Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  0:16  
Welcome to our workshop Sociocracy Governing with Equivalents, Effectiveness and Transparency. I'm the Reverend RenŽe Ruchotzke, part of your Unitarian Universalist Association. I serve on the LeaderLab design team, the UU Institute and also on the Central East Regional team. And with me is

Ted Rau  0:39  
Ted Rau. Hello. I am the leader and co founder of Sociocracy For All, which is a nonprofit that operates globally, but it's based in the US, and it supports people in finding better governance solutions that are consent based, which we'll talk about today.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  0:55  
I want to start out with a little bit of context, governance in Unitarian Universalist congregation is based in congregational polity, this polity goes back to the Cambridge platforms centuries ago actually, where congregations decided that they were going to govern themselves as individual congregational units. So the authority has always rest in the congregation. Now historically, congregations would understand and decide things in discernment with one another. There's a great story in by Alice Blair Wesley in her Minn's Lectures about the Dedham, Massachusetts congregation, and how before they decided anything else, they spent a year meeting in a circle, deciding what their core values were, what really mattered before they actually formed their governance. And so I see sociocracy is in the lineage of that kind of decision making. As Unitarian Universalists, were always engaged with a wider culture. And as democracy and democratic decision making became more a part of the wider culture, we adapted and adopted pieces of what was being used for democratic processes in our congregations. And one of these is Robert's Rules of Order. And if you read through Robert's Rules, it's really based on a an organization where there's conflict and divergent thinking that instead of finding some sort of way of creating a way forward, that works for everyone, it has more of a winner and loser hearing the other side at the end of the day, the majority rules. And as we have known, and realize, especially today, with the Widening the Circle of Concern report, this kind of decision making tends to leave the people at the margins outside of the decision making, and we really don't consider the needs of everyone. And so we're considering or offering sociocracy as an alternative that meets the needs that were outlined in Widening the Circle of Concern. One other thing I really like about sociocracy is that it also interfaces beautifully with our theology, especially our theology of creative interchange. That's part of process theology. Creativity interchange is this idea of we co create the future together through our interactions, I have a model that you'll see on the screen here. That is sort of my mental model of what this looks like this and this is based on based on Henry Nelson Wyman's understanding of process theology, he was part of the American pragmatism school of philosophy. And the way I understand it is that when people like maybe two people come together, in this free and open discourse and discernment, they bring their own understanding, their own reason and their own experience, and they share that together in dialogue. And out of that, comes new understandings that informs future decision making, and how we create this container where we can have this free and open discourse and discernment requires our goodwill and our forbearance. Goodwill is, in some ways, how we agree to come together. And forbearance is really how we show up when we are together. So this ideal ideal of our covenants, rules and new engagement, things like that, how do we create a container for decision making where this free and open discourse can happen? So this is a way that our theology can inform our governance.

Ted Rau  4:47  
So the values of sociocracy to me are really have to do a lot with clarity and inclusion, really. So what is our congregation about? What do we care about? What is our shared mission, and what's our vision of what we want to contribute in the world. So that is something we really have to be very clear about, because then that helps us align our actions around it right and how we are together. Another piece that has to do with decision making, and also with how we distribute decision making is a strong sense of agency. So wanting to empower people to speak up, empower people to do make something happen. That's, that is a big piece of it. We do assume, or let me say, actually, I assume, because that's me speaking, I have a hard time kind of speaking for the sociocracy movement. But for me, one big piece is that I make the assumption that processes help me kind of be a better version of myself. So if I'm clear about the process, and we have clarity with each other about how we go about things, then that helps me show up more often in the way that I want to show up. That's really what it is to me. So process, serving us, not kind of constraining us, but serving us to be better with each other. Because things when people do things together, that's a complex, right, there's a lot of a lot of needs, and and, you know, just overall perspectives at the table. So bringing that together well, and that being held by process. One of the things that we'll talk about more is that decision making method and sociocracy, which is consent, which is very close to consensus, but a little bit of a different tweak on it. The old kind of the slogan of consent is no one ignored. So we want to have a governance system where all the voices can be heard. And we can still move forward and consent as a principle and mindset. But also just a process really helps the to put that into action that we'll talk about that. Similar to that kind of the no one ignored, stated in the positive is everybody's voice matters, right? So we want to not only optimize things so that the majority is okay, we want to create a system where everybody's voice matters. Also the people on the margins, right? So in, as Renee was saying, the in majority vote like in Robert's Rules of Order, the the minorities kind of get drowned out, right, you simply outnumber it. That's it, and how we're moving forward. And, and consent and in sociocracy overall, that doesn't happen. Because we tend to pull those voices in and kind of amplify and work with that. Which then that's the next point works with people's curiosity of if somebody has a different opinion, or a different experience, can we be curious about what what is behind, that is there more for us to learn. So it's more focused on learning about each other, and listening very much optimized for listening. And ultimately, that, of course, makes a system and that's what we are kind of a system which is with each other, right? A human system, makes it more resilient. Because if we're just going with a majority, for example, or we're just going kind of with this mono culture of thought, then we're going to lose so much information that we then that, for example, voices that might have warned us of something, you know, like that we would lose out on. So we're more resilient if we're really interdependent. And that means having all that richness of experience with each other.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  8:36  
One thing about sociocracy that Ted is alluding to, is that it really does give a chance for the people who are the outliers or who have the unpopular opinion, to be heard in a different sort of way. And as I think through a lot of the blow ups that have happened, especially at the UUA level, there was always someone around the table, who was saying this is not a good idea. This is not a good idea. One particular example is the Thomas Jefferson Ball General Assembly. Over a decade ago, the idea was to have a ball where everybody came in period dress. And there were people saying, you know, this is this isn't going to be comfortable for a lot of people. Oh, it's going to be fine. You know, it'd be great. It helps us, you know, hold up our connection to Thomas Jefferson. And sure enough, the Reverend Dr. Hope Johnson, our late beloved, er came up to the process mike and said, you know, there's this Thomas Jefferson ball planted am I supposed to come dressed in chains and rags this could have been considered earlier on, but that those voices were ignored. And it came to a head in a crisis point where it really could have been resolved in a way that felt good for everyone rather than having again this very important conversation, but it could have happened in a way that was more general generative and life giving and peole could have felt much better about how we went about it.

