How can we ensure that teams collaborate effectively and align with a shared mission, both vertically and horizontally?
For organizations to achieve true alignment, both the Chain of Command and the Chain of Consent are essential. The Chain of Command provides vertical alignment, ensuring that directives from leadership are implemented throughout the organization. The Chain of Consent, on the other hand, establishes horizontal cohesion, fostering buy-in across departments and teams. Together, these structures create a powerful framework. However, for impact-driven organizations, a more fluid exchange of information is required to fully unify operations with purpose.
In their Harvard Business Review article “Why Strategy Execution Unravels─and What to Do About It,” the authors note that the traditional approaches to alignment─”translating strategy into objectices, cascading those objectives down the hierarchy, measuring progress, and rewarding performance”─are insufficient to unite a team on one mission. In fact, though they seem to maintain some measure of vertical alignment, they may actually damage horizontal alignment. [Source: One Mission]
Double Representation: Connecting Chains and Levels
This is where double representation comes into play—a structure enabling information to flow both top-down and bottom-up, and across teams or departments. Double representation, inspired by sociocracy’s “double linking” concept, enables information to flow top-down, bottom-up, and across teams or departments, allowing for greater alignment.
This structure involves representatives or liaisons who bridge adjacent circles (or teams), facilitating bidirectional communication and influence. Each circle not only has a liaison to communicate with the next circle but also includes a delegate from that circle, ensuring an ongoing exchange of insights, experiences, and feedback across the organization. This design, rooted in consent-based decision-making, amplifies transparency, inclusivity, and shared ownership over the mission.
Sociocracy’s emphasis on circular hierarchy replaces traditional top-down command with interconnected circles, which align well with our concentric structure. Here, each level’s connection to the purpose and mission is strengthened, creating a dynamic, interconnected governance model that places market-facing teams closest to customers and core stewardship functions at the center, guarding strategy and purpose.
Daniel Mezick’s work on agile transformation also demonstrates the value of double representation in Scrum teams, where representation across levels and functions drives collective engagement and innovation. This structure ensures that each team member is directly connected to the organization’s purpose, making double representation a natural fit for organizations aiming to balance leadership authority with collaborative influence.
Whole-System Alignment Through Consentricity
In Consentricity, double representation strengthens both the Chain of Command and the Chain of Consent by ensuring feedback flows through every level and functional area as needed. This approach builds trust, sustains an impact narrative, and enables adaptable, resilient teams, creating a culture where each part of the organization aligns with shared values and goals.
The Power of Consent-Based Collaboration
When every decision is shaped by input across levels and teams, the organization becomes not just a system of directives but a cohesive, purpose-driven network. By infusing double representation into both vertical and horizontal chains, we create a culture where alignment isn’t just top-down or peer-to-peer; it’s systemic, embedding transparency and inclusivity throughout the entire organization.
Double representation bridges gaps, builds trust, and fortifies resilience—ensuring that every step taken is aligned with the collective vision for impact. This layered structure enables organizations to act as one, fully unified and adaptable, with every decision grounded in shared goals.
While the term Chain of Consent originated from my own thinking, I wanted to explore if anyone else had developed a similar concept. In doing so, I came across an article by Dan LeFebvre. After reaching out to Dan, he shared that his inspiration had come from Daniel Mezick.
