Book Review: Many Voices One Song

Many Voices One Song: Shared Power with Sociocracy by Jennifer Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez is a new book on sociocracy. The book is a collection and description of sociocratic tools and practices.¹ Sociocracy is a set of principles and tools for shared power. The assumption is that power sharing requires a plan.²

Sociocracy is designed to distribute power.³ Sociocracy enables each team to contribute to the organization’s mission.⁴ The teams decide themselves how they govern themselves.⁵ Values translates into principles that are the underpinnings of the tools described in the book.⁶ Equivalence and effectiveness are the two major principles in sociocracy. Equivalence is defined as everyone’s needs matter equally.⁷ Sociocracy strives for both effectiveness and equivalence.⁸

There are three reasons for why Jennifer Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzales have written the book. The reasons are (1) to build skills, (2) to avoid reinventing the wheel, and (3) because they care deeply about equivalence. In the book, they share what they know about shared power and how to do it.⁹

The book has six major chapters covering the:

• Organizational structure (68 pages).¹⁰
• Consent decision-making (60 pages).¹¹
• On feedback and learning (28 pages).¹²
• How to run a sociocratic meeting (56 pages).¹³
• Roles and elections (29 pages).¹⁴
• Implementing sociocracy (37 pages).¹⁵

Jennifer Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzales write that implementing sociocracy is harder than running an organization sociocratically. If you are the one who is in power, you have to be willing to share the power. And if you are not in power, you have to ask the one who is in power to share it.¹⁶ This means that the implementation of sociocracy starts in your mind.¹⁷ No matter what you do, you need to have two things absolutely clear: (1) a commitment to equivalence, and (2) a clear aim. You need to start with a shared agreement that you will strive for equivalence. The shared aim is necessary for effectiveness.¹⁸

To summarize, this book is a sociocracy manual. Jennifer Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzales are very experienced. They say themselves that if you are a beginner, the book probably gives you a level of details that is way too much.¹⁹ The book requires, in other words, a combination of reading and practicing and reading again.

The paradox, for me, is that 300 pages are required to describe what basically is common sense. People have cooperated for as long as humanity has existed. The principles behind sociocracy are not new.²⁰ Nomadic hunter-gatherer societies practice it, and have likely been practicing it, since prehistoric times.²¹ The book can help you to become more effective, provided you embrace equivalence and shared power. The latter is not so common.

Notes:
¹ Jennifer Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez, Many Voices One Song: Shared Power with Sociocracy (Sociocracy For All, March 2018), p.ix.
² Ibid., p.1.
³ Ibid., p.2.
⁴ Ibid., p.1.
⁵ Ibid., p.7.
⁶ Ibid., p.3.
⁷ Ibid., p.5.
⁸ Ibid., p.6.
⁹ Ibid., p.7.
¹⁰ Ibid., pp.16–84.
¹¹ Ibid., pp.85–145.
¹² Ibid., pp.146–174.
¹³ Ibid., pp.175–231.
¹⁴ Ibid., pp.232–261.
¹⁵ Ibid., pp.262–299.
¹⁶ Ibid., p.262.
¹⁷ Ibid., p.263.
¹⁸ Ibid., p.266.
¹⁹ Ibid., p.13.
²⁰ Ibid., p.ix.
²¹ See Sociocracy as practiced by the G/wi.

Related posts:
Book Review: Sociocracy by Gerard Endenburg
Sociocracy as practiced by the G/wi