Ted Rau  10:08  
So, equivalents Oh, in the principles is that we start out, assuming that everybody's voice matters, quote, sort of already said that. But it's important enough to say it again, in a different way. So everybody's voice matters in the same has kind of the same value. That's what equivalence means, right? So how can we have a governance system where people might be doing different things, but everything counts the same. And one metaphor that I use for that that really works for me, is, when we sing in a choir, right, like a multi part choir kind of thing. It's pretty much clear to everybody intuitively, that not everybody sings the same tune, right? But that might be but it's nicer if we have several parts. So everybody thinks a different tune. But there's no way to say that part of the like, let's say the sopranos are more important than the bass, like that would not occur to any of us to say, right. So it's the same in governance, just because somebody's having one role. And doing this particular thing doesn't mean that they're worth more, all the pieces need to come together to have a healthy system. So we're trying to really hold that well and have decision making where that is built in.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  11:33  
There was a book I read several years ago called The Starfish and The Spider, they compare two different kinds of organizations. One is the spider organization where there's one central nervous processing system, the brain, and there's, you know, eight legs, that all you know, work and get the spider to where it needs to go. And the spider can lose a leg or two, but if you have a spider loses a critical mass of legs, then the spider can no longer function. Where in the starfish, the DNA and the like the nervous system of the starfish is actually spread out through the whole organism. And so if the starfish loses a leg, it can actually regenerate the leg. And if you cut a starfish into pieces that become new starfish, so the, the core DNA of the starfish is throughout the whole organism. And the idea of sociocracy, and then the mission based organization that has this, this idea of you get the DNA, the understanding the the core mission, a feel of the core mission, to every decision making part of the organization, then the the organization can operate in a way that is more resilient is there, it's able to adapt to changing situations. And interestingly, if you as this is being recorded, there's this, you know, horrible war going on in Ukraine. And if you look at the Russian army, that's very much a spider organization. And they realized if they killed off the generals, then the army was just paralyzed, the Russian army wasn't able to do anything. It's that's a classic example of a spider organization where the Ukrainians have been trained in the western NATO and the United States, they have very much a mission command where the person who's been commanded the mission has an understanding of the big picture and is able to adapt to whatever situation that's going on. And if they're cut off from main communication, they're still able to operate in service of the mission. And so this idea of of starfish organizations, sociocracy is a framework that helps an organization be a starfish organization.

Ted Rau  13:49  
Again, I like these kind of little comparisons to for people to have like an entryway into this way of thinking. So for example, and this is just this is just a far fetched example. Okay. But anyway, if we ran a country, sociocratically, then there might be a president at the top but nobody would know the president's name because it wouldn't matter because everything else was already taken care of. So this decentralization, it's kind of the the idea that everybody knows what they're doing, and they're empowered to do things and so on, then there might be a little crisis somewhere, but everybody else just goes about their day and does their thing you know, and there is kind of enough strength in the system to, to hold that and to buffer it and to then support so there's just like this web of interconnection more than this top down us where everything where one weak link and break everything. Another way of saying it is anti fragile. That's also what some people use to kind of express the samething. Similar to what I just said, right? If everything is kind of taken care of somewhere, then we can really adapt in a whole different way. So let's say something big happens. Okay, so To our to our group. And we need to kind of wait for the leader writes to tell us what that now means for us, it's going to be slow, we're going to have a bottleneck, highly dependent on that leader kind of person to tell us what now we should do. Okay, that would be a fragile way of doing it again, again, the spider organization kind of thing. Like, if we have this distributed web of people doing things, then if there's a crisis, everybody can just look at their own piece and say, Okay, what is this big thing that is now happening mean for us, and they just started putting things into, into in. Like, they're changing the things as as they go and adapt kind of more locally in that area. And that then helps us adapt in small steps without even needing this overarching explanation of what's happening. And that's kind of that's going into emergent thinking of, wait, what's happening here? Oh, let's adapt this, okay. And then we see what happens. And then we learn something from that. And we kind of just grow our own little ecosystem there in this fractal way. And that, again, speaks to visit games. And that also means we need to have and pay attention to what are we learning what is happening? So not just making a plan and saying, Okay, our plan was great. Now, we don't even have to look with it work, because we're so sure that it didn't work? Because what else would happen, right? And instead, really pay attention to did this work? What feedback feedback are we hearing? So what can we learn from what just happened locally in our in our, in our group?

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  16:42  
So we've experienced this as the Unitarian Universalist Association, when the pandemic started, there was all sorts of adaptation that had to happen. We went from in person services to online services and like two weeks, right, and part of the emergent, this this emergent thinking is that you in congregations were making decisions and coming up with experiments about how to do things. There were some Facebook groups that were set up on COVID response, but we had some on worship, and technology, religious education, and people were sharing ideas about what they were doing. And so our system as a whole, were communicating with one another and trying these things. So you weren't sitting around waiting, I mean, the UUA was helping with we're paying attention to the science, we're paying attention to kind of what to do to be safe. So like the basic human survival pieces, but you all were doing the creative pieces, and we were sharing that information back and forth. And so if you had waited around for the UUA way to come up with, this is how you do online church, you would still be waiting. But you know, again, within just a matter of days of weeks, you all were figuring it out and learning from one another and all the UUA did was collect the pieces of what you were doing, shared it back to the larger group.

Ted Rau  18:02  
And that is that is a wonderful example for that. Right, where also I guess one thing I want to say about sociocracy because sometimes people think like, oh, it's a new thing that now we have to do, right? But I think actually, it's quite the opposite. It's more rediscovery of something that feels very close to natural, like this comes natural to people, you know. And it's just more that somehow in how organizations have been built for the last decades or maybe decades, I guess, with this whole hierarchical structure is we've kind of deviated from what makes sense. So sometimes people have summarized sociocracy as well. This is just common sense made way of teaching. There's like, yeah, it is common sense. But somehow we don't do it. So it's more almost like a remembering back of Wait, what makes sense? Oh, yeah. People are getting creative and finding solutions in all their different ways, finding solutions for their actual issues that they're dealing with, you know, let's just do that. So there's always this kind of, yeah, this is new. And then again, it's also not both at the same time. What does that all mean, right? Because it all sounds great. But how does one do it? There are a few pieces that from my point of view, have to click into place so that everything makes sense. One of the pieces that I've refer, or we've both actually already referred to or alluded to, is that we move decision making into groups and empower them to make decisions. We will see examples of that and how that would actually play out for now, just that as one of the design principles. Circles, which is kind of a team knows what they can decide what they cannot decide kind of what their boundaries are. And then they just go do stuff. And another one that also has a circular process and and hearing everybody's voice in it is when we are in a meeting, we often talk in rounds. You can see that in a group of two so much because we're just by going forth. But if we were three people, and we were trying to, let's say brainstorm about a topic, we would discuss a topic, we would basically talk one by one. And that way we have clarity about who speaks when. So that not some voices dominate, because that happens often in kind of free flow. And just so that everybody can relax, I know I'm going to be heard. And know RenŽe is going to be heard, everybody else is going to be heard. So we can focus more on the issue at hand and, and listening to each other. So that goes back to some of the principles and values we've mentioned, right? Everybody's voice matters, process helps us. And we want to listen to each other and not ignore voices or ignore things that come up for people. So rounds are very easy to implement way of holding meetings and having discussions. That really changes the culture, pretty much on a dime, sometimes when people are willing to go for it, and just give that a try.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  21:05  
And even though it's simple, and it's easy, it's also very hard because we have habits that are not talking in rounds. And you might remember, those of you who've been around for a while might remember when we first brought back small group ministry, covenant groups, and the idea of taking turns to give a reflection on a reading or a poem or something like that, that was a spirit group spiritual practice that we needed to develop. And I'm finding as I'm introducing circle, decision making and rounds to congregational leaders, you've it's like, you want to just have that free flow back and forth conversation, like you're at a coffee shop, you know, with your with your hot beverage and trading ideas back and forth. But what happens in that in those situations is that there are voices that are not heard. And again, we get again, to the voices at the margins, or the introvert voices, which as you know, are quite, quite often the most thoughtful ideas from are introverts. So it's important to make sure introverts have a space to speak. So this developing this habit of of sharing in rounds, especially around deep decision making, and it's going to be really awkward at first and I just see the awkwardness every time I introduced this to a group, but this is really the the nugget, the the key pattern, that once you have this as part of the the healthy, helpful habits in your congregational decision making, this is the building block for everything else.

