prohibited by a particular policy.
b. For any unfulfilled role, the lead link automatically takes over that role
c. Every circle has specific elected roles and all members of a core group apart from the lead link are eligible for the election.
d. If an elected role is unfulfilled or the role filler is unavailable, there is a structure which exists to allows a temporary (or permanent)
IV. Sub Circles: A role within a circle can become a circle itself and is referred to as a Sub Circle. These can be modified or removed. A sub circle will also have a lead link.
V. Governance Process: Governance in simple words, is the process which is used to define ALL policies that are applicable in that organizations Holacracy. It defines all criteria, roles, rules for representation, agendas, decision making processes, election processes etc.
Why Holacracy and for Whom?
While there are several companies which already operate on Holacracy, this process came into the recent limelight when ecommerce player, Zappos.com (acquired in 2009 by Amazon.com) moved to the Holacracy approach in January of this year. Zappos.com is the world’s largest online shoe store, with over 1500 employees. There has been a lot of hue and cry in the media about Holacracy and its impact on the functioning of a company.
But can it work for everyone? Short answer, No.
Holacracy is a very strong and hard process to manage, and can work for companies which are strongly value driven and attempt to focus only on the customers. It can be work for a company like Zappos.com which was already advanced in these areas. It is a strong data driven organization which has always applied agile management practices. Holacracy thus automatically looks at areas for an organization that otherwise may get missed. For e.g., the holiday/leave policy: for a technology driven agile company, this may be an area where they would not have expertise in. And at the same time, they would not be interested in developing the expertise in since it’s not a core area of focus. Holacracy offers a way out on how these tasks and activities can be managed. Also, it can work well for companies, which are already strong on their customer and external focus.
Ironically, the problem faced by most organizations today is that they have processes in place to handle the administrative side of issues and are weaker when it comes to external focus. They focus on internal strengthening and are unable to “wow” their customers. In such companies, Holacracy will be ineffective and would do more harm than good. But there is a strong belief in the supporters of Holacracy that it will continually evolve and in the future iterations that come out of these developments would be more in tune and be more useful. Also, in the current structure of Holacracy, one of the most important stakeholders is missing from the entire circle. This stakeholder in a way holds the most important role for an organization, and that is, the customer. It is the customer who ultimately in their own is the deciding factor on the basis of which the final survival of a company is dependent. So, not including the customer is definitely one of the weaknesses of Holacracy. A customer has to be the force behind which the procedures of an organization should focus, after all, internal democracy may sound nice, but what’s the point if the organization doesn’t survive.
Saurabh Chawla, Varsha Jain
Institute - IMI Delhi
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PARADIGM Nourishing the Intellect