I thought this conversation was going to be about meetings. And it was. But it turned out to be about something much larger: a fundamental redesign of power in organizations.

Sheella Mierson, PhD is a scientist-turned-organizational-consultant whose whole practice is built on a simple, subversive premise: meetings are a window into culture, and if you can fix the meeting, you can fix the culture. Henry Herschel brings a complementary lens — a business background helping packaged goods startups navigate the journey from entrepreneurial chaos to IPO — now applied to the fascinating challenge of governing a Jewish co-housing community in Berkeley called Berkeley Moshav.

And I came to this with skin in the game. I spent nine years in co-housing myself, in a 22-household community in Durham, North Carolina. So I know firsthand how quickly idealistic visions of communal living can devolve into parking disputes, pet policy standoffs, and festering factions. What Sheella and Henry are describing — the governance framework called Sociocracy — is the most elegant answer I've encountered to the question of how groups of passionate, opinionated people (and let's be honest, co-housing and startups both attract people with very strong opinions) can make real decisions together without anyone losing their mind or their dignity.

Sociocracy was developed by Gerard Endenburg, a Dutch electrical engineer who looked at a traditional organizational chart and said: I would never design a power system this way. There's no feedback loop. You can't steer it. What he built instead is a system of distributed decision-making, structured rounds, consent (not consensus), and built-in review cycles that treat every policy as an experiment rather than a decree.

After this conversation, I've been thinking about what a Sociocratic world might look like. The question that keeps haunting me: what could Google or Meta or Microsoft contribute and stand for if all their talented, idealistic people had a real say in what they built?

Topics We Cover

Meetings as Cultural Diagnostics

1. "Show me a meeting and I'll tell you what your culture is like" — why fixing meetings is a route into fixing everything
2. The difference between meetings that drain and meetings that build

What Sociocracy Actually Is

1. Gerard Endenburg's insight: a traditional org chart has no feedback loop, so it can't self-correct
2. How distributed decision-making gives everyone a say in the policies that affect their work
3. Why Endenburg built the system to run his own electrical contracting company — and what that has to do with power grids

Consent vs. Consensus: A Crucial Distinction

1. Why Sociocracy doesn't seek agreement — it seeks the absence of paramount objections
2. "Is this good enough to try?" as a more useful question than "Does everyone love this?"
3. How consent decision-making short-circuits faction formation

The Structure of a Policy Meeting

1. Clarifying questions round → Reaction round → Consent round
2. Why having a proposal that's well-thought-out before the meeting matters enormously
3. What happens when someone raises an objection — and why that's the point, not a problem

Policy Meetings vs. Operational Meetings

1. The crucial two-track system: setting guidelines vs. coordinating work
2. Why mixing these up is a recipe for frustration and dysfunction
3. The third type: picture-forming meetings, where you gather information before you can even shape a proposal

Feedback Loops Built Into the System

1. Every policy has a lifespan, success metrics, and a built-in review date
2. Why "we've always done it that way" becomes structurally impossible
3. How the system surfaces problems without requiring someone to be brave enough to speak up

Circles and Distributed Authority

1. How circles (teams with defined domains) make decisions within agreed-upon boundaries
2. Why this frees up the whole group from having to weigh in on everything
3. How information flows between circles — and how a frontline idea can reach the board

Real-World Application: Berkeley Moshav

1. Parking, kashrut, pets — the hot-button issues that tested the model
2. Henry on the learning curve: making errors, getting over the hump, building momentum
3. Why having about a third of the community fully competent in Sociocracy is enough to carry the whole

What This Could Mean for Your Organization

1. How a manager and direct report can run a two-person policy meeting as equals
2. Why people who feel heard stop building factions
3. A thought experiment: if the employees of major tech companies had real voice, would they be building the same things?

Resources

Mierson Consulting — Sheella's practice

The Sociocracy Consulting Group — Sheella's group practice, and where to find training courses including Foundations of Sociocracy and Facilitating Sociocracy

We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy, by John Buck and Sharon Villines (a great book about Sociocracy)

And it fundamentally changes the power dynamics in those organizations. Since that conversation, I've been thinking a lot about sociocracy and reading everything I can about it, and I've been doing a thought experiment.

They're allowing, uh, entities to spy on us. They're dumbing us down. They're addicting us. What if you took all those people in those organizations and gave them a say? So they're not simply employees working without a lot of leeway and choice, but they get to say, what do we wanna do? How do we want to spend our days?