Ted Rau  22:43  
I have one little story about that, because I am you know, lucky me in a in a place where this is basically the norm to speak like that. And I remember once we had a little group discussion, somewhere here in the community where I live. And because it was not a meeting, we were not doing rounds. So you know, this kind of stuff could then just like what I'm saying is being conscious and being kind of used to this doesn't even mean that it's just automatic, they happen. One still has to put out, put in an effort that it will happen and just have some sort of commitment to it, right? Because what happened in that situation was it was four of us, three of us talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, because I have no issues interrupting people at all a dominant, you know, like, I'm totally fine doing that. That's, you know, if you don't kind of support me and giving me a structure, that is what's going to happen. But this fourth person, at some point said, Excuse me, could we do rounds, because I noticed that in order to be heard, I would have to interrupt people, and I don't want to do that. And to me that was just like, Whoa, I was contributing to a system where somebody had to say that I was embarrassed. You know, I don't want to do that. And yet it happens, right. And it's one of those cases that I referred to earlier of if if I have the belief that this system helps me be a better person. And this is a very good example of that. Like I'm not you know, I'm not enlightened in that way, you know, but I choose to show to to embrace those doctrines.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  24:22  
In workshops I've helped to facilitate, it's often brought up and I'm guessing it's coming up in your minds about Isn't this an indigenous practice that we might be appropriating or misappropriating and I, So my experience of experience circles and primarily African American led groups, and yet also I experienced a circle, Northern Europe at a Latvian gathering where everybody who came to the the gathering around a fire had, we had a circle sharing about the event that we were a part of, and so on. I think this is a ancient human pattern that is indeed indigenous. But it was my experience. It's indigenous to all cultures, it's just how far back do you go? And if you're using a particular cultures version of circle, I would call that misappropriation, if you're using it outside of that tradition, but the basic pattern of a circle of people gathering and taking turns speaking, is an I believe, strongly for my experience, is an ancient human pattern that we can create a version of it that is authentic to Unitarian Universalist in particular, but also to humanity in general.

Ted Rau  25:43  
Oh, yeah, no, that's that's always a big discussion. I remember, this is just an anecdote, because, you know, there's only anecdotal knowledge here on that. I remember there was an indigenous group looking at sociocracy. And asking, they had a big discussion about that very question of Wait, is this now a, you know, is it a colonial pattern that we're now going to adopt, you know, this sociocracy thing from the Netherlands? And or? Or is this bordering on on cultural appropriation? Because it's using similar things, and just kind of saying, this is sociocracy. And they came to an interesting conclusion, like with each other. And that was, this is not an indigenous practice. But it's very close. And as such, it's actually the perfect situation. They said, You know, it's kind of playing with similar elements, without kind of saying, we're using kind of this indigenous practice, you know, what I mean, they can get to the elements in this shape and form. And, yeah, that's, I have found my peace around it with that, to me, this is the both and that, that works for me. And of course, people have to answer it for themselves. But I just wanted to share that how that's my current stand on it.

So I've already said a few things about circles as these small groups that are empowered to make decisions. And just, again, some themes here, repeat clarity. So when you have small groups making decisions about whatever it might be, and again, we'll get to examples, then, in my experience, a lot of the arguments and tensions that arise in organizations come from lack of clarity about who decides what, because if the same two groups think that they are making a decision about this thing, or they should be heard on this thing, whatever it might be, then obviously, they're going to step on each other's feet, right? And you know, then you can already imagine what one side will say, why, how could you, you know, do this and that, although it's ours, the others were like, well, if somebody had to do it, because he went out, you know. That kind of stuff is already basically expectable, if you have lack of clarity and overlap, and if you have a situation like this, where something is not claimed by anybody, nothing is going to happen, right? And then people might make assumptions of like, why don't you take care of this things, you know, like, and you'll never do all the things you were asked to do, and so on, because it's simply not clear. So the solution is, of course, to make it clear. And that is one of the things that circle structures do of just making it very, very clear without having the rigid because one can change it. Right, you can change the structure. But and there's ways of doing that. But it has to be clear. And there's just these two pieces of jargon that you see here, that are, to me, the three pieces, consent, aims and domains that really help understand and kind of words that are used in everyday language almost That's how important they are to me. Aim is that is a description of what a circle is doing, like, what are we about what is what are we doing? What is our contribution to the whole? And domain is kind of the other side of the coin? Of what is it that we can make decisions about to carry out our aim. And we of course want to give groups an aim with the corresponding authorities so that they don't just have ideas without any authority to also act on them. So those two have to go together, ideally, otherwise, we are in a hierarchical system where some people decide things and other people carry things out. And in sociocracy that's together the people who do things are also those allowed to carry things out.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  29:30  
So we Unitarian Universalist congregations have been doing a lot of work around mission, which mission and aims are kind of in the same same family. You want to have each especially program group in your church worship, religious education, social justice, to have a clear sense of your mission, and how that mission informs the work of your particular ministry team. So that part we've kind of got. The domains piece is where we see our conflicts happen because we don't have clarity and honestly this is where I'm hoping that sociocracy is going to help our congregations to have those conversations about who has what authority. The domain is really like, it's the RACI chart, who's responsible, who's accountable, who needs to be informed, who needs to consent, those those conversations. The better we're able to have those conversations, the fewer conflicts we're gonna have. We'll have conflicts over important things rather than just to stepping on his toes. And also, we'll be able to do our work better, we'll be able to carry out our ministries better. And so the case study, I kind of have in my head is the word how, like what happens on Sunday morning, because there are a lot of different groups. And so the domain is the domain conversations are about, like the worship associates team, the minister, the religous educator, the greeting team, safety team, maybe who's responsible for what and so that's when we talk about domains we're talking about, who has the like responsibility and accountability for the different pieces of the ministry of the church. And it's complicated. So we're not going to sell that in this workshop. And we want to do at least frame that.

