Holacracy® at “Waking Up the Workplace”

The following is an edited transcript of a conversation between myself and Ewan Townhead and Diederick Janse, two founders of Waking Up the Workplace, an organization teaching the art of Conscious Business online.

Olivier: Would you share a bit about Waking Up the Workplace (WUtW) in general, and how you got introduced to Holacracy?

Diederick: WUtW is a company started by the three of us in 2010 to explore the emerging field of conscious business. It started as a fun project among friends, and then the success of our 8-week online course in 2011 turned it into a company. Today, there are around 100 trained Agents of Conscious Business worldwide.

We were aware of Holacracy before starting WUtW, and even used it to manage the organization to some extent. But recently, with the growing need for clarity and flow, we decided to formally adopt it for our company.

Olivier: So it’s only recently that you began formally using Holacracy. What triggered that change?

Ewan: We committed more seriously to Holacracy four months ago, but we were using it before that. We were running operational meetings and governance meetings, and we had an explicit structure with roles. Then recently we decided “Okay, let’s go all in, and see what happens.”

The first reason for adopting was that practicing Holacracy is about enacting the purpose of WUtW, which is around more conscious ways of doing business. And secondly, as we were starting to scale up the organization, it felt like it was asking us, “How serious are you about this?”

Diederick: After the success of the courses we ran, we decided to continue with the company, which to me was never a given. So, it then became quite obvious that we needed an infrastructure to do that. Particularly because we work remotely, and because all of us have other things going on — there’s a huge risk of the energy just leaking out.

So I felt that it needed a very clear container, clear structure, and boundaries that we could then relax into and that would almost carry us and remind us “Hey, there are things expected of us”.

Olivier: I love your point about the structure that Holacracy gives — not a physical one, but an organizational one. That triggers a question: were you looking into other systems than Holacracy to run a company? In other words, if not Holacracy, then what?

Diederick: Chaos. (laughter) I would say probably just unconscious chaos, which I think is kind of the default for start-ups and small companies, where they just negotiate every step and everything as they go, every expectation, every commitment, every next action. While that works in small companies, it also takes a lot of energy.

You could say that chaos is quite creative, I don’t know if that is true necessarily in that example, but I see it a lot in other small companies. I think it works, or at least I would say it is workable until a certain level of complexity. It would probably have been relatively workable for WUtW too, but knowing Holacracy, I would have screamed if we had been that chaotic.

Olivier: What would you say are the costs of adopting a new “operating system” like Holacracy, and most importantly, was it worth it?

Diederick: Sure there are costs — there are always costs. I also think in this case I am very willing to pay them. But if I wanted to be in a business where I didn’t need to worry too much about the day-to-day realities and be very comfortable just chatting and talking, designing, thinking up all kinds of things and not getting too much done, then I would be pretty comfortable not using Holacracy.

I think that’s where the cost comes in — Holacracy has forced us to be very much aware of what WUtW needs, as opposed to what each of us individually needs and wants and desires. There’s a feeling of being accountable, because what I’m accountable for is so much more explicit, and what’s needed to move the work forward.

The mindset of dynamic steering and gathering data also carries a cost; if things aren’t working out as you like, or not as fast as you’d like, then that’s going to be very visible. So reality just becomes much more visible, which isn’t always comfortable and it’s not something I always enjoy. And yet I’m very willing to pay that cost, because I know that’s really the only way of getting anything done in the long run. If I want to enjoy my own comfort zone and not worry about reality too much, then I probably wouldn’t use Holacracy.

Olivier: That’s great — yes, facing reality can be very uncomfortable at times, and Holacracy doesn’t help us hide from it. Ewan, I’m curious what challenges you’ve experienced in using Holacracy?

Ewan: The main thing that comes up for me is that it’s a commitment. Here’s a slightly strange analogy that comes to mind. I was talking with a friend recently about the idea of “open relationships” — polygamy. And one of the things that he said to me (having coached people through it), is “You can do it, but man is it a full-time job.” It just opens so much stuff up, and there is so much energy being unleashed that you really need to have a means to process it all. In a sense, Holacracy feels like the organizational version of that.

And it’s a commitment, because you can’t hide anymore. It’s a commitment to saying “Okay, I’m going to wake up and I don’t know what the hell is going to happen.”

Or it’s like repairing a wall; you could just do a bodge job, or fix a few cracks, but if you really want to get in there, you’ve got to take the plaster off and who knows what’s going to be underneath it! (laughter). I think that’s what Holacracy does, and personally, I’m all for it.

Diederick: I’m just realizing something else, which is that Holacracy sets a high standard. I want this business to be set up intelligently because I really want to grow it.

There’s a balance that I feel is necessary. Holacracy is the way that I feel we can run this company in a smart way, which means to be really clear about what needs doing, what is most important, what a role is accountable for, how to prioritize things, and how to keep the momentum going without it taking hours and hours every day. The boundaries are just very clear and they don’t need to be renegotiated every time we talk, which means that almost all of my energy can just go into doing the work. And it’s kind of a paradox, because Holacracy is a lot about creating the structure and the environment.

When you start implementing Holacracy, you could say it’s a distraction from getting the work done, because you’re putting in place all these processes, structures, and meetings, this way of thinking and working, and yet, once you’ve done that, it allows you to focus on the work with so much more power and clarity.

Personally, I love practicing Holacracy. For me it’s almost a goal in itself, but in WUtW it’s very much a means to an end, which is creating maximum impact teaching Conscious Business.

Ewan: Yes, I would echo that, Diederick. There’s just an efficiency side to getting the work done, and Holacracy is more powerful than anything else we know of to do that, AND at the same time it is a practice in and of itself.

One of my other great loves is the art of authentic relating. One thing my dear friend and mentor Guy Sengstock says about relationship is that “the more authentic you are, the less you know what the hell is going to happen next.” It feels like Holacracy does that on an organizational level. The more rigorously you follow the impulse of evolutionary work flow, which I think Holacracy allows and even demands, the less we know what’s going to happen. We have to let go of always knowing what’s best in any given situation.

One of my favorite quotes is from Heidegger: “The point is not to ask if what I am saying is plausible, the point is not to listen to a series of propositions, but rather to follow the movement of the showing.”

And in a sense, that’s what I think Holacracy asks you to do as a collective. Can you sense and follow that movement of the showing and surrender to it? I think that is a spiritual practice in itself.

Olivier: I really resonate with that. I initially got attracted to Holacracy through my interest in group dynamics and relationships, and it’s my experience that Holacracy allows more authentic relationships at work. By holding everybody accountable in their roles while at the same time differentiating the people from their organizational roles, Holacracy sets us free to be authentic with one another, with cleaner boundaries between what’s work and what’s just us people enjoying each other. All that while getting work done — I find that quite inspiring. Thank you very much for your time, guys, and for sharing your experience.

To learn more about Waking Up the Workplace, you can register for free and get access to a multitude of free interviews, tools and blogs exploring the practice of Conscious Business at www.wakinguptheworkplace.com