The ideas in this essay were first explored in a talk I gave at the 2025 Sociocracy Conference, hosted by Sociocracy For All.
Introduction: When Process Becomes Performance
More and more of us are seeking ways to live, work, and decide together in ways that reflect our values. These are practices grounded in shared power, mutual respect, and care. Whether in schools, cooperatives, activist groups, or creative organisations, we are experimenting with new forms of collaboration. In this search, many turn to models like sociocracy, which promise more participatory and inclusive ways of organising collective life.
Sociocracy is one such framework. It offers principles and structures such as clear roles, shared leadership, and decision-making by consent, aiming to support horizontal governance. For some, this has been liberating. It brings clarity where there was confusion and voice where there was hierarchy.
And yet, structure alone is never enough.
Too often, I have found myself in decision-making spaces that follow the script perfectly. Everyone speaks. No one blocks. Agreements are reached. But beneath the surface, something is missing. The conversation feels flat. The presence is thin. People follow the process, but they do not seem to arrive in it.
This blog is an exploration of that tension. Drawing on philosophy, sociology, and organisational theory, I invite you to consider a different orientation. Not governance as a system to implement, but as a relational process to inhabit. This is not about rejecting models like sociocracy. It is about asking how we use them. Do they support genuine connection, or do they sometimes become rituals we perform without feeling?
What follows is not a technical analysis. It is a reflection on how power, emotion, attention, and presence shape our attempts to decide together. It is also a call to shift from procedural fidelity to relational fidelity. In other words, to move from asking whether we are doing it right, to whether we are still truly with one another in the process, or – in other words – is this useful.
When the Circle Feels Empty
I have sat in meetings that looked exemplary from the outside. The structure was followed. Decisions were reached with consensus. Everyone had a turn to speak. Yet something was absent. The energy in the room felt withdrawn. The gestures of participation were there, but the underlying relational life had gone quiet.
These are the moments that call our assumptions into question. What are we really doing when we follow the process? Are we deepening our capacity to listen, to respond, to remain present? Or are we performing inclusion while losing the very connection we seek?
As institutions become more complex and our social crises more urgent, it is tempting to reach for structure. But governance cannot be reduced to procedures. It is always embodied, always relational, always unfolding.
From Models to Mess
Sociocracy offers a framework that is often elegant. Originating in the mid-twentieth century, it combined Quaker discernment with cybernetic thinking to support more democratic forms of organising. It has since evolved into a widely adopted method for collaborative decision-making in everything from schools and community groups to international networks.
But no model is ever complete. Norbert Elias (2000) reminds us that human life is shaped not by systems, but by webs of interdependence. Social life cannot be managed from the outside. It must be participated in from within.
When we treat governance models as fixed systems, we risk reification. Georg Lukács (1971) described reification as the objectification of living processes. Axel Honneth (2008) reframes it as an ethical forgetting, a loss of sensitivity to the other as a living, relational being.
This forgetting does not always appear as violence. More often, it appears as routine. The process is followed. Everyone is included. And yet, nobody really shows up.
Power in Horizontal Forms
Even in spaces committed to equality, power does not disappear. It reorganises. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus helps us understand how (Bourdieu, 1990). Habitus refers to the embodied patterns of thought, movement, and expectation that are formed through our social histories. These patterns shape who feels confident to speak, who anticipates being heard, and who quietly holds back.
Miranda Fricker (2007) names this as epistemic injustice. Some people are discounted not because of what they say, but because of who they are perceived to be. The injustice lies not only in exclusion, but in the inability of dominant frames to recognise the validity of certain voices, styles of expression, or emotional registers.
Sara Ahmed (2012) adds that institutions also regulate feeling. They produce emotional norms. Calmness, control, and fluency are rewarded. Hesitation, grief, or anger may be labelled disruptive. And when governance processes reflect these norms, they begin to pattern which bodies are welcomed and which are read as out of place.
This is not a failure of inclusion. It is a failure of attention. It is a sign that the process has become more important than the people it was meant to serve.
Phronesis: Practical Wisdom in the Midst
What do we do when form ceases to serve?
Here we can turn to the ancient concept of phronesis. Aristotle (trans. 2004) described it as practical wisdom, the ability to discern and act well in specific, complex situations. Unlike technical skill or abstract knowledge, phronesis cannot be taught as a rule. It is cultivated through attention, sensitivity, and care.
Bent Flyvbjerg (2001) reintroduces phronesis in the context of social science, insisting that questions of governance are always ethical. Who benefits? Who is left out? What kind of future are we building?
This kind of wisdom arises only through participation. John Shotter (2011) calls it withness thinking, knowledge that emerges within dialogue rather than outside it. It is responsive rather than prescriptive. It listens. It improvises. It cares.
Haridimos Tsoukas (2005) agrees. He reminds us that organisations are not systems to be managed, but spaces of becoming. The challenge is not to design perfect models, but to enter into conversation with what is already alive.
Complex Responsive Processes
Ralph Stacey, Patricia Shaw, and Chris Mowles offer a theory of complex responsive processes that moves even further from the systems paradigm. They argue that organisations are not entities with boundaries, but constellations of interaction and response. Identity and coherence do not pre-exist participation. They arise in the moment, through gesture, interruption, and repair (Stacey, 2011; Shaw, 2002; Mowles, 2015).
This view builds on George Herbert Mead’s insight that meaning emerges in the space between gesture and response (Mead, 1934). It is never fixed. It is relational and improvisational. John Dewey (1939) carries this forward into democratic life, describing democracy not as a form of government, but as an ongoing practice of collective inquiry.
From this perspective, governance is not about managing outcomes. It is about holding space for relational process. It is about making room for the unknown, the unresolved, and the not-yet-articulated.
The Discipline of Staying
Even when we know this, the pull toward routine is strong. We settle into patterns. We perform process. We avoid discomfort. This is where Megan Boler’s pedagogy of discomfort becomes essential (Boler, 1999). She argues that transformation requires friction. When governance becomes too smooth, it may no longer be alive.
Michalinos Zembylas (2014) reminds us that hope is not the denial of pain. It is the willingness to stay with what is unresolved. Donna Haraway (2016) echoes this in her call to stay with the trouble. Governance, in this view, is not a problem to solve. It is a space to inhabit with care, humility, and courage.
Hartmut Rosa (2019) draws our attention to time. He observes that modern institutions accelerate. They rush toward outcomes. But resonance, the experience of being moved and responding, requires slowness. Governance becomes ethical when it makes space for that resonance.
Fidelity and Devotion
Paul Ricœur (1992) speaks of narrative identity as a form of fidelity. We do not stay the same. But we return to our commitments again and again. In governance, this is not about following a script. It is about remembering the promises we have made about how we want to be together.
This is what it means to build the ship while sailing. We are not working toward a static ideal. We are co-creating process as we go. And what holds us is not form, but devotion. A devotion to presence. A devotion to relation. A devotion to a future that is emerging between us.
Let’s Stay in the Conversation
If any part of this reflection resonates with you, or if you are navigating tensions in governance, facilitation, or decision-making in your organisation or collective, I would be glad to explore this further with you.
I support groups and leaders to develop participatory, relational, and phronetic approaches to collaborative process and institutional design. If you would like to begin a conversation, you are warmly invited to get in touch via the contact form or social channels here on the site.
Let us stay with the questions that matter. Let us continue to build processes that remain open, unfinished, and alive.
References
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