Ted Rau  31:18  
Yes, and again, it can change, right? So let's go back to that little like the, what I talked about, and feedback and really learning locally, right? So with more clarity about all of this, the discussion sounded a little different. It's not, why don't you always do this? And why do we always do this? And then why don't you do this? And that it's more like, Hey, hold on, we don't seem to be clear about our domains. Can we talk about that? Like, where does our work and and where does your work start? And how does that align, which is a whole different conversation to have, because now you have the clarity, you have the words, you know, and now you can talk to each other about that. And it just takes the tension out of it to a large extent and kind of focus more on the constructive part of the, of the conversation. So it's a very useful word to use that especially domain as you're saying. To me domain, once I understood that, and I see it everywhere around me in my life, you know, a simple thing of whose domain is it? You know, what my teenagers eat? Is it my domain or their domain? You know, do I have decision making power over what they eat? depends on the age and we struggled around that and you know, we could have a conversation about it. Okay, what you eat? Is it in your domain on my domain? Can we talk about that, and that gives us just more conceptual clarity on what it is that we're struggling about with each other? So domain super, super useful. I can I cannot live with that term anymore honestly.

The way I think about it, when we define domains and give power or authority or whatever, we want to call it responsibility to small groups, then we almost have like these little silos, right? So now we need to connect it back together of how does everything weave together again, because interdependence is real, right? We are interdependent. So right now we've basically with domains and aims, we've only talked about autonomy, but how do we bring it to interdependence. And that is what we do by connecting two circles that are directly related in this way that you see here, with double linked circles. So what does that mean? We have a circle and another circle. And let's say one is basically nested under the other like they're doing a subset of that other one. So not all the circlesare connected in with no, well, you'll see later, it's really hard to describe verbally and very easy to see visually. So let's say kind of a child circle or a parent circle relationship, and to make sure that information really flows well into both directions, from the more, kind of nested group to the higher level, and vice versa. We have two people who are both full members on both teams. And that now means that information can flow. That's one thing, but also that no decision can be made in one group, that negatively impacts the other group without that group having a say. So the two people from that group that this decision impact will be able to be a decision maker here. And because we're using consent, which we'll talk about next, they can be outnumbered. So now, in this combination of Circle, circle, membership, linking and consent, we now have created a system where not only individuals are equals with each other, but also teams equals with each other, and they have to work together to figure things out.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  34:50  
So let's go back to the case study of the worship service, and I'm imagining there's a worship circle, which is kind Have the center circle with sub circles or use a child parent and also like main circles sub circle as terminology. So you might for this worship circle, you may have a sub circle for music and music program, you might have a sub circle for family ministry, you might have a sub circle of maybe worship associates, or maybe another one with guest speakers, where these groups all help to create the worship service together. And the worship circle, the main, the parent circle, or the main circle, has representatives from each of those circles, as well as a member of the worship circle who's and I think of like that, there's a person who's mainly the member of the worship circle, but they also sit as a full member, on one of the sub circles. And so they're they're kind of loyalties are mostly to worship as a whole. But also they show up at the at the Music committee or the music circle. And then the music circle has another representative, that center of gravity or loyalties are kind of to the music, like making sure you're understanding the music program, and bringing that voice to the worship circle. And on the same thing with a family ministry, and the maybe worship associate,s guest guest speakers, that sort of thing. So that those that communication channel ensures that the music it's in, we often use theme based ministry, I'm guessing a lot of you, if you're paying attention to governance, you're probably also like, have great worship and theme based ministry as a way of doing that. So having those those theme conversations might happen at the worship circle. And then people bring the double linked people bring that conversation to the sub circles of worship and family ministry so that the worship elements they bring will be in alignment with the theme and also like fit the the emotional signature is that a service of celebration, is it a service of lament, is it a service of reflection, to have that shared understanding so that the worship experience ends up including all these elements in a very graceful and harmonic kind of way. So these end, we do this in some ways, but sometimes our mileage varies, sometimes it works really well, sometimes, you know, there's disconnects. And so the idea of using the structure of this sociocracy decision making in this linking, helps to create a structure that helps us show up as our best selves, and also help us show up as our best communities creating this worship experience. For Sunday morning,

Ted Rau  37:47  
I have one tiny little subtle comment, actually, there is an interesting effect that I noticed. And you know, because I practice sociocracy, in several organizations that I'm a part of, and it has to do with, with less of a tendency for othering, I'm not sure how strong that effect is. So when I'm in a group, and then there's this other group, sometimes we talk about this other group, and we kind of form an image of well, this group, you know, that's how they are kind of, but if now to them, like, I am working on my team, and I know my team really well, and I trust people they have, right. And now, two people from my group, go to this other group, and that's where they are a part of right with a dual loyalty, then it's just harder for me to think of them as other they're almost like an extension of us, you know, because there's these two people that are now there. And it's almost like my, my trust, and my, I guess my my trust, and my heart can kind of extend to like, oh, yeah, they're also us just in a different constellation, you know, and that just extends and extends. And that's what I really love about it. It's mobile, it does to me emotionally, plus the information flow and all of that. But there's also this subtle thing about just landing with this sense of interdependence of we're all one but we're also all individuals, it serves both. And this gives us somehow that I find really fascinating also, and what it does somehow inside of me.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  39:18  
In some ways, what you're describing is what we call the beloved community, there is this sense of connection, and we have our things that we're paying attention to and there is this like wider culture thing of polarization or othering. And it sounds like your experience of the structure has enabled a different ethos to enter the organization of feeling connected because of the relationships that happen by the by the double linking between the circles,

Ted Rau  39:54  
Yup, because everybody is a colleague of the colleague of a colleague. We don't separate them Have a kind of Yep.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  40:02  
Can you speak a little bit also about? One of the questions I get is Doesn't this mean double meetings? Double work? Like? Why would you do that? Why not just have one person?

