how holacracy works
holacracy seeks to replace the rigidity of a traditional command structure with a system of flexible roles each with wide authority within their specific area of responsibility instead of a traditional pyramid shaped structure a holacracy is described as a series of nested circles each representing autonomous teams with many roles rather than having fixed job responsibilities individuals functioning in a holacracy may occupy several roles each with a specific purpose and one or more domains and accountabilities since each individual has multiple roles it is possible for the ceo of a company to take a leadership role on one team and a subordinate role on another any conflicts that arise are resolved in periodic governance meetings within each circle 1role leads are empowered to make key decisions without having to defer to the management chain of command this gives rise to what is described as the golden rule of holacracy to fulfill your role you have the full authority to make any decision or take any action as long as there s no rule against it 2holacracy looks to do away with managing from the top down and gives individuals and teams more control over processes origin of holacracyarthur koestler author of the 1967 book the ghost in the machine coined the term holarchy as the organizational connections between holons from the greek word for whole which describes units that act independently but would not exist without the organization they operate within brian robertson then developed the concept and dynamics of holacracy while running a software development company named ternary software in the early 2000s 3 in 2007 he and tom thomison founded holacracyone and published the holacracy constitution three years later 4 companies that have publicly adopted holacracy in some form include zappos com 5zappos com with 1 500 employees is the largest company to adopt holacracy 6examples of holacracythe largest company to integrate holacracy into its management practices is zappos com an online retailer for clothing shoes handbags and other accessories that has over 1 500 employees according to zappos holacracy allows every employee to quickly surface and act on customer feedback 7holacracyone lists around 185 organizations that have publicly adopted holacracy principles besides zappos others include liip a digital agency in switzerland springest a dutch company that produces learning software and mercedes benz io the online arm of the auto manufacturer 8special considerationscritics have described holacracy as hype or the latest in a long series of tech sector buzzwords when zappos integrated holacracy into its management practices nearly one in five employees elected to receive a severance rather than continue with the company and many of them cited holacracy as their reason for leaving 9some tech companies that adopted holacracy later abandoned it for example medium a blogging site that adopted holacracy in 2013 ended its experiment three years later in a blog post the company said that holacracy was getting in the way of work 10correction june 18 2022 a previous version of this article incorrectly listed valve as an example of a holacracy based company 