02/11/2018
"Power Over" vs "Power With"
As an ecovillage design educator that was part of spiritual communities and social enterprises in the last 20 years I came across many cases of power abuse and conflicts the question is always
how to shift from the old traditional ways of "power over" hierarchal organizational structure to a new paradigm of "power with"?
that everyone voice is being heard and taking under ACCOUNTABILITY
That EQUANIMITY is being kept and decisions are made by CONSENT
that information is accessible to everyone and every process is happening in full TRANSPARENCY
That working in a circle can be a quick fun process with high levels of EFFICIENCY.
That the process itself contain FEEDBACK loops to check if we are on the right track…
2 years ago I encounter an answer to this question it is called "SOCIOCRACY" ,
it is a dynamic governance system that many Social enterprises, Ecovillages, NGO's and Businesses are implementing right now all over the world.
I was skeptical at first still exhausted from years of long circles that leads to no-action but as much as I been exposed to Sociocracy I could see how it actually works and wanted to learn more , so in the last few months I was meeting with very inspiring people from many different countries for a sociocracy leadership training.
So if you want to gain an actual experience and deepen your knowledge ,we can form an Empowered Learning Circle (ELC) facilitated by me as a service to the island's community.
ELC is an intimate group that will meet for 3 morning for about 4 hours to study Sociocracy using the platform and materials of "Sociocracy for all" a non- profit organization that is spreading this knowledge on donation.
there is only 6 spots in the group so the priority will be to people that lives or run a business in Koh Phangan, If you are interested just write in the comments "me too".
Never heard of Sociocracy? This is a 4-minute summary of the basic concepts. Sociocracy supports equal voice and effectiveness in collaboration, for instance...