Ted Rau  40:14  
Well, let me just start out by saying one person is in theory possible, but it is a little risky, I think we don't have that healthy redundancy. You know, what if the person is sick, we don't hear from that subset or that sub circle child circle. For a while, it also just burdens that person of being, it's a little bit like being a middle manager, you know, in that, in that we kind of have these people saying that, and these people are saying that, and how can you really represent the nuances and everything that is happening. So two, people just have a much easier time to do that. And it doesn't burden them so much. The other piece, and that's where everything is connected, it's really hard for me and sociocracy, to kind of point to one thing and say, This is how this works without also considering the rest. Because we tend to try and make the circle structure for organizations for themselves, in a way so that we have a good match between who needs to be here. So we're already basically trying to have like, it should fit like a glove, basically. The people who need to make this decision together should be in the circle, because those are the people doing work in this area of the of the congregation. We're already paying attention to, to minimize meetings or like groups that we have to be a part of. Okay. So to me, I'd rather pay more attention to being clear about who needs to be where and really kind of making more use of people where they are and then adding the connections instead of what often happens in organizations, that it's the lacks intention about that. So to me, I'd rather I'd rather minimize there and and then up the level of connection, then what is actually happening. So to me, it's, you know, it's not a clear one to one fit of like, oh, there will be more meetings. So there will be less meetings, I think there's just too many nuances and variables to think about and to bring into into the conversation. I don't like this kind of black and white kind of comparisons, it just doesn't work that way. For me, it's more complex and nuanced. And the other thing is, people have choice over it. So one can change it. One can also have this conversation about well, does the single link make sense here, I don't know, a double link. And so this all kinds of things one can do, as soon as people take ownership of the system that they understand well, and, and create so that it fits their needs. I'm not saying to cut corners. But hey, sometimes we cut corners, you know, because it's our system, and we need, we need to work with it. So it's not, it's not supposed to limit or constrain people.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  42:55  
So the one thing I'm hearing about you talking about how the double linking helps people to almost do a deeper dive into the area that they're working in. There's certain roles, and I'm talking mostly about program, ministry and congregations and not so much about government. So we're not talking about finance committee meeting so much, we're talking more about a program where there's deeper conversations about how things fit in with mission and vision and how to create a ministry that's meaningful to the people who are participating in it as well as people who are being served. And so there's an opportunity with these, this double, these double link conversations, for leaders, lay leaders like y'all to have deeper conversations about the big why and how the work that you're doing in the ministry that you're doing, the impact that it's having, and your own understanding of it, and how it's transforming you as individuals, I think of worship associates where some worship associate programs and lay pastoral care associate programs. There are meetings that you have with the minister, along with the planning meetings, and a lot of times there's theological discussions that happen in days. And these are the kinds of service leadership positions service positions that our congregations that are our own faith development. And so what I'm hearing you talk about Ted is that this double linking is just another opportunity for this thicker, more robust, dive into the ministry that that's attached to, in our case, the ministry of the church that just helps you feel more connected, more equipped, more relational, relational with other folks in the congregation, which is why we're there in the first place. Right.

Ted Rau  44:49  
And if you think back to the starfish, right to the starfish organization, we need to have strong bridges or the whole thing just falls apart. that sense making shared sense making in many different places needs just to be not robust. That sounds too rigid, you know, like, but same needs to be strong and really rich and deep and meaningful. Yes, I agree with him.

So now when we have one, circle, one, team, one group, one committee, all the same thing for me, making a decision together, there is kind of a cadence of steps, that just makes a lot of sense. And I think of it as all the individuals are kind of in their brains, trying to wrap their head around what we're doing right now and trying to come to a decision and come to discernment within themselves about it, about the decision. And it's just really hard to align everybody, right, because you might have it that somebody's already ready to go ahead and implement the decision and some baby, some people might still have very basic questions about what even the plan is. Okay? So that just happens in groups, right, we're all kind of just trying to come together and, and be be kind of one brain for a moment. And in order to do that, it really helps to have that cadence of steps. And the one that we use is the frame of understand, explore, decide. And that is really like a set of building blocks that one finds in all kinds of different places. But for now, just focusing on decision making. What it means is, if somebody has a proposal, and it's a proposal was already formed, okay. Now, the first step is for everybody understand to understand the proposal. So give people a chance to ask questions like, What did you mean here? What does this word mean? Did you think about that? Oh, yeah. Okay, great. Now, that's the proposal. And now when everybody understands that, we now do typically one round, that's those speaking one by one by one thing, again, of everybody just giving a little bit of information, like, how do you relate to the proposal? What comes up for you? What ideas do you have? How do you feel about it, whatever it might be. And it's good, if that's, you know, somewhat concise, but at least one round, I want to hear from everybody about how they are with a proposal. And then once we've heard that we might make little tweaks to the proposal, or not depends, and then we go to a decision. So that way, all these different phases have their place, and they build on each other. Because it's really hard to build an opinion about something we don't understand. That's my understanding comes first. And then making sure we're heard, and then saying yes or no. And then we can implement it. So that's just one little example of just having enough structure so that we can be together in an intentional way that makes sense together.

What I just talked about the decision making process assumes that there is a proposal, but there isn't always a proposal because they don't tend to, you know, just show up. So we need to sometimes write proposals together, it might be that somebody just sits at home and writes down a proposal and brings it to a meeting. But I find that rare, typically. And I also don't encourage it too much, because I really like when all the voices are brought together from the get go. And in picture forming, this is a process again, that just helps groups think in alignment and with each other at a pace that makes sense to everybody. So when we have you have an issue that we want to address that we want to find a proposal or solution for is we just first make a list of all the things that need to be mentioned, like what needs to be covered in the proposal, and what are some things that need to be said. And then with that list, we make another list and say, Okay, now for each of those points, like headlines, what are things that people think like what should the proposal say? And then we kind of have the have the puzzle pieces of the proposal. And all we need to do is give it a slight edit and make some choices about what ends up in the final proposal, and then we can make a decision about it. So it's just one of those little tools in the in the toolbox of sociocracy that really helps groups almost crowdsource solutions from from the teams or from the committees so they can solve the issues on their own.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  49:28  
So this picture forming in this decision making practices are what we have been offering at the UUA, there's a training on discernment circle practices. The idea of this picture forming, I think, has just been really helpful about learning how to communicate and create clarity, especially around ministry decisions. I often see groups who come to let's say, do a fundraiser or to put on a worship service or to plan a summer program for the religious education children. And everyone walks into the room with kind of an idea of what that might look like, or maybe half formed ideas of what that might look like. And conversation starts, and everyone has their own idea in their head. And sometimes they're close enough that they think they're talking about the same thing, but they're really talking past each other. So this taking a step back to create a shared understanding of what you want to do in the ministry,  in particular, before you actually go into the proposal, part of it is really helpful for worship services. I often start out with a question, how do you want people to feel as they walk out the door at the end? And work our way back from that? So you know, do a round about how do you want people to feel? Maybe Maybe you're planning a month's worth of services and say, Okay, we have this theme, like, do we want to have different emotional kind of footprint for each of these services and deciding what those are and then work back from that? Okay, so what are some things that help people feel hopeful as they walk out the door? What are some things that help people feel like they have had a chance to mourn things that are lost as they walk out the door? So having that shared sense, helps to inform then, okay, what are the elements of the service going to be? Do we choose a hymn that's in a minor key or a major key, all those things, decisions can be guided by the shared understanding or picture forming, that your ministry team might do together?