So as you listen to the conversation, we start out talking very, very granularly about how to have a meeting. But I want you to listen for the implicit invitation to create an entirely new world. And it might seem scary, it might seem anarchic, but when I look at it, I think of freedom and progress and inclusion.

So I'd love to hear your thoughts at the end of this conversation. So without further ado,

Voting, something like that. And I think all of us who are here, and all of us who are gonna be watching and listening have experienced terrible, pointless, anguished, conflicted, boring, useless meetings. So we're here to put an end to that. So, Sheella, first I'd love for you to introduce yourself.

And then we'll turn it over to Henry, and then we'll figure out why the both of you are here and where we're gonna go from there.

Howie Jacobson: Aha.

Sheella: focus of my business.

Howie Jacobson: Gotcha. So the meeting can not only be the symptom, but the manifestation that you can look at and start to cure a larger issue that when you start fixing meetings, you can fix other things as well.

Sheella: Exactly. There's a quote, and I'm drawing a blank now on the name of the person who said it, but he said, show me a meeting and I'll tell you what your culture is like.

Howie Jacobson: Hmm. Got it. Very good. Sheella, can you introduce Henry and explain what he's doing here?

Henry: and

Sheella: I'll turn it over to you.

Henry: I come from a very strong business background working primarily with high growth packaged goods and food companies going from entrepreneurial roots to going public and or, being sold or having some major equity event. So helping them from the time that they were entrepreneurs to the time that they reached this kind of, earmarked part of their lives where they actually go public or get sold. and I worked there in the technology area as a lead technology person figuring out not only all the technology, but all the business processes that had to go into making these companies grow and support growth of the rate that they were going. And so anyway decided to get involved with the Berkeley Moshav, myself, my

Howie Jacobson: Hmm.

Henry: And so that's how Sheella and I met.

But unlike every other neighborhood in our neighborhood, the houses were close together, smaller, and that left a lot of room for communal things. For a garden, for a meadow, for a workshop, for a common house with a dining area and a lounge and all that. And the idea was that we could pool resources.

So what, what's the vision? That brought people together to create Berkeley, Moshav, and

Henry: I hope

Howie Jacobson: you know,

Henry: it

Howie Jacobson: and to make it manifest in the world.

Howie Jacobson: Gotcha.

Henry: are a little smaller than most homes, but we have a lot of community space. So we could have shared meals, have activities, children's area and outdoor space in order to make it really a community.

So, Sheella, can you talk a little bit about, as you look at this project, what do you think about in terms of, so, you know, we've got 36 units. The funding's gonna be there, the beams and the, and the boilers are all gonna be in place, but there's a bunch of people who are gonna have to live together.

What do you think about when you look at how that could happen sustainably? Joyfully generatively and not devolve into a mess?

It's not just haphazard. that's really the foundation of the community in the same way that the physical structure is the foundation of where they're gonna live, and it really requires as much attention many, organizations put much less attention. into how they're going to work together, how they're gonna make decisions together.

Howie Jacobson: Yeah. So my question to Henry is, so you have a longstanding business background, and I'm imagining when you're working with startup founders, you know, someone wants to start a company 'cause they want to be the boss, they want to be in control of their life, they don't wanna work for someone else.

it seems like there's a lot more democracy baked in to co-housing than traditional business. I'm curious first of all, your experience in the business world in terms of governance, does a top down sort of command and control work, right? It's hard to imagine, you know, Microsoft giving everybody a vote on everything.

In fact, the only people who have votes are shareholders as opposed to, you know, employees. Can you talk about. consent, consensus, democracy in terms of your experience and how it applies to Berkeley mha?

Howie Jacobson: Got it. So Sheella, let's introduce Sociocracy 'cause we've said the word a couple times, but I think it'd be useful for you to define it and where it comes from and what's your background in it.

Howie Jacobson: Hmm.

Sheella: the place.

Sheella: Okay, so if the three of us are in a group, and I'm the boss and I tell the two of you what to do, and you go out and do it, and that's the end of the conversation. And you're both gonna find some things that work some things that don't work in the instructions that I give you. If on the other hand there's a systematic way for you to come back and say, we need to tweak this because this is such and such is not working. Or if we continue down this path, we're gonna crash. in a lot of organizations there is not, some of that feedback may happen internally. But there's, there's very seldom any systematic way to ensure that it happens. And we all know of disasters that have happened because people didn't feel they could, they could speak up.

