Sociocracy - Human Friendly Organisations

Astrid Blunschi Balmer

Introduced by Klaus Schenck

Sociocracy’s roots in political philosophy are almost as old as those of the banking industry in Switzerland. Combining the two with a focus on ethical values and sustainability, plus adding some lean, agile, and Solution Focus (SF) elements to the mix, sounds like another approach to radically Reinventing Organisations (building on Frederic Laloux) or more Brave New Work (as introduced by Aaron Dignan).

That’s what Astrid Blunschi Balmer is doing in that surprising context of sociocracy plus agile plus SF in the unconventional Alternative Swiss Bank (Alternative Bank Schweiz - ABS).

So, what is sociocracy? It is a governance model for self-organisation and self-led teams. It builds on Quaker traditions of eye-level equality of contribution in conversations about topics that matter and participative decision-making, aka consent.

Consent is different from both democratic majority vote and consensus. My favourite version of it goes like this:

1. A majority vote, with or without abstentions, does not mean a proposal is accepted if there is any veto against it. Any person giving a veto must spell out the reasons for this objection.
2. Following a veto, ALL involved are obliged to co-create ways to solve those objections.
3. Then steps 1. and 2. are repeated until there’s no more veto.
4. After these steps, an abstention or an “I’m still undecided” position is no longer valid. Rather, EVERYONE is obliged to constructively contribute to implementing what was decided. A person who doesn’t want to do that must spell out a veto beforehand (That’s like the tradition before any marriage in Germany: There’s a public announcement that whoever has anything to say against that marriage should speak up now – or shut up later and support the newlyweds.)

After some rounds of development since 1851 (see Figure 1), we can summarise sociocracy’s current, Version 3.0 into a Common Sense Framework for Organisations and Teams. Version 3.0 recommends to “see the bigger picture – identify what’s needed – prioritise where to start”. This recommendation helps BOTH the people AND the organisation thrive.

It defines ten principles (that are aligned into concentric circles in Fig. 2):

1. Clarify Purpose
2. Develop Strategy
3. Focus on Value
4. Sense & Respond
5. Run Experiments
6. Enable Autonomy
7. Collaborate on Dependencies
8. Invest in Learning
9. Intentionally Develop Culture
10. Build Shared Mental Models

Core Principles 1 and 2 claim to be intended for orientation, principles 3-5 for navigation, 6-7 for structure, and 8-10 for transformation.

Now, enjoy the webinar with Astrid!

If you want to learn more about the details, you may well download a 170 page Practical Guide on Sociocracy 3.0, or follow any or all of the links below.

Some more links (as of May 10, 2024) are:

• to further information on sociocracy: and

• to the difference between sociocracy and Holacracy: and

• to a more detailed description of systemic consent:

• to the Alternative Bank Schweiz where Astrid works and