Ted Rau  51:34  
So what we just did was talking about how we walk kind of in a meeting towards a decision, and where proposals come from, to even make decisions, how we can write them together. And now I want to talk about consent as a decision making method, because that's one of the key pieces. And I think it really does make a big difference. So whenever there's a proposal, there will be some people in the room that say, Yay, awesome proposal, let's do that. That's exactly what we should do. This is the best proposal. It's also exactly what I want. And we say, for those people, the proposal is their personal preference, right? It's what they would vote for, for example. Yet. Typically, there are actually more options that we could say yes to then the one, that's our number one. Because maybe the proposal that I would have the idea that I would rank number two is actually totally fine. And I would totally go for it. But sometimes when we make decisions, we ask, do you agree with us? And let's say I want propose they I want this idea A, okay. But the proposal is to the B. idea b. And now somebody asked me, Do you agree with idea B? I would say no, I don't agree, because I think idea A is better. So asking, do you agree is not necessarily the right way to ask or not the most? Make it loses information? Because you're just asking me about my top one. But you're not asking me Well, would you be okay with B? Because probably, you know, chances are I would. So just by asking the question, you've basically now polarize the situation, because now people talk about what it is that they want. What is my number one? And they don't talk about what would you agree to? What would be okay, unacceptable for you? What could you work with? What could you live with? That's a whole different question. And that's what we call the person who like the range of tolerance is proposed to be your idea be within your range of tolerance. And if you ask that, instead of Do you agree, we might get a lot more yeses. And again, that doesn't mean that now we force people to say yes to things they didn't want, but just also catching all the things that they are also fine with. Outside of that, if something is really outside of our range of tolerance, and we object, that's totally welcome to, you know, we want to hear somebody says, Hold on, this is not going to work. I don't think we should do this. That's very, very valuable information. Think about the conflict,  for the period, period, dress the dresses earlier, right, an objection early on would have saved a lot of trouble. So objections are super, super welcome and valuable and precious. Yet, we have to make the distinction between what is acceptable just doesn't happen to be my number one. And what is an objection? And having those three categories is typically really useful for people to think about. And you can also see, now if we have more than one person, we have this kind of smaller area of things that we want, that's our favorite, right? And then the bigger area of things that we're willing to do, or willing to go along with, I guess, and if we only ever asked for people's preference to overlap, there will be a tiny area, we would hardly get anything done.

And maybe that's not even helpful to what we want to do, because we're doing so little because we hardly find enough common ground because we put the bar so high. And maybe that's not ultimately serving as either, right? It might be then that the plans are the perfect plans, but so rarely, that we're overall not moving forward as an organization. So now instead of we go for the overlap of the ranges of tolerance, now we have something to work with, which then helps us learn and adapt and do other things. Because the decision that we're making today, we might be able to review again in nine months, and by that time, we've learned something new. And that by that time, we might review it again. So we're not trying to make perfect decisions. We're trying to make decisions that are good enough, and then learn from there. So we make it a little easier to make a decision. But then we review and improve from them. One little example that I have just again, to have the difference between preference and range of tolerance. If I asked my kids, I have five children, if I have my kid asked my kids, do you want whatever pizza for lunch? I've already in asking the question that way made life really hard for everybody, including myself, because chances are that's not what they wanted, right? But now what are we going to do? So instead, if I ask, well, would pizza be acceptable? Or is there any reason not to have pizza? I've now asked the question in a way that is more inviting of people who would have had something else that's the preference, but a totally wanting to have pizza, which means yeah, we are going to actually have lunch instead of arguing with each other.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  56:44  
Now, if we overlay this idea of range of tolerance, with the picture forming, it really can help with a lot of decision making in our congregations. Because people at church have strong, strong opinions about things. And often it's really hard for people to let go of their preference, and be willing to go with their range of tolerance. And so if you have a high anxiety decision that you're doing, or trying to make, creating a shared understanding of what that decisions should do, or what qualities the decision should meet, is often very helpful. Again, worship people have strong opinions about hymn choices, whether or not to have an intergenerational service, there's all sorts of things that people have lots of feelings about. But if you can invite people into a place of okay, what's the big picture? For example, I often use hymn choice. And people have their favorite hymns. And people have hymns that they hate, right? And so if you have this create a shared understanding about okay, we need to choose a hymn and what what things do we want this hymn to provide the congregation? Do we want it to be singable? Do we want it to be? Do you need to be able to see the music or not see the music? How do you want people to feel after they they've sung the hymn, you know, just come up with your own list for that group for that moment in time. And then as you look at the hymn choices, you're looking at those choices against the list along with people's personal preference. And what that tends to do is he invites people into kind of a wider view of this particular hymn at this moment in time has this thing and maybe Spirit of Life, though my favorite hymn may not be the best choice for this particular moment, it can still be my favorite hihymnm, I'm not being disloyal to that hymn by saying, Okay, I'll be happy with Gathered Here is the hymn at this moment in time. So again, this is just another way of inviting people into decision making, which has a wider view, hopefully is more inclusive, and the person with a really strong opinion doesn't always get their way.

