Our collective is focused on creating an supportive community, where all members are respected and where their is a true balance of power, so that we can move forward and co create the necessary infrastructure to live sustainably and independently of the state. All,Whilst living in harmony with the earth.
This has been our main focus, but we have run into difficulty whilst organizing ourselves. Time, is one of our main currencies, so when we come together we want to make sure that we are using our time wisely and effectively. In the past our meetings have lacked structure and it was really frustrating to watch so much valuable time go to waste, with so much time spend going backwards and forwards, with no resolution in sight. We would also end up repeating a lot of information over and over as more people joined our collective. Time management was a big problem.
We wanted to develop the skills needed, so that we could become a lot more productive and also become very clear about our needs and how we can meet them. We have a tendency to jump into things, because so many of us are very enthusiastic about the collective and wish to be more proactive, but this at times, ended up with a lack of structure in groups. In the end holding us back.
So how best to move forward? We were really lucky, that the right person came to us at the right time, with the skills needed to help us formulate a new way.
Sociocracy is all about implementing a more productive way in which to organize ourselves so that needs of the community, of each individual and the environment are met. Where we focus on empowering each other and our collective.
The first step is identifying the needs of the collective so that we can then create a mission statement, where everyone is involved and it is agreed upon by consensus. The collective had an original mission statement but it is not one that was created by the group or voted upon by the whole. Integration is another key element of Sociocracy.
As we evolved, we also found that it was always the same people who were pro active and those people became part of a core council, which also focused on organizing the weekly meetings. But we realized that we really needed more people to become involved, to balance out the work load and to balance out the power within the group. It is very important for me that everyone feels equal within the collective and that no one person or persons hold more power in the group.
Over the last year, we realized that we we needed to organize ourselves into smaller groups which are more focused. We have tried to do this, but found it hard to keep the momentum going, as more pressing topics would arise and we would deal with them. It didn't help, that it was always the same people who offered to promote awareness, create the magazine, do legal research and offer support.This is a huge part of Sociocracy and this week, we began to work on identifying those groups and the roles within each one.
Each circle/group has a leader, facilitator, delegator and admin person. There will be a main circle/hub where 2 people from each circle will meet to discuss the overall progress and to ensure we are committed to the vision and achieving our aims.
We spend 5 days in Non Violent Communication training, which has been an excellent foundation on which to learn and develop our Sociocracy skills. It has been very exciting, to see all of this take place, to see our group grow and evolve. We still have another day, in which we will focus on group facilitation and feedback. I feel very positive about the impact that this will have on our collective and our ability to be more productive.
