Sociocracy: thinking smarter together | John Buck | TEDxUMD

In many ways, the world is skidding out of our control, both at a global level and at a personal level that directly affects students. The symptoms are as varied as the dramatic surge in species extinctions, a four-fold increase since 1980 in incarcerations, increasing suicide rates, ballooning student debt, and a sharp decline in teaching students about civics and methods of self-governance.

Amazingly similar solutions to these broad societal problems started developing in the late 1970s in the Netherlands and India, unbeknownst to each other - until about six years ago. Known in the Netherlands as sociocracy and in India as Neighborhood Parliaments, the solution is starting to get notice. Companies and organizations on every continent are using sociocracy successfully. In India and some other countries, there are more than 200,000 Neighborhood Parliaments. The approach is starting to have a society level impact, including at the United Nations, and could be dramatically useful to students and their universities.

John Buck has been working with organizations all over the world to help infuse principles of consent and transparency leading to increased equality, freedom and sustainability for people and communities associated with those organizations. He has led dozens of sociocracy implementation projects in varied organizations such as schools, universities, healthcare providers, software companies, materials manufacturers, professional organizations, and ecovillages. He is co-author, along with Sharon Villines, of the book "We the People, Consenting to a Deeper Democracy" (http://www.sociocracy.info/we-the-people/) as well as co-author, along with Jutta Eckstein, of the just published book "Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, and Sociocracy." (https://leanpub.com/bossanova)

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

This is an octopus.

Octopuses - or octopi as some people say -

have a deep message for us

in the power of group intelligence
and the way we govern ourselves.

Octopuses are one of the smartest
animals on the planet.

If I take a pill bottle,

and put a piece of fish in it,
and put a childproof cap on it,

and give it to an octopus,

the octopus will figure out how to open it
faster than a chimpanzee.

Octopuses have a sense of humor.

If you put them in a laboratory,
you better be careful

because they're very good
at getting out of their tanks

and playing practical jokes on scientists.

(Laughter)

And humans and octopuses
are the only two animals,

the two species,

that when they're angry with each other,
have fights by throwing rocks.

(Laughter)

But the big question is,
How do octopuses think?

Now, I know there's
a lot of students in the audience,

and students like quizzes, I know.

So let's have a quiz,
a one-question quiz.

And the question is,
How many brains does an octopus have?

Three, eight, five.

An octopus has nine brains.

Each arm has a brain,

and then there's a central brain,
the ninth brain.

Each arm is an individual personality.

There's adventurous arms and shy arms

and emotional arms
and sexy arms, and so on.

(Laughter)

And there's a ninth brain.

And the interesting thing
about that ninth central brain

is that it's not really a command
and control center

the way our brain is.

It's more like a facilitator.

So it might look around and say,
"Heh, there's a crab over there,"

and say to the arms, "We need some food."

And then the arms take over
and start coordinating,

maybe they use the eye information
from the main brain,

but they coordinate
and go grab that delicious crab.

This is very much unlike human beings.

When we get together,
there's no built-in coordinator.

We have to contribute to it
to build the ninth brain function.

Usually, we just end up

jockeying for power,

and so you end up with one brain
in the ninth brain position,

and there's like no improvement
in group intelligence.

So we have to be trained in order
to have the ninth brain function.

It's almost like octopuses
are ahead of us in evolution.

There are a number of insights
that we can gain from this

that you can use today as students,

and you can use for the rest of your life

in your career, in your family,
in your clubs, your politics.

And let's see where these concepts
have been developed.

It seems that India and the Netherlands
are in advance of everybody else

in adapting octopus technology
to the improvement of democracy.

Father Edwin John and Dr. Gerard Endenburg

worked independently
of each other for a long time

and only recently discovered

that they both discovered
the same pattern,

which I think is very exciting.

So let's look a little bit
of what they have to say.

Democracy is rule by the "demos."

And the "demos" is like
the general mass of people

with no particular connection.

And you say, for example,
the Senate at the University of Maryland

I understand is a pretty good
democratic institution.

It does an okay job of providing
the ninth brain function

of, you know, creating group intelligence.

But it could be improved a lot.

For instance, a self-respecting octopus
would never try to get 200 arms

to think together.

Let alone do it by majority vote.

Sociocracy, which is
Gerard Endenburg's term,

means rule by the "socios,"

which means people who have
kind of a social connection.

"Socios" in Spanish,
I understand, means partner.

So it's like sociocracy
is sort of a subset of democracy

that's designed for organizations.

Both men say that the basic
political unit should be a small,

a relatively small group of people,
where we all can see each other,

nobody needs a microphone,
every voice matters.

And that you should be taking
these basic units and building them up.

Representatives go
to the next higher level -

"Circle" as Gerald calls it
or "Parliament" as Edwin calls it.

Again it's fairly small,

and then you build up
through society that way.

Gerard's work has been mostly focused
on organizations and companies,

and there's companies and organizations
in the thousands around the world

that are using sociocracy.

Edwin has been focusing more

on what he calls
"Neighborhood Parliaments,"

organizing people who are living together,
living near each other.

And in India, there are more
than 200,000 neighborhood parliaments

and a children's parliament system
that corresponds with that.

So how can we apply
the insights of Edwin and Gerard

to your life as students

and lifelong as you pursue your career

and in your families
and in your politics, and so forth.

[What happens without a ninth brain?]

Let's start asking the question,
What happens when there's no ninth brain?

Let's say that you're in class
and the professor says,

"Okay, it's time for a group project."

And you get assigned
to be with a group of five people.

Does any of these sound familiar
to what happens?

