Holacracy Community of Practice Archive

Posted in Practicing Holacracy • By Louis • 10/01/2017

Interpretation

Hello,

Wished to have your interpretation on the Constitution over the Reaction Round during the Governance Meeting. Constitution Article 3.3.5 :

“(c) Reaction Round: Once there are no further clarifying questions, each participant except the Proposer may share reactions to the Proposal, one person at a time. The Facilitator must immediately stop and disallow any out-of-turn comments, any attempts to engage others in a dialog or exchange of any sort, and any reactions to other reactions instead of to the Proposal.”

In the case the Secretary is also Proposer, may the Secretary change the proposal as he is physically the same person, the Proposer during the Reaction Round, integrating what people say, for example, noting or amending one thing, and so there are technically physically no interactions?

My interpretation would be no as if they were two physically different people this won't be possible and so this is role abuse (as those are two different roles, and the Proposer is abusing his Secretary role), and that this is a kind of interaction with the tool GlassFrog “The Facilitator must immediately stop and disallow [...] or exchange of any sort” and the fact that in addition, it's very much disturbing for the people reacting. Wished to have your interpretations? As another polarity might be to say that “it's not explicitly prohibited”.

4 Replies

Jean-Michel Gode
10/01/2017

Hi Louis,

My perspective is no. Definetly.

Secretary doesn't have to change the proposal or to write down the reactions during the reaction round.

Regards.

Louis
10/01/2017

Hello,

Thanks. The Constitution is already pretty clear on that in my opinion, as no interactions are allowed as “The Facilitator must immediately stop and disallow any out-of-turn comments, any attempts to engage others in a dialog or exchange of any sort, and any reactions to other reactions instead of to the Proposal.” same for the Secretary eventually noting the Reactions, which have no real value. My question was more about the fact that there wasn't technically any physicals interactions (in that case) about if so somebody “talking from a role to another ““internally””” was considered as an interaction as he's both Proposer and Secretary (which I'd say yes, because of interacting with GlassFrog), and so wished to have people giving and explaining the why of their interpretation for the given example with for example a polarity which is “as it's not prohibited (or explicit), it's open to”.

Bernard Marie Chiquet
10/01/2017

Interesting! My interpretation of Constitution Article 3.3.5 is a bit different as il the situation you describe, Sec. and Proposer are the same personn - so IMO there would be no "out-of-turn comments, nor attempts to engage others in a dialog or exchange of any sort, and nor reactions to other reactions instead of to the Proposal.”

And I would not allow that as a Facilitator because it would be weird for next participants during the Reaction Round to be asked to react to a Proposal being amended at the same time!

May be some further clarification to be added into 3.3.5...

Tom Mulder
10/02/2017

Louis, my answer is also NO. If the Proposer wants to amend his proposal, regardless of the roles he fills during the meeting, this needs to be done in the Amend & Clarify round.

Also in the Reaction round the Proposer is the only one not to react. So by changing the Proposal it would be either in his Role as Proposer which is not allowed or in his role of Secretary, who has only the right to amend Proposals solely based on Proposers input (as mentioned in 3.3.5(d)).