A short History of SDO

A short history of how SDO came into existence

  • In 2007 Graham Boyd began working on better ways for people to work together.
    He deployed Holacracy in his startups over the following years, and realised that something was missing; Holacracy addressed some of the problems, but not all. It was insufficiently integral, lacking developmental and legal aspects.

  • 2008-2013 Graham was running tetraLD and LTSGlobal. This included developing and prototyping an integrated approach to processing all tensions: within and between people in the organisation; within and between roles and their tasks; and between stakeholders within and outside the organisation. He realised that if any one of these three elements (patterns of human interaction, patterns of task governance, patterns of legal power) was missing or weak, then the other two were left fragile and exposed. Some of the elements he integrated included: Development of Individuals (Laske, Kegan, Rosenberg, ...), Self-Organisation (Holacracy, Sociocracy, Reinventing Organisations, ...) and the Free Company legal form he developed for LTSGlobal.

  • From approximately 2010 onwards Bernhard has used Integral Theory (Ken Wilber) to enable new perspectives on work and how to consult. He integrated elements of Holacracy and Reinventing Organisations into his daily work.

  • In 2014 Graham deployed in Edgetalents an integration of self-governing based on Sociocracy with the Adaptive Way approach to creating a developmental organisation. The success - and issues - in edgetalents confirmed that all three elements are essential to creating a resilient organisation in a VUCA business context.

  • In 2015 Graham integrated his Free Company legal structure with the FairShares legal structure, and established Evolutesix (formerly Dojo4Life) to bring this integrated approach to all who needed it, from individuals to large corporates.

  • Otto Laske connected Graham Boyd with Bernhard Possert in 2016. Bernhard joined Evolutesix.

  • Summer 2017: Graham and Bernhard developed the term "SDO". The central concept builds upon many ideas that Graham had developed over the previous years.

  • Autumn 2017: Bernhard establishes a first version of the SDO Playbook in German.

  • Dec 2018: During a camp with Graham Boyd and Rob Bigge, Bernhard sets up the Matrix with the two axes: Development vertical, Self-Organisation horizontal, with the main message: Development is a precondition of Self-Organisation.

  • Spring 2018: Bernhard establishes the first version of the SDO concept paper with the 6 stages on both axes and integrates helpful feedback from Graham and Rob.

  • Spring 2018: Bernhard develops an elaborate version of the SDO Playbook.

  • Summer 2018: Graham and Bernhard decided to loosen the ties: They both protect the SDO "kernel" and develop material upon that. Bernhard is still part of the team of trainers, but no longer part of the core group.

  • Summer 2018: Bernhard decided to apply the 3E: easy / emotional / elegant

  • Autumn 2018: Bernhard developed the first version of the SDO Map and the first version of an easy Playbook in English.

  • October 2018: Bernhard gives two SDO workshops in Korea - 60 participants with the first Korean version of the easy Playbook.

  • January 2019: First Corporate Design of SDO, with the three teal squares and the swallow

  • February 2019: 2nd version of the English SDO Playbook - already with CD

  • February 2019: Setup of the website www.sdo.works