Ted Rau  58:58  
Because the marginal hymn in this case, or the one that you know, is maybe maybe somebody is in the minority, but they might get their favorite from time to time because it's actually in the range of tolerance for everybody else. So that's where we have less of that monoculture that we talked about in the beginning, right, and we have more opportunity for not the big strong majority voices to come through. So consent really supports that in exactly the way they're just saying I like that

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  59:32  
We've been focusing on some of the bigger, more impactful decisions and how to create a sense of shared understanding and to come to a resolution that's within everyone's range of tolerance. But in sociocracy, circles operate in different modes or in different with different purposes at different times. So you're not going to do these deep rounds of top of picture forming, to approve the minutes, right, that's not going to happen. So there's different ways that the circle operates. One way is what we call policymaking mode. And if you're like me, like I hear about policies, it's like, oh, I just feel like someone put a big, huge 20 pound weight on my shoulders, because we got to work on policies. But actually, um, sociocracy has taught me that policy is really just having a deeper discussion now and then saying, okay, the discussion we had now is going to inform future decisions. So rather than revisiting that, that, that, you know, deep, deeper discussion, you actually make a decision that, hey, for future decisions, we're going to do A, B, and C. And that's our policy for future decisions, you can always revisit it, but it actually in the fullness of time, saves your circle a lot of time, and just aggravation and everything. I've been in congregational board meetings where we have rehash the same thing over and over again. So basically, hash it once, put it in a policy, and you don't really have to hash it again, until you really need to revisit it. So another mode is operational mode is it's just deciding what to do in the moment, maybe there's, you might have to, if you're a board, you might have to approve an expenditure. If you know your worship Arts team or worship committee, you might be putting together an order of service. And so this operational mode is a little more agile, it might be something very quick, you don't necessarily have to go into this really deep conversation for unless you need to. And then then you kind of shift into that, that secondary mode where you go into more of a deeper discussion, maybe do some picture forming. If you feel like people aren't on the same page about something, you might want to step back and do some of that work. There's this program proposal shaping mode, which Ted talked about earlier, sometimes people come with a proposal, and you just engage with that proposal. Sometimes people just come up with an idea, or maybe you have a problem or a challenge that you need to kind of figure out as a group. And so getting to the point where you even like what what should even be in the proposal, you have conversations around that and then delegate that to maybe a smaller group and have them bring it back. And then you have a proposal that you can have at hand to decide on the. There's another mode, which we talked about in the discernment circle training, which is the election mode. And that's when you're making a decision, specifically, are most usually about what roles people might have. And so first of all, you agree on what the role requires, how long your role is, and then you make elections, proposals about who best fits the qualifications for that particular role. If you're interested in this, there's a lot more information out there. But I just wanted to at least go over these with a broad brush.

Ted Rau  1:03:05  
I want to add one little thought which is, I completely agree with you, you know, you say policy. And people are like, I know that sounds that sounds tedious. And I think of it all of these different pieces, I think of it as let's make it easy for ourselves. Because as she was saying we spend a lot of time redoing decisions that could just be done in a package deal. And a package deal for decisions is when a policy is right, let's just throw them in a package deal. And then we're done with it. And then in operational knowledge, we can have just the will just on a small scale, but just trying to get this one piece decided, which means we don't have to make it such a big deal. And just knowing kind of what's what's not a big deal. And what is the big deal just helps us be intentional about how much time we want to spend on it. And then election mode. Also, if we cluster things tasks into a role, and we sit down and think about who's going to do this, we're saving ourselves time again, because we don't have to talk each time about who's going to do this next time, who's gonna do that next time was gonna do this next time. Instead, we cluster in a role, give it to the person, right. And then we've now freed up our minds and our meeting time to talk about things that are important to us instead of having to deal with so many moving parts. So it's all I mean, that's what sociocracy or governance should be it should support us and making things easy for ourselves. And we shouldn't forget that that's what it's all about.

I quickly mentioned objections and how they are gift and we had the perfect example but the costumes and the ball was a, Yes, it is actually already the perfect example. So I'm just going to repeat it a little bit to be more clear about it. So in a consent decision in a circle, every member of the circle needs to give their consent for a proposal to move forward. If somebody object, that means not yet, this is not ready yet to move forward, because there's still this thing that isn't working out. So when objects If one says, Hold on, we can't actually do overall what we're doing if this proposal moves forward. But so in a way, in a kind of colloquial, informal way of saying it, and objection is when we say hold on, we're gonna shoot ourselves in the foot. Yeah. I think if we move this forward, this other thing is not going to work out. And then obviously, we're going to listen because the people that you work alongside with and that you trust, one of them says, Wait, this is not going to work, if then what else would we do with them to stop and listen, right. And that's what we do when there is an objection. And typically, once an objection is well understood, and there are many great processes and sociocracy what one can do with objections, typically, it's not so hard to integrate an objection, typically when people have already done the listening and in the rounds, and so on, or the clarity of who decides what objections are fairly manageable. And I know that sounds scary to people, but they are fairly manageable, once everything around it is in place. So that's really what an objection is. And, again, we're making a decision in small groups. So it's not necessarily everybody anywhere that needs to be totally in on it. But it's a circuit that makes a decision that also makes it more manageable.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  1:06:33  
So along with the objection piece that really talks about this shooting yourself in the foot foot kind of decision that you want to provide an opportunity to interrupt bad or disrupt what's what the status quo might be. There's also that not everyone has to agree. And so I've been in decisions, circle decisions, where someone feels like, like, they really don't like the decision that's happening, and yet they're not objecting. So sometimes we'll do like I consent round, or sometimes we'll say any objections. And the person like the person who's the dissenter, it still gives them an opportunity to say, I really don't like this decision, but I'm not going to object to it. So there's an opportunity to be a like, this isn't my opinion, I want you to hear my opinion. And I'm not going to block it. Because I don't really have this. It's not something that's fundamentally going to hurt us or be in conflict with our mission, or it really has to be a substantive objection. But it still gives people an opportunity to disagree, like pretty passionately, but still not block the decision from moving forward because it's not blocked because of a substantive organizational impact or individual harm, kind of reason for objecting.

With mid sized to larger congregations who have staff, the staff really pays attention to carrying out the mission into the organization and helps to empower other leaders and volunteers and things to carry out the mission and make decisions. And so I have a diagram here, which is, again, we don't have very many congregations who have implemented this at this level. And so I'd love to hear Ted from you about how a minister who is not really, is in partnership with the congregation, as a whole, a called Minister has a relationship, a covenant relationship with the congregation as a whole and is entrusted to help lead the congregation it is serving its mission specifically, and often has staff, music staff, religious education staff, who helps carry out that mission. And so I'm imagining that the staff provides part of the linking pieces to the different elements of ministry. So the the minister, for example, would be in this diagram, I have the staff as being its own like kind of mini circle. And then there's this program Council kind of circle. But the minister would be the person from the general circle, the program circle, that would be a liaison to the Sunday service circle. And then there'd be someone from the Sunday service circle who would sit on the program Council, the same thing with the music director might be represented in that Sunday service circle. The same thing with the enrich program. religious education, faith development, the religious educator might be the person who's the interface and then there's someone from that circle who would sit on the program Council circle and then maybe the external there might be a membership coordinator or something who's that the link to the outreach circle and then there's someone from the outreach circle who would sit on the program circle I I'm curious, how does this look to you?

