Why Sociocracy 3.0?
Not another method or (scaling) framework!
Using Sociocracy 3.0 helps you figure out how to meet your organization’s biggest challenges, take advantage of the opportunities you face and create the most value you can with the limited time, energy and resources you have available.
One of the key things that makes Sociocracy 3.0 powerful is it’s modular, patterns-based approach for developing organizations.
Did you know that you can build frameworks like Scrum, SAFe or Holacracy by putting together patterns from Sociocracy 3.0?
S3’s iterative, needs-centric approach to organizational development and change enables you to move beyond the limitations of prescriptive methods and frameworks to evolve your own, tailored made, fit-for-purpose approach. Developing organizations in this way will help you to avoid a lot of waste, but it also requires investing in learning for people to do it well.
Why the Sociocracy 3.0 Academy?
The S3 Academy is part of our strategy to take S3 to the next level. We want to raise awareness of what it takes to get the best out of S3 and provide the necessary avenues for learning. Our intention is to improve the professionalism of those using S3 and of those who are helping their customers do the same.
The fact is, Sociocracy 3.0 is an extensive system of concepts, principles and practices. While some are simple to get your head around, others require a lot of understanding and practice to learn well. But it’s not just about understanding the individual pieces. It’s also about learning how different patterns are more-or-less suitable in different contexts, how they can be adapted and how they fit together and in which ways.
Developing fluency with S3 requires a combination of theoretical understanding, learning by doing, succeeding and failing (ideally in safe-to-fail environments), and exchanging with others, including those with more experience and expertise.
New information is interpreted through the lens of our past assumptions and it’s hard sometimes to get out of our own box enough, to recognize what is different or new.
There is depth and subtlety to S3 that is often overlooked by people who just browse through
the guide. Since we launched S3, we’ve learned with regret of situations where misunderstanding (especially the kind of misunderstanding that people don’t know they have) has led to a lot of waste. Attending a workshop or an intensive course can be insightful, sometimes, even life-changing, but when we learn lots of new things in a short space of time, we often forget important details quickly as well. This is largely avoidable when people understand S3 well, but doing so requires an investment in learning and development over time.
Our approach
Based on 8 years of learning how to help people get the best out of S3, we’ve designed a structured learning path that offers you a holistic and integrated approach, to effectively develop the competence and skills you need.
Blended programs
E-learning modules introduce you to the numerous facets of Sociocracy 3.0. They help you to integrate knowledge, and build your understanding one important step at a time. Live sessions provide you with the space you need to experiment and reflect with others. You get to apply all you are learning in practice, with support from us and your friendly peers.
With numerous opportunities for asynchronous interaction as well, actionable assignments and opportunities throughout to verify your learning, we’ve got you covered every step of the way.
A coherent learning journey
We’ve broken the journey down into a series of parts. Our radically improved
Sociocracy 3.0 Practitioner Level 1 program includes a new
Foundations Course that will help you to build the necessary foundations on which to grow your practice. This follows with a
Practical Course where you get to apply and experiment with all you’ve learned.
If you wish to continue your journey, our
Sociocracy 3.0 Practitioner Level 2 program is designed to help you significantly deepen your understanding and develop your skills and fluency with S3. Over a period of a few months, we combine
live sessions and
assignments, with regular
one-on-one coaching and mentoring,
group supervision and intervision sessions,
peer mentoring and opportunities to
verify your learning. This program is designed to give you what you need to feel confident and able in your practice with S3.
Verification of learning
We believe certification programs often fail to guarantee quality and integrity of learning and competence. At their worst, they lead to arrogance and bias, and encourage shortcuts where people are driven to get their piece of paper, instructors teach people how to pass the test, and students fail to integrate what they learn.
However, at their best, certification programs provide people with structure and quantifiable ways to assess and validate their learning and growing competence. Therefore, we’re developing options for practitioners to
track and evidence their development, and provide assurance to others of their competence and skills.
For more information about this, go to our
FAQ page.
Personal, as well as professional development
When you’re learning about S3, you’re inevitably going to learn about yourself as well. S3 patterns can sometimes help to reinforce what we already know and do, but sometimes they invite us to act in ways that are different to our more habitual ways of orienting and acting in the world.
It’s at this interface between our habits and something new, that the potential for greater consciousness resides.
With greater consciousness comes the possibility to view life more objectively and with more nuance, and to make more considered choices about how to proceed. When you bring this level of awareness and scrutiny into the whole organization, great things start to occur.