So I was taught, to kind of help teams that Sheella, first of all, you say what you need, you make sure that we understand, we repeat it back to you, and then we're assigned a role around. Am I responsible for it? Am I informed about it?

Am I consulted on it? do I have the authority? all those things like that, we're talking about it. But a lot of leaders, a lot of Sheellas would be like. I'm so frustrated because Howie keeps coming back to me to ask me questions because he's not taking responsibility, he's not being proactive.

So like these issues are, known before sociocracy. So I'm curious how Sociocracy deals with them differently than sort of standard good management process within a hierarchical organization.

Sheella: Right. So there are several aspects to it. we make a distinction between two types of meetings, policy meetings, and operational meetings. The policy meetings are for purposes of developing, what I call policies, which are guidelines within which individual people and groups will make their decisions on a day-to-day basis For purposes of those policy meetings, however many there are in this team or this department get together. for purposes of that meeting, we temporarily set aside whatever top down hierarchy we have in the organization that does determine how we, do our work on a day-to-day basis.

If you have major concerns, we have to address those before we can even set the policy. you may be the ones coming up with the policy, and I may have questions of you, or you may have questions of each other. That's a completely different playing field. So that's one aspect of it. The other is that for policy decisions, the decision is made by consent, which means that there's no, paramount objections to carrying it out.

This method is perfect for that because we actually want to get people's objections because that's feedback and leads to a better policy. So we systematically collect objections and sometimes if there's no objections, it means that the

Howie Jacobson: Hmm.

Sheella: is good enough and we can proceed, but sometimes it just means there's not enough safety in the room to voice the objections.

Howie Jacobson: And.

Sheella: meeting formats are very carefully laid out, and people trained in it to increase that psychological safety so that people actually do raise objections.

Howie Jacobson: Great. Henry, do you have a case study for us of

implementing policy

Henry: all

Howie Jacobson: meetings and how they went?

Henry: Which interesting about policy

Howie Jacobson: Okay.

Sheella: Howie, can I add something to what your

Howie Jacobson: Please.

They're there 10 years later. Nobody knows why they're there. They get in everybody's way, but it's the way we've always done it and there's no systematic way of reviewing those. So that's another way that feedback happens.

It doesn't take somebody saying, oh, I wonder if I should raise this. Am I gonna get in trouble if I raise this? Which happens a lot, you know? Can cer happen certainly in the workplace, but other places too that's built in.

Howie Jacobson: Can you some examples of policies that you know for businesses or other types of nonprofits, just so we know what we're talking about?

Sheella: Yeah. Are you asking me that?

Howie Jacobson: Yeah.

We'd never get any work done. On the other hand, if we didn't have a system, I wouldn't be able to find your files. I might not even be able to find my files. And,

Howie Jacobson: Mm-hmm.

they had some additional financial information and so on. So They made changes to the proposal. and so that's just, one example.

Howie Jacobson: Okay.

Sheella: if you have an example

Howie Jacobson: Yeah.

Sheella: from the MHA of Henry, because you're still in the forming stages, so it might not have been long enough for some of the policies to

Henry: Yeah.

Sheella: it.

Howie Jacobson: Mm-hmm. Well, let me ask you a question about a sort of meta policy. Which is that the three of us agree on a naming convention and Henry follows it, and I don't, so what's the policy for someone going rogue or, you know, maybe I can't remember it in the moment, or maybe I'm telling myself like, I'm the sales guy, I don't have time for this.

Sheella: that would be to the organization to determine those policies because that in itself is a policy. but there are easier ways to do it. one of us could notice that, that's part of the evaluation of a policy, which we've set a time limit, but we can do a review of it anytime before that If there's a reason to. So, Henry might. get an item on the agenda and any one of us can get things onto the agenda, saying, I noticed that we're not all doing this. And in particular, Howie, there's several times recently when I couldn't find a file because you didn't follow our naming system.

Henry: thing is because we're working in circles,

Howie Jacobson: So.

Henry: committees there're a group of people who can help answer some of these questions or approach the problem in order to help make recommendations. So the resources are built into the structure.

In addition because of the way the decisions are made as a group. So if there's a problem, the problem can be resolved by the group or individuals within the group can be essentially assigned to help go find out what the problem is and what are some recommendations for resolution.

