Lesson 1 Structure, rights, responsibilities.

We want to start with a better structure. We will use the points used in Holacracy so that each team can start implementing Holacracy as soon as they are ready. It is NOT my intention to make all decisions myself in the future. It is NOT my intention to have the main control over payments. It is NOT my intention to run Zimbabwe or any country from Switzerland. I intend to give you all the responsibilities for your own deeds. At the same time, I do not want our organization to have departments doing just as they think is good and, in the meantime, doing their own thing. That is, your own thing CAN be in line with Sound Prosperity. As long as you get paid in SPURT for the hours you make, you have to keep our rules. The rules are the constitution of our organization.

I spoke about Holacracy before, but until now I did not get much response, besides one Educator implementing it step by step already.

In Holacracy decisions are made locally by those doing the work. People KNOW what decision they CAN make, and what their LIMITS are. People are very confident in making decisions because they say, I want to do this, and this is our current strategy, and that totally makes sense.

Also, employees can have their own responsibilities, so that nobody needs to tell them what to do.

We know that it is too early to give all of you from today on all responsibility. I have seen that it is not functioning that way. The MAIN reason is that people change their minds and start doing OTHER things without even telling. That way there is a gap, and there is no one filling in that gap. One of the examples for this is the payment of the people. Yes, we have a better system to pay now, but payment can only be done on correct lists, and that is a BIG problem.

So, let us do this step by step.

I will start to introduce some words we will use while growing.

The Purpose is the WHY behind what we do

The first thing each team has to do is to decide to find the PURPOSE of the team (you do not make  a purpose, you will come up with one). The purpose is not something you dream of. It is something you work on each day to be accomplished. It is the anchor for your decisions.

WHY do you want to have this team? WHY do you want to work for its purpose? In the video about Voting you see how important the WHY is.

What does this team want to BE in this world and in Sound Prosperity? What is the purpose of your circle? Write it down. Make it IMPORTANT for all team members.

This is, by the way, also something we, as person, must find out for ourselves. What is the purpose you are here? I truly believe that everybody has a purpose. Why don’t we seem to know our purpose? We cannot just come up with an idea, but working our way to what we FEEL we want to do, we find our purpose.

Every TEAM in the overall purpose of Sound Prosperity knows its purpose and every ROLE in the teams know their purpose. When anything gets in the way of that purpose, we change something to unleash the purpose. All of you are creative in service of some larger purpose.

Everything is based on its purpose.

Every team knows its purpose.

Every role in that team knows its purpose.

If anything gets in the way of that purpose, we change something.

Everything is based on its purpose.

Every CIRCLE knows its purpose.

Every role in that CIRCLE knows its purpose.

If anything gets in the way of that purpose, we change something. 

In the introduction we read:

Unleashing purpose

Holacracy gives us a way of grounding EVERYTHING back to purpose. It makes sure we take one overall purpose for this enterprise and we brake it down. Every team knows its purpose. Every role in that team knows ITS purpose. When anything is getting in the way of that purpose, we change something to unleash the purpose.

Working ON the team

Most organizations have some way of executing through a meeting, getting things done together. Very few have a way of stepping back from working IN their team on work ON their team. Not just what work needs to be done, but what is the power of how we execute? What are the processes involved? What are the roles we are going to play?

Who makes which decision? It is really easy to get so caught up just MAKING those decisions that you don’t step back to say how can we more effectively make this decision? (it is like a regular conversation in a circle, as they call it in Holacracy. This conversation is not so much about what to do today and tomorrow, it is more about what we expect of each other. How can we make those things explicit? Because most times we just expect things of each other and we don’t talk about them.)

One of the things that makes Holacracy so powerful, is that is not a group that is trying to achieve consensus, it is people getting real autonomy to make decisions in their own roles, without having to check back with a boss. Without having to check with their colleagues. There are NO group decisions in Holacracy.

Everyone can become powerful, without managers, in service of some larger purpose.

What is the purpose of Sound Prosperity?

To make life better for you and me
and pay it forward wherever we can.

When we can see Sound Prosperity as a body

Each of us is an atom in that body, or a cell, some cells are building this organ, other that organ. The cells for the liver will not suddenly change and become cells for the skin. Each has their own responsibility which is their ROLE.

“The structure allows you the freedom. Much like the structure in the

roads… If it’s an appropriate structure, it allows you to think about other

things while you drive.”

– David Allen, author of Getting Things Done

Role

A role is a FUNCTION. It is not the PERSON doing the job.
A role is therefore never personal. You can take on several roles in your Team, so that all roles are available in each team. In a small team there might be someone being the vendor and the admin and the employee attendant.

Each Role has its own responsibility. People around you can count on you for that specific role. There might be a tension, where you don’t agree on how a person is fulfilling that role, but then there need to be a discussion about the ROLE, not about the person fulfilling that role.

Does that ROLE miss a certain responsibility? Is the ROLE depending on someone else? Is that ROLE taking his responsibility serious? The person responsible for a certain role accepted that role himself.

An Example:

Role: Worker in the production responsible for transport.

Responsible for being on time, for the other workers are depending on THAT ROLE to bring new empty glasses and take the production of the past day to another place. They cannot work properly when all the stuff is still there. ALL KNOW that the ROLE for the Transport is in the hands of THAT person.

Someone in the TEAM Admin might be responsible for checking the hours on a regular basis and will notice that the worker did not show up. Extra work for the Admin Team.

I will start to define certain Roles but would love you to ADD ROLES you think are important to describe.

ROLES are to be described for ALL people working in SP. A person can have more than one role. In some cases, it is even necessary to have more than one role, to be able to do certain things completely.

All people can SEE who has a certain role in a system we will buy, but until there, we will add the Roles in the blog http://SoundProsperity-Zimbabwe.blogspot.com

TEAM

A TEAM needs to decide which ROLES are to be available for that team so that all responsibilities are taken care of.

CIRCLE

The Educator is the Circle. All teams can CHOOSE to work with a certain CIRCLE. In many cases the teams choose to work with the Educator they worked with from the beginning, but there might be all kinds of reasons that the “child (team)” leaves the Educator and starts a team outside of the Educator or wants to join another Circle. There will be ONE Circle available for teams without an Educator for what reason ever. But all teams need to join a Circle, for the Circle will pay you and your employees (team members.) In a Circle is an important Role: Circle Counselor. The Circle Counselor is speaking with all teams and the team speakers speak to the counselor of the Circle. The Counselor is CHOSEN by all team speakers, OUT of all Team Speakers. The Circle should do its utmost to be a good circle, following their Purpose, for offering all kinds of services makes their Circle more attractive than others. That might be a reason to switch Circle. But a Circle is in fact run by the Team Speakers. They can discuss what new plans can be made to make the Circle better. How they perhaps can attract people with certain qualifications to be, for example, PAM or even BAM. People capable of setting up Business Plans. 

There needs to be an Admin team for ONLY Admin. Admin cannot be educators themselves, for that is a conflict of interest.
This Admin team might help the Admins of the Teams with their own Admin problems so that they can deliver perfect lists for payment.

There might be a team to develop ideas to make the area where the Circle is better, to do things for the Children, for the orphanages, the single parents, make daycares for the children or whatever. Also, the seniors need a hand.

Voting

The Teams are anonymously voting, each half year, the Team Speakers and they are choosing, anonymously, each half year which is the counselor for the Circle. By that, the counselor needs to proof him or herself and will do what he can to counsel the teams well, for he can be re-elected when he has points between 60 and 100.

I encourage you to come up with ROLES for a perfect community! 

https://goo.gl/forms/VxDyFS3gkcnJTZU93

Thank you!