https://patterns.sociocracy30.org
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