Holacracy

This explanation makes Holacracy appear simple and it does not really explain the principle difference being an org structure that moves from the triangle of hierarchy to the circle of Holacracy, but within that two minutes the video states that it allows for everyone to be an entrepreneur.  That is the first warning flag for me, because in a larger organization there are more than just entrepreneurs that hold the glue of the organization together.  Still it is an ambitious attempt to find a solution to the traditional form of organizational design, which is hierarchy.

In listening to why Medium abandoned this approach, they simply stated that it put a little bit too much tax on their organization, which looks like they are saying that the cure for bureaucracy is adding its own version of bureaucracy.  Holacracy's founder and thought leader is Brian J. Robertson.  I am sure a room full of people like Robertson could get holacracy to work, but that is a tall order - for capabilities vary in most organizations.  It is still interesting however to hear a deeper view of Holacracy from Robertson himself, and this he provided during a Google Talk in 2015:

While there was disruption caused by the introduction of Holacracy at Zappos, when a pioneering leader like Tony Hsei continues to believe in it, and it has not been abandoned by him, it is a brave experiment, on a real business. 

This is what is a part of exploration of Indigo Intelligence - which is organizational intelligence. I do not stop at how organizations organize their systems, but organizational ability from very basic administration, all the way to grand organizational design.

Why Holacracy is being piloted in established entities such as at Medium and at Zappos is curious, when I would think that such an approach is best begun with a brand new startup and allowing people who are free to design their startup, to put their innovative zeal into play from the outset, rather than interupt their design with a radical shift.

The Google-Talk is impressive because the basic thinking of Robertson is well thought out and he has a vision that has the potential to overcome the problems of hierarchy, but can it overcome the very thing that messes up the best laid plans - people who assume they know a particular system but either engage irrationally, or politically or badly.  Then in that condition, even the best organizational design is more like Forest Gump i.e. like a box of chocolates.

I support what people like Brian Robertson are doing and I especially admire leaders who put everything on the line to experiment.  Hsei offered compensation to any employee that did not want to participate in change and over 200 employees accepted, but Hsei says that this acceptance is not an outcome of problems with Holacracy.  His critics might not agree, but his critics are not in the hot seat, making big calls in the heat of business.

Recent articles about where Holocracy suggest that the outcomes are still in the balance, but the project is not over, even if external commentators are assuming it might be.  This reiterates to me the perils of being under public scrutiny and while the value here is "who dares wins", the pain points would be less if an unfashionable organization was trying to implement this.

There will be other attempts to create leaderless organizations but what has yet to be seen is a company founder who is also the founder of the conception.  That is the ideal scenario of organizational structure, or at least it is people the founder employs rather than consults.  In the case of Toyota Taichii Ohno was the internal pioneer of the Toyota Production System along with the Founders. That arrangement makes more sense to me.

At least with the Zappos story, it is at the time of writing still a work-in-progress - so I can follow this story as a part of my learning.  I am not advocating systems here, I am simply engaging this for my own learning purposes and in so doing explore what Indigo Intelligence means for my thinking and my decisions.  In terms of Holocracy, the failed experiment at Medium did leave one news report that contained a better description of its actual aims: