How Holacracy works - image from http://holacracy.org/how-it-works |
Its Flattened/No
job titles/Goal-rather-than-management-led approach is an enviable fit with the
more open business philosophy companies of this kind are comfortable and
familiar with.
In many
ways it’s simply putting a name to and combining many of the learnings those pursuing
the 10 Principles of Open Business have already acquired. - but it may also provide a useful additional toolkit for the internal development of some Open Businesses.
The
following brief extracts from my new book (out on January 28) The 10 Principles of Open Business,
illustrate the point:
South African entrepreneur Arthur Attwell – found similar effectiveness
from following the principle of Transparency:
“... you
get a productivity boost from people who properly understand their importance
to the company and the role they play. So many people – even unconsciously –
think that they are just a tiny cog in a big machine.”
“They feel an alienation from the products of
their work,” says Arthur.
Without
transparency it’s difficult for people to find meaning in their work. And
without meaning there is little ambition and even less joy.
The job
descriptions he offers people are just three lines long. There is no
task-by-task list of things to do every day.
Everyone
must have the ambition to own their space in his company.
“That’s
why we don’t have job descriptions in the conventional sense. We have a maximum
three bullet-points of functional responsibility. Some people have just one or
two,” says Arthur.
“What that
means is the things in those bullet points are your problem. It means people
have to engage with more than just a narrow task list defined by key
performance indicators,” adds Arthur.
“Make your
people the boss of what they do.”
This will sound familiar to those trialling holocracy.
As will
the impact of Principle 4: Shareability:
Definition:
Packaging knowledge for easy and open sharing both internally and externally
Sharing is
the cultural key to collaboration. It is where the organisational design
principles of collaboration reside.
It is a
principle which has the powerful benefit of flattening hierarchies,
distributing responsibility and making the organisation more strategy and goal-led
than management and task directed.
Shareability
provides the tools for a radical re-organisation of resource. Deployed
effectively it means people gravitate to what they care most about and can do
most about. It can allocate people to work with their passions – generating a
giant leap in effectiveness and productivity – not to mention morale.
And from the
chapter on Principle 1: Purpose...
“If every employee is clear about the Purpose of
the org, if they express this in what they do and it is expressed in what they
see of the behaviours of the business and of their colleagues, then they will
be better able to make decisions which are truly aligned to the Purpose...
The decisions your
people make are what drives the success of your business. Ensuring those
decisions are made towards your shared goal (Purpose) is... more critical than
ever.
Since we have seen
that telling teams is not enough (and even less likely to succeed in
distributed structures), ensuring they know the Purpose, through belief and
behaviours, becomes even more essential.
Thanks for chiming in on Holacracy, David! I work with HolacracyOne, the company behind Holacracy. I have to admit I'm not familiar with the "Open Business" concept, but I just want to clarify that Holacracy is not a movement, a philosophy, or merely a set of principles. It's a specific system with very specific rules, embedded into the Holacracy Constitution. For more clarification, see "Five Misconceptions About Holacracy" https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1
ReplyDeleteThat said, it may well be that it aligns well with several current other approaches to business and work! Similar ideas are in the air.
I think its value may lay in formalising the requirement for the distribution of authority which emerges from Open Business thinking - such as seen through Purpose, Shareability and Transparency. A welcome toolkit to help make flattened structures real and workable.
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