Ted Rau  1:10:02  
So let me just do some out out loud thinking, okay, because I think it's going to be helpful. So if we compare this kind of two very classic Socratic structure, the general circle, right, what's the program counsel here has the task of making sure all the information flows, and the other pieces are connected, all the major pieces are connected, and everybody knows what's happening overall. And if we need to change some of the domains, I guess, some, some, yeah, just change how everything fits together, then it would be a decision in the general circle. And if we, for example, change the aims and domains of one of the program's circles, that will be a big deal, right? That's, that's a big change. And we would want some good participation in that decision. Now, the staff as a subset of the general circle makes a lot of sense. It's basically it's the kind of part of an leaders only meeting and in the sociocratic jargon, where they are more supporting and more kind of bringing bring impulses from the organization into the program circles, while then the decisions that would made in would be made if we change the aims and domains of programs circles. because we make overarching decisions, I would want those to be made in the general circle with that extra person, not just the staff, because that's what it means to make decisions together. So there's, there's a interesting, interesting tension between that is baked into sociocracy has nothing to do with what you draw, but it kind of surfaces that between what are what a general decisions policy decisions are more about about governance system? And what is operations and operations tend to when I say that very, very cautiously. Operational decisions tend to be a little bit more top down, while the governance and how would you set up? How do we set up things generally tends to be very, very flat. So we want a we want good participation with a lot of people making making those general decisions. So yeah, that's how that's how it relates to me, I see it as the operation heavy parts in the in this staff. And that makes a lot of sense. And then bringing those impulses. But that doesn't mean that this top down power, because we in the aims and domains, we create our sandboxes, right, and those that we do as equals. So you, you know what I mean, with a tension between the operational kind of top down-ish, perspective, and then holding the frame together as equals,

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  1:12:48  
What part of the tension is, is staff has a lot more time to devote to help make things happen, I think of volunteer time as being dog time worth a seventh of the time that staff has because staff with not all staff is full time, but they have a commitment and intention and attention to carrying things out. And so in some ways, I'm hearing this this, these bigger decisions, like I talk often about guiding documents, there's guiding documents that help guide decisions. And so the general circle helps develop the documents or the policies that guide staff. So the guide, the staffs not just going off doing whatever on their own, they're doing so and being informed by what the general circle at a program council circle, the conversations that happened in those in that in that wider group that takes in kind of the understanding of the laity in the congregation. One piece is the role of the minister in this organization. And we have one of the previous governance fads was Policy Governance. John Carver's Policy Governance, which has a very strong CEO leader, which, you know, sometimes gave the minister a little bit more ability to get things done in the congregation, but often disconnected lay, lay people from decision making. And so there's there was some some tensions around that. And this is something where I see the minister really has to have a commitment to shared lay ministry, where in some ways the the authority of decision making and guiding the direction of the congregation. Those guiding conversations are ones that the minister invites the congregation in and helps to actualize but the minister isn't exactly driving the bus. The minister is helping to create the container and being the, I don't know, we don't we don't have many metaphors that match this because they're is not a lot of things, and at least in society where this goes, but it's really more of a facilitator and a person who's supposed to have the big picture, like, are we paying attention to mission, which is kind of what ministers do anyway, but the minister also kind of gives away some of the traditional power that ministers have had to the direction of the congregation.

Ted Rau  1:15:24  
So I am basically in this position, because I'm the executive director of a nonprofit that has about 200 people and two thirds, at the very least, like three quarters of those are volunteers. So I find myself in exactly that position. And what I noticed myself doing is whenever I have an idea of something that I want to happen, I know there's no way I'm just going to, you know, push it, like, that's just not going to happen. Because I know I need the buy in of all the steps along the way. So it's more that I might do my thinking and get some heat feedback from people. So it's not the driving the bus, as in, I'm going to make up my mind and then go do it. And everybody has to jump on as a jump, that's not the relationship, the relationship is more that I happen to be spending 40 or more hours on this stuff, you know, just like a full time staff does. And of course, then I will have some overview and just more time to think about it, then a volunteer for whom that is a smaller part of their of their waking hours. So what then happens is that I might, for example, write a more strategic document, and then I run it by people, you know, and I do the legwork of talking to people and so on. It's more like a community organizing effort, actually, like a top down community organizing effort to advocate for my ideas and see how it would land on people in the course of that I get feedback, and so on. And then it might end up in a more strategic level policy, that then requires consent from the people on the general circle. So there's no way I'm going to be able to do my own thing. But that doesn't mean my hands are tied, I can still bring my ideas and bring those impulses, I just know that I have to work with what is going on for people and really advocate for my ideas and have kind of a deeper saturation of that of that shared sense making, then if I would just, you know, put out the guidance and say, Now do as I said, so it's a different relationship. But one can still have volunteers that are less involved and staff and kind of get the get the advantages of both when doesn't want doesn't give away the advantages that a full time staff person has in the overview and the direction that they can get.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  1:17:44  
Of course, the minister has the pulpit and other sorts of venues to help frame help provide framing and acceleration and things like that to what the group as a whole is doing. So.

Thank you so much, Ted, for being with us for this workshop. Sociocracy for All is an amazing organization, I am taking their academy. a part of their Academy right now, which I'm really enjoying. My hope is that within the year, we'll have a community of practice for congregations who are interested in exploring sociocracy. We do have some resources on the UUA websites and introductory resources, as well as some things to practice circle decision making and things like that. But Sociocracy for All has a lot of amazing resources. If your congregation wants to do a deep dive into exploring this.

Ted Rau  1:18:41  
Yes, I want to just to help people, because I've seen the question always of how to start. And that's exactly what we're trying to do, right, we're trying to give people the option of trying out this kind of governance, communities of practice are a great way to do that. And we do a lot of networking for people to find each other, and in other different sectors, among them also among UUs, and we throw we try to provide enough resources out there in the world videos and articles and whatnot. So people can get an idea and really whet that appetite. Because ultimately, if one goes for this kind of organizing, one has to really own it completely and understand it well enough and so on. So that is what we're trying to do offer that so people can find the path more easily and don't have to reinvent the wheel. So thank you for having me. Okay.

Rev. RenŽe  Ruchotzke  1:19:33  
I also want to mention there are organizational memberships.

Ted Rau  1:19:37  
So I can say something about organization memberships. So we have relationships with a lot of organizations now that have been kind of adopting sociocracy in in, in collaboration or just feeding off our resources and that's great. And often then there's the question of how can we have a more formal relationship to Sociocracy for All. So we created organizational memberships, which means that everybody who is part of a organization that is an organizational member can get discounts on trainings and so on. Just have a longer standing relationship where we can really understand the organization, the member organization, and really be have ongoing, ongoing support. And for members to really immerse themselves in, in, in this world, right, because it's this whole new transformational way of working together and running an organization and that's just very hard to do all by yourself. Even if you group it really helps to be plugged into the wider system and learn from each other then.

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