Clear and Organic Structure with Holacracy

Holacracy® is a new operating system for organizations. Authority is distributed into an organic structure of circles and roles. Rather than sweeping them under the carpet, tensions and issues serve as fuel for continuously improving the organization.

Tension is Fuel

In Holacracy, everyone is a sensor for gaps between where the organization is, and where it could be (“tensions”). When there are no effective channels for processing tensions, they show up as friction and confusion. Holacracy creates the conditions so that every tension, sensed by anyone anywhere in the organization, can be processed into increased clarity and flow.

One way in which that happens, is through really effective meetings. In Holacracy, there are two types of meetings — each with their own rules and rhythm. Tactical meetings happen weekly and focus on clearing roadblocks so the work can go on. Governance meetings most often happen monthly, and focus on roles and accountabilities. Unlike job descriptions, roles in Holacracy are dynamic, and one person can fill multiple roles.

Making the Implicit Explicit

One of the hardest things about working together is how to deal with expectations. Whether you talk about them or not, there are always expectations of who does what (or should have done what), and who gets to take which decisions. Governance meetings serve to make these expectations explicit and capture them in clear roles and accountabilities.

These roles are continuously adapted based on tensions, so it’s always clear who’s accountable for what. And when you fill a role, you’re not just accountable — you also have all of the authority that goes with that role’s specific accountabilities. With faster decisions and a more adaptable organization as a result. And, equally important, lots of room for getting fully engaged and taking lots of initiative.

Dynamic Steering

Continuous improvement is one of the key ingredients of what Holacracy calls ‘dynamic steering’: taking workable decisions and adapting them if and when tensions arise. This allows for a more organic structure which is continuously evolving, rather than a thought-up structure that triggers yearly ‘re-organizations’.

Compared to more traditional ways of organizing, Holacracy requires more discipline, not less. And although distributed authority gives you much more traction, it requires letting go, first. At the end of the day, Holacracy is not just an ‘update’ but an entirely new operating system for the organization. And although it’s a pretty big shift, it can unlock a whole new level of clarity and flow.