What's your feedback on this image description showing the main elements of sociocracy?

My organization, Youth Power Coalition, is working on a handbook to onboard members new to YPC to our sociocratic governance structure. As part of writing this handbook, we’re including and crediting many Sociocracy for All images.

Here’s a draft of our description of one of our images. Could you give feedback?

Title: Fundamentals of Sociocracy Visual

Description:

  • The visual is titled “Sociocracy” and an arrow pointing to the title says “governance by those who associate together”
  • The top left-hand corner shows a cartoon of five people, all wearing different hats, arranged in a circle with arrows going from one person to the other. This cartoon is labeled “the circle” and “defined authority empowers circles to act.” Another label points to one of the hats and says “process and operational roles”.
  • To the right of “the circle” is a drawing of a heart. The heart is surrounded by a circle of five arrows labeled “members speak in rounds”
  • Below the heart is an arrow that points to an illustration of “decisions by consent”. It shows three sections with speech bubbles that say, from left to right, “Love it”, “Not great but ok”, and “needs improvement”. “Love it” and “Not great but ok” are labeled “consent”. “Needs improvement” is labeled “objection”. An arrow going from “objection” back to “consent” is labeled “understand + integrate”.
  • Left of “decisions by consent” is a diagram that shows squiggly arrows pointing from “plan” to “do” to “evaluate” and then back to “plan”.
  • On the upper right there’s a drawing of an organizational structure that shows multiple circles all connected to one another.
    • At the center there’s a circle labeled “general circle”. An arrow pointing to “general circle” reads “alignment and flow of information.”
    • Below the general circle is the “mission circle” with an arrow pointing to it that reads “holding the organization true to its mission”.
    • Three bigger circles are arranged to the left, right, and above “general circle”
    • The circle above “general circle” has two smaller circles connected to it. That connection is labeled “circles form sub-circles as needed”
    • The circle at the right also has two smaller circles. A label that says “everything in its place” has three arrows that point to different circles.
    • The circle on the left is connected to one smaller circle. At the point where the circles meet, there’s a cartoon of two people. Each person has two arrows, one of the arrows points to the sub-circle and the other points to the big circle. This cartoon is labeled: “Circles are connected by 2 people.”
  • On the bottom right there’s a drawing of a piece of paper that has a list of meeting agenda items. The items are “Check in”, “ADMIN”, “consent to agenda”, “topics”, “Check out”. To the right of the drawing is the words “ :heavy_check_mark: reliable meeting format” and “ :heavy_check_mark: all needs considered”.
  • In the bottom right corner there’s a Sociocracy for All logo and their website “sociocracyforall.org”. The Sociocracy for All logo is a blue circle that has, inside, a flower-like image that’s made up of circles and sub-circles.
  • This image is shared under a Creative Commons Licence Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International, Sociocracy for All 2018.

Related Discussion

2 Likes

Wow. Great work. A picture tells a thousand words. One wants to put as many concepts as possible on to one page without making it too busy. These infographics will help us spread the concepts much easier. I love the friendliness exuded by the imagery.