The Butterfly Effect

How wonderful that a simple and unremarkable event in time can lead to such important consequences. Thinking back to where Sociocracy began for Yukon College, I am reminded of this concept many of you will be familiar with: The Butterfly Effect. Quickly put, it is "the idea that one butterfly could eventually have a far-reaching ripple effect on subsequent historic events" (taken from Wikipedia). How does this relate to Dynamic Governance at Yukon College?

To understand the history, we must go back about three years (2006), the the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Ottawa. In my role of President of the Yukon Francophone Association, I often attend national meetings in Ottawa, where representatives from all provincial Francophone associations meet to share ideas, plan, strategize, and so on. A good colleague and friend of mine, Denis Desgagnés, Executive Director of the Assemblée communautaire fransaskoise, started sharing about a new way of doing things, of making decisions, of communicating, of governing. That new way was supposedly more effective, more humanistic and inclusive, easy to use, leading to greater buy-in and satisfaction... and much more. Right away, my skeptic mind took over and I started to ask questions, often posed as opinions. Being the brilliant person that he is, Denis managed to answer all my questions and ignore my misplaced negative comments; but mostly, he managed to inspire me.

Move forward a year (2007). I am sitting in the community hall of L'AFY in the company of about 15 other people who had chosen to use their Saturday to listen to Francine Proulx-Kenzle, a wonderful woman from University of Regina's Institut français. The Institut français has a mandate to create a space at Regina University for French-language students to learn in French. It also has a mandate to work with the Assemblée communautaire fransaskoise and the community at large. As such, Francine and Denis were long-standing community partners and both were very familiar with Sociocracy (the original name of Dynamic Governance). Francine spent the day going over what Sociocracy is, how it can help organizations improve in terms of their decision-making and communications systems. At the end of that day, I found myself intrigued, somewhat confused, and very curious to learn more.

I went online and started digging. It took a while to find what I was looking for, as the web resources for this relatively new and relatively unknown approach were rather scarce (it is amazing to see how much more there is just two years later). I managed to find two links that turned out to change the course of my life, and, it turns out, possibly the course of Yukon College too. The first was a link to John Buck and Sharon Villines' book, We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy, A Guide to Sociocratic Principles and Methods (2007). By the way, Yukon College employees, I have many copies in my office if you ever want to pick one up. Of course, I was not so keen on waiting for the book to arrive, so I found a second document, that one full-text online: The Creative Forces of Self-Organization, by John Buck and Gerard Edenburg (founder of modern Sociocracy). Once I read the article, I was hooked. The butterfly's air displacement had morphed into a breeze that would soon turn into wind... but I am getting ahead of myself.

I spent the fall of 2007 reading the book and pondering its implications. I discussed it with friends and family, thought about it some more, and dug for more information. That's when I found Gilles Charest's book, La démocratie se meurt, vive la sociocracie (2007). February 2008 soon came around the corner, and that is when I met the new Vice-president Education & Training for Yukon College, Karen Barnes. I was involved in a few sessions where staff were asking her questions around her management style and beliefs, and I was impressed by her openness and willingness to work with people. A few weeks later, I went to her office and simply gave her John Buck's book. I told her I thought she would like it, to which she replied she was very busy but would try to have a peek.

The very next day, I got an email from her. A simple line: "I’ve read half the book already – it is very good reading. Sometime we should meet to talk about it – I keep thinking about how one would organize this institution into that model. Hmmm".

That was all I needed to get going. We met on a few occasions to discuss how this could be experimented with, and it was suggested we bring up John Buck for the occasion of the Yukon College President's Breakfast, held each year late in August. I contacted John with the idea and he gladly accepted the opportunity to come up to the Yukon to present his expertise on the matter (I think he was as excited about coming to the Yukon as he was to present us with the information, but I will let him confirm this or not...).

Between March and August, little was done other than to plan John's visit. He was to spend the entire day of the 27th with the Senior Management Team (from the President down to the Chairs), the afternoon of the 28th (the President's breakfast day) with the staff who attended (around 150 out of 200), and the day of the 30th with the Senior management Team once again. The day of the 30th ended with a proposal to have an 4-month experimental phase in two areas of the College: the Liberal Arts and the Library Services. That phase would culminate into a formal evaluation of the experiment, after which a decision would be made to cease or continue with Dynamic Governance.

It is difficult to believe that was only eight months ago! So much has happened since... but you will have to wait for my next post to read more on how the wind of positive change swept the College.