Howie Jacobson: Gotcha. So Henry, I have a question about factions. 'cause in my experience of co-housing, you tend to get factions, right? So that there's, you know, there's lots of sort of side conversation and, you know, coffee clutch complaining about this group. And people have their very strong opinions.

I'm wondering what your experience has been around that.

Henry: especially when about two thirds of it are local and the rest are scattered around primarily North America. the biggest issue for us is just basic communications across disparity of space, where there's needs to be, clear communications that this is the direction

Howie Jacobson: She was stabbed.

Henry: It's

Howie Jacobson: your doctor to not.

Howie Jacobson: goodness.

Henry: Mitigate some of the really hard edges that can occur.

Howie Jacobson: Gotcha. So in my experience, you may avoid this as a condo, but the cat owners versus the bird lovers was an example that we

Henry: it or not,

Howie Jacobson: we never came close to resolving.

Henry: months coming up with a pet policy.

And that whole issue has come up and there's now a pet policy in place. And we'll see how it works when we move in.

Howie Jacobson: Very good. Sheella, I want to get to just touch on at least operational meetings, but before we do, I'm curious about the policy meeting. Can that also work between Boston Direct report, that same process?

Sheella: Absolutely.

Howie Jacobson: 'Cause this, I have a client where, in the whole organization, the complaints are people aren't taking initiative.

Sheella: It would be like having a circle of two so that you can use that same process that Henry described of, he was actually describing the process. Once you have a proposal on the table, there's another process to use for a group to develop a proposal, and once you have it, to have clarifying questions and reactions and a consent round, you can do that even just with two people. but it has to be an agreement that our voices are equivalent. For purposes of this meeting and that, that's a mind shift. I wanted to say something about the factions. In my experience, factions are much less, using consent, decision making. in most meetings that I am in, people are often listening to each other, or I suspect that they're listening to each other.

Howie Jacobson: Actually.

Sheella: of factions, the kind of attacks that go on. that's been my experience.

Howie Jacobson: I'm looking at the clock. And Henry, you did say you had to leave at the bottom of the hour. So I wanna make sure we get this done. Sheella, would you be comfortable coming back on to talk about the rest of this another time? Awesome.

Henry: if that's helpful.

Howie Jacobson: oh, fantastic. Okay, great. So yeah, let's get it done's. before I forget. So, you've explained the meeting in a way that I can grasp, conceptually a little bit, but I couldn't do it yet. where can I find information? Is there a book, a website, a video series?

a training course where I would feel comfortable, going in to my client and actually saying, this is how you do it. As opposed to, you know, Sheella and Henry said a bunch of stuff and I'm gonna half-ass my way through it, with my fingers crossed.

Howie Jacobson: great. So,

Sheella: training absolutely. Is key.

Howie Jacobson: gotcha. So I'll pop those links into the show notes and people can find them there and follow up.

Sheella: Yeah.

Howie Jacobson: Great.

Sheella: to Mierson consulting.com, there's a link there to the Sociocracy site. Nobody can spell sociocracy.

Howie Jacobson: Well, nobody can spot it either, right.

Sheella: but it's a little easier to remember than sociocracy. And it's just one word to remember. So it's M-I-E-R-S-O-N.

Howie Jacobson: All right. Well, for that matter, nobody can spell Sheella the way you spell it,

Sheella: That's why I

Howie Jacobson: so, yeah.

Sheella: I just give the domain name and you'll get my name there because if you're trying to send an email to me, you've gotta remember both names and good luck with that.

Howie Jacobson: All right. So let's talk about what's an operational meeting?

We don't try and do it. So it's a different part of the brain, a different way of interacting, different way of thinking. And it may even be a different person leading the meeting.

Howie Jacobson: So in terms of that power system, the feedback and steering, what do we think? what's the goal of an operational meeting?

Sheella: Oh, just to coordinate what we're doing and make sure that we're doing the things that we've set out to do

Howie Jacobson: Sorry.

Sheella: within the guidelines of our policies.

Howie Jacobson: I gotcha. So Henry are you guys at the point of having operational meetings yet?

Howie Jacobson: Gotcha.

Henry: you

Howie Jacobson: that's, is that a third type of meeting? The brainstorming

Henry: brain.

Howie Jacobson: That different from,

Sheella: if I could just add to that

Howie Jacobson: Please.

