Circles
A Circle is five to fifteen people who actually witness each other's work, meeting one hour a month to name contributions out loud. The whole kit is the one page below. You don't need our permission to start one.
Our own mechanism page admits it: honor is proven at the scale of villages, wards, and projects — communities small enough to witness contribution directly. Whether it survives at the scale of millions is the first open problem on the list. So the movement starts where the evidence is: small rooms, real witnesses.
A Circle is that room. A team that ships together. A street. A lab. A family. The people in it already see each other's actual work — which means recognition between them is giver-weighted by construction: it comes from the only people whose judgment of the work means anything.
Circles are also, honestly, the experiment. No study has tested witnessed recognition as a standing practice everyone knows about in advance. Every Circle that runs for a year teaches the movement something nobody currently knows.
The protocol
One hour, four parts, no scorekeeping.
Print this page and the protocol comes out on its own sheet — pin it where the Circle meets.
The Circle Protocol
Impactism, practiced at the scale where honor works
Who
Five to fifteen people who see each other's real work or real lives — a team, a neighborhood, a lab, a congregation, a family. Witnessing is the qualification. There is no other.
When
Once a month, one hour. Miss months freely and come back without explanation — the practice is forgiving on purpose.
The hour
- Arrive (5 minutes). No agenda, no updates. Sitting down is the agenda.
- The naming round (30 minutes). Each person names one contribution they witnessed since last time — specifically, and addressed to the person who made it. Not "you're great"; rather: "On the 14th, when it broke at midnight, you stayed. We shipped because you stayed." The receiver says thank you and nothing else. No deflecting; being seen is the point.
- The uncounted round (15 minutes). The Circle names one person outside it whose contribution went unseen this month. Someone volunteers to write them a Recognition Letter before the next meeting.
- Close (5 minutes). No minutes, no action items, no homework. The hour was the thing.
The rules
- No points, no rankings, no records kept on people. The moment a Circle keeps score, it has stopped being one.
- No criteria. Nothing counts as "too small" to name. Announced thresholds are how recognition gets gamed.
- Silence is allowed. Anyone may sit a round without naming or being named. No purity, ever.
- Anyone may leave, anytime, and the unscored are unknown — never untrustworthy.
- Never attach money. No bonuses, no gift cards, no prizes decided in the room. The naming is the whole transaction.
Impact over money · impactismfoundation.org/circles
Start one this month
Pick the people who already witness your work. Send them this page and one sentence: "One hour a month, we name what we saw each other give. No scores, no homework. In?" That message is an easy yes, for a simple reason — almost everyone is starving to be accurately seen, and nobody ever asks.
You don't register a Circle and we keep no list of them — by design; the mechanism page explains why we're allergic to registries. But if you want your Circle's existence counted in the movement's story, or you learn something running one, write to hello@socious.io. What Circles learn is what the book gets to know.
You already know your Circle's names.
Send them the page. Pick an evening.