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Opinions and preferences

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

If there’s one thing that my family and friends can rely on me for, it’s an opinion.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines an opinion as:

A view or judgement formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

But is everything that we have a view on actually opinions? Are some things mere preferences?

The OED defines a preference as:

A greater liking for one alternative over another or others.

Recently, I’ve been doing some introspection about my preferences. This is, in part, due to the work that I’m doing while on loan to Outlandish from my home co-op.

Diagram showing 'preference' circle inside larger 'range of tolerance' circle

Outlandish use Sociocracy to make decisions, and the above diagram was part of my induction.

Sociocracy, also called dynamic governance, is a system of governance which seeks to create harmonious social environments and productive organizations. It is distinguished by the use of consent, rather than majority voting, in decision-making, and of discussion by people who know each other.

Wikipedia

What I like about Sociocracy is that it gives everyone a voice through the use of ’rounds’, recognises that emotion is an important part of decision-making, and (crucially) tackles preferences head-on.

This was particularly useful to me recently with some decisions we had to make about the colour scheme part of We Are Open’s rebrand. I realised that, while I’ll happily express an opinion on anything, these are usually based on mere preferences.

This realisation was more liberating than I expected it to be. As a result, I’ve resolved to check whether I’m expressing an opinion or simply a preference when interacting with others. I have a feeling that, most of the time, it will be the latter.

This post is Day 19 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. Want to get involved? Find out more at 100daystooffload.com

Weeknote 29/2020

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

I seem to have forgotten to write weeknotes over the past few weeks, which is odd as I’ve written them for years. I guess the change in routine has thrown me off-balance a little bit.

My last weeknote was 25/2020 which detailed my final working week at Moodle. Next week is actually my last contracted week, although I’ve done so much that it feels a lot longer than a month since I left. I’m certainly a lot happier.

This week I worked three days due to a magnificent long weekend which mean I took Monday off, and then a debilitating migraine on Thursday which took me out of action completely. The long weekend saw my son and I head to the Lake District for a couple of nights camping in a valley which had no mobile phone signal. It was very refreshing.

In addition to the work I’m doing through We Are Open Co-op, I’ve started helping out Outlandish with some project management. They’re another co-op who are part of the CoTech network and I spent most of Wednesday in a sociocracy workshop with them. I can’t tell you how amazing it is spending all of your working life working in a non-hierarchical environment.

I deactivated my Twitter account this week, not because of the hack, but mainly because of reading 33 Myths of the System by Darren Allen, which made me see a few things for what they actually are. I’m continuing to use my Mastodon account and am thinking about switching back to social.coop (if they’ll have me!)

Next week is more of the same, and then the following week we’ll be heading off on holiday to visit family down in Devon. I’m really glad we had two spectacular foreign holidays (New England and Iceland) last year!

Header image of the valley in which we camped last weekend.

Sociocratic design sprints

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

Update: Check out Kayleigh’s more comprehensive post on this at the Outlandish blog!

I wanted to take a moment to record a great twist that Outlandish made to the now-classic Google Ventures design sprint.

The week-long process, as documented in The Sprint Book, requires a ‘decision-maker’ with authority to sign things off. The reasoning?

Without a Decider, decisions won’t stick. If your Decider can’t join the entire sprint, have her appoint a delegate who can

On the very first day of the recent MoodleNet design sprint, Outlandish introduced us to a way of making decisions without recourse to a single person. That process is sociocracy (or ‘dynamic governance’) and something that, as a co-operative, Outlandish uses on a daily basis.

Sociocracy process

Here’s how it works:

  1. Appoint a Chair and Note-taker
  2. Agree time boundary
  3. Invite proposal
  4. Clarifying round
  5. Initial reactions
  6. Test for consent
  7. Draw out concerns
  8. Group concerns
  9. Resolve one group at a time
  10. Test for consent on each resolution
  11. Repeat until consent is gained

In practice, over the week-long design sprint, it was more like:

  1. Invite proposal (e.g. “MoodleNet should use the same colour scheme as Moodle core”)
  2. Clarifying round (e.g. “Do you mean the exact same colour orange?”)
  3. Draw out concerns (e.g. “I’m concerned that people will get confused between our products”)
  4. Test for consent (e.g. “I don’t have any critical concerns”)
  5. Invite new proposal (e.g. “MoodleNet should use similar brand guidelines to Moodle core”)
  6. (repeat)

There are several benefits to this process, which becomes quicker and more natural the more times you do it:

  • The group gets used to giving consent despite having small concerns
  • ‘Critical’ concerns from individuals can lead to modified (and improved) proposals
  • The group can quickly move forward without getting stuck on opinions

I’ve read quite a bit about sociocracy in theory, but it was so good to see the approach working in practice. Not only did it make the week more democractic, but it actually accelerated things! The Outlandish team got us testing on Thursday instead of Friday, which meant we spent a day iterating and focusing on next steps.

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