If you've not been trained
in "ninth brain" technology,

you may be unable to start on time.

You may not be able to get everybody

to the first meeting
of this project group.

And if you don't know
to consent to a facilitator,

then the ideas that you have
may not be all that well discussed,

there may be conflict
between team members

that's hard to control.

The dominating personalities
will come in and say,

"This is the way it's supposed to be."

And these shy personalities
that have a lot to say don't say anything.

And if people actually do,

do their tasks and start
to carry them out -

well, actually that's unlikely,

if you don't know to consent
to an administrator

who follows up with everybody

in making sure that they're doing
what they're supposed to be doing.

So often I think it ends with,
maybe, three of you, if you're lucky,

spending an all-nighter
trying to pull this project together

because you care about your grades,
cursing the other two that aren't there.

And

that's how it tends to go
if you haven't had good training,

which a lot of us haven't had.

The octopus's message is,

Support each other,

govern together.

You're going to be working
with people in groups

the rest of your life.

And a lot of your success in your career

is going to depend upon how well
you are able to function in a team.

Employers prioritize looking for people
who have a proven record

of being able to function in a group.

Let's look at a different scenario.

Here we have a group of students.

They're meeting.

They might be in a club,
a university club.

They might be doing a project
of some sort, like we just talked about.

They might be people in a dorm,

maybe one section of a dorm.

But they're meeting together,
and they know what they're doing.

They know about ninth brain technology,

so they're making decisions
very effectively, very fast.

How are they doing it?

Well, they're using
something called consent.

And that's not consensus,
and it's not majority vote,

quite different.

If you're making a consent decision,
and one of the brains here says,

"Oh, I have a great idea.
It's this and this."

And nobody sees a risk in it
that you can't take,

the decision's done.

Good enough for now, safe enough to try.

Consent is acceptance,

it's not agreement.

So, what does the facilitator do?

Facilitator makes sure
that the conversation flows,

that everybody gets their input.

One of the techniques
you might want to try

is to do what's called a round,

where you go to each person and hear
what their opinion is about a topic

so that everybody's heard,

they're equivalent, which really helps
the self-organizing of thoughts,

and everything's fair.

And there's no crosstalk allowed.

The administrator is really necessary

because if you have group intelligence,

you need a group memory.

And so you need notes,
and you need to organize.

You also need somebody who carries out
the decisions and the action items,

or makes sure they're carried out
after the meeting is over.

That person might be a club director,
it could be an RA in the dorm,

I mentioned before in the project
it could be the administrator.

But what's most important

is that everybody needs
to contribute to this ninth brain.

We don't have one there,
we're not octopuses,

and we have to contribute to it.

So everybody might have some task

to be representative
to another group on campus

or handling a project, and so forth.

The feeling of intimacy

and the feeling that I'm an individual
but part of something greater

is something that occurs
relatively infrequently to us

because we don't know
how to organize in a connected way.

If you're in an octopus, like let's say,
I'm one arm of an octopus,

and I look at you, and you're another arm,

I might say, "Wow,
we're sharing the same blood.

We're sharing the same food.

We're both in the same skin.

I can't escape from you and you from me.

We have to get along."

But humans don't have this constriction

so you really have to know the discipline

in order to achieve the kind of energy

you get out of a meeting
that's run by consent,

and the flow that comes out of it.

I want to give some examples

of how groups around the world
are using "ninth brain" technology,

group intelligence,

to have fun and do
some really interesting things.

This is a playground in India.

The children are meeting in Parliaments.

The children know about
ninth brain technology,

they know how to use consent
to elect each other.

They all have roles in their neighborhood

because they're organized
by neighborhood, not by grade.

There are many heartwarming stories

about the accomplishments
students have made in India.

They really have an effect
on their society, getting bridges built,

getting laws about when children
have to leave school -

you know, the girls leaving school early
for getting married;

they've managed to stop that -
all kinds of amazing things.

At the School of Media, Culture & Design

in Woodbury University in California,

the professors decided they were tired
feeling overwhelmed all the time.

It wasn't any fun.

So by consent,

they forbid themselves
to take work home at night.

They prioritized their work,
they worked the priorities,

and they found that they were
much fresher each day.

They were thinking a lot better,

and the school kept growing and growing.

The lesson is that there may be things
in your life that just seem overwhelming,

like you have no control over them.

But together, you can solve
those kinds of problems.

And together, we can solve
some of society's problems

that seem so intractable.

Here is Eindhoven University
in the Netherlands.

The graduate students -
the doctorate students,

and the master students get together

under the sponsorship of Sjoerd Romme -

he started it -

to support each other
in their thesis work.

That's normally pretty lonely work.

And they get together
and they support each other.

And then in the end, they use
sociocractic election methodology

to elect their grades.

Professor and the students say,
"These are your grades."

And you'd think like, "Oh my goodness,
the students are telling me my grade,"

but actually, people who experience it
are very enthusiastic about it.

They say that it's a very fair process
and the learning is very deep.

The process of sociocracy

brings all kinds of benefits.

The people in this room are the leaders.

You are amazingly talented;
you're the change-makers.

And society desperately needs you

to improve the governance technology
for yourselves in our institution.

Let's work together

to build a global culture

that looks at decision-making
as a time for artistry,

not a time to have a fight.

I encourage you to try out
ninth brain technology

while you're a student

so that when you get into your career,

you'll be much better prepared
to transform society.

Check it out.

I'm John Buck.

I brought sociocracy
from the Netherlands back in late 90s.

I would love to know how you're doing.

This is the way you can contact me.

Please stay in touch.

And thank you.

(Applause)