Sheella: We do

Howie Jacobson: I,

Sheella: of brainstorming in a particular structured way. We sometimes other types of brainstorming. if that's useful. if it's consistent with, the principle of consent. there's nothing to stop us from using other methods of brainstorming, but the most common way that we use it is in a structured process of a round.

Howie Jacobson: okay. And me meaning that there's a question and that everyone speaks to that question before anybody responds.

Howie Jacobson: So how,

Sheella: with no

Howie Jacobson: mm-hmm.

Sheella: people have the option to pass if their ideas have already been said, but everybody has

Howie Jacobson: How do you avoid group think in a structure like that?

Sheella: Well the objections process avoids that.

Howie Jacobson: All right.

Sheella: it, and it's part of the training to actually welcome objections

Howie Jacobson: Okay. But objections are something that happen afterwards, right? So if the first person speaks, they're very articulate, the second person sort of agrees, and we're not doing objections yet, we're just brainstorming, but all the ideas might conform, and now you're bringing objections to bear on a limited range of ideas.

Sheella: that,

Howie Jacobson: that happen?

Howie Jacobson: Mm-hmm. Alright, so I guess my final question, I love Henry for you to respond to this and then we'll end with Sheella, is that, so you have this methodology process set of processes, but you also have humans who have to, you know, do it, have to implement it, and they affect each other, right?

So you need a certain type of person to make sociocracy work, and you need a certain kind of structure to allow people to be their best. What are you seeing Henry, after, you know, I guess a year of introducing Sociocracy to like helping people default to their better angels of their nature?

Henry: so as I began this journey I thought it would be easier than it was. It was a little complicated.

Howie Jacobson: I.

Exactly what it was it was a choice of the community. And if you wanna be part of the community, then this is something that you need to accept. So the challenge is, getting enough momentum, which took a little bit of time, and a belief system that this was the right answer. even during those kind of dark moments where you weren't really sure, and you make it over the hump. The interesting thing is we probably have about a third of the organization now, that's competent, or at least has a really nice appreciation. and it's those folks that are sitting on the sidelines,

Howie Jacobson: and.

Howie Jacobson: Great. Thank you. Sheella. I wanna give you the last word. Can you take us home. What's a big picture idea you wanna leave listeners with?

So you gave an example of a place that you worked at, a company called Creative Urethane. It's a plastics manufacturing company in Virginia that's been using this method for years. Sociocracy, including consent decision making.

And Richard Hetfield, who was the CEO for many years, said, there's a wonderful quote from him saying that when I was an enlisted man in the military I used to wonder why the officers never listened to our opinions. Then I became an officer and I used to wonder why the enlisted men would never speak up,

Howie Jacobson: Hmm.

Sheella: experience, this method addresses that from both ends.

Howie Jacobson: Hmm.

Sheella: it's,

Howie Jacobson: This is great.

Howie Jacobson: Hmm. Well this is a beautiful model and I appreciate you so much, Sheella and Henry for taking the time to share it and show how it can be used to make hard things happen. , Thank you so much for the good you're doing in the world. Henry, best of luck with the continued construction of the buildings and the culture of Berkeley, Moshav

Henry: much

Howie Jacobson: and Sheella, thank you so much for taking the time today.

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Dot com as part of the Sociocracy Consulting Group, TSCG, and you can find her, um, private practice at the first one and her group practice at the second one. And I'll put both links in the show notes, which again is plant yourself.com/ 6 3 1. Alright, movement news. I've been enjoying rucking. Um, having a little trouble with sort of using ordinary backpacks book bags because they tend to flop around and the weight goes lower on my body than I think it should, but it's starting to prop it up with, uh, with pillows and blankets and things and looking to, uh, to upgrade my, my gear once I decide that this is gonna be right for me.

So I will, I will be there if you happen to be on the Mediterranean coast of Spain near there, just south of Valencia. Come by, say hi. Um. Buy me a plant-based shake. Um, and we'll, we'll have a good time on the beach. There's some other tournaments coming up as well, so I'm really hoping to get. In shape.

I've been doing a lot of, under the, uh, the, the guidance of my trainer, Jay. I've been doing a lot of split squats, holding just like two, four pound weights, one in each hand that it is destroying me. So it's inter, it's really interesting how, uh, different muscle groups get challenged by pretty similar activities.