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Holacracy is Bullshit

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Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#101

Post by saraid216 »

mbillie1 wrote: post #90
saraid216 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe it's too much to ask that we say "different things work for different groups of people"? Weak opinions make for weak conversation, especially between strangers. All the participants need the ability to appreciate nuanced positions in order to gain value from weak opinions. This isn't unrelated, either; it's one of the reasons that cliques form in the first place. The extreme position is inevitably simpler tha…

> The extreme position is inevitably simpler than moderate ones, and thus acts as a more solid common ground for group formation. While I certainly agree with you that this is true, and while I am certainly not surprised finding this sort of thing on HN, it would be nice if discussions could start from less extreme positions. In my weak opinion, anyway ;)

Discussions could start from less extreme positions if we had two things: (1) minds in the habit of being constructively critical and (2) ways to capture many, many opinions with minimal cost.

For #2, I think that a technological solution can be started on, though I admittedly have no idea what I want (or I would have started on it myself). The weakness of democracy, and the Internet, is that our tools for discussion are really, really weak. They do this thing where they're kinda-sorta paying lip service to real-time conversation... except that they're very much not. And they pay lip service to long-form discussion, except that no one really has the time, energy, or reason to properly parse an essay-length exploration of a subject.

This needs to change. Despite what Jeff Atwood seems to think, a better forum isn't really an answer: all that does is capture all the drawbacks of human conversation, notably the difficulty of acknowledging the many nuances in thousands of other opinions. Dozens, our human brains can manage on a good day and with some talent. Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions goes from silly to impossible. But we need to find a way to do it anyways.

For #1, that's a completely different solution.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#102

Post by zem »

malandrew wrote: post #94
thenmar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you begin to open a discussion on these topics with people who not only lack the necessary education to talk about them accurately, but already have a disdain for words like "feminism" and "privilege"?

You don't. You leave that discussion and have it elsewhere. I don't know about you, but the most feminist response to the alleged Github debacle would be for a woman to go out and start her own company with the culture she wants to see in the world. There are a lack of women engineers out there, but if the issues we're discussing here are so widespread and destructive, why do we not see more female engineers leaving…

except that women starting companies also have an uphill struggle when it comes to interacting with the larger ecosystem.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#103

Post by mpyne »

dragonwriter wrote: post #69
mpyne wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm understanding the linked article correctly, she wasn't claiming holacracy guts management, she was claiming that it introduces a power vacuum. And from what I can tell in that pretty picture you provide, she's probably actually right. E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company? Who guides the unending governance meetings to decide who the managers will be that day? Who decides which spouses get to…

> E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company? The circle whose focus is strategic direction. > Who guides the unending governance meetings to decide who the managers will be that day? Unending governance meetings and "decide who the managers will be that day" both seem like signs of a circle with a poor governance process (probably, one that is trying to force things into a non-holarchic structure.)

> > E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company?

> The circle whose focus is strategic direction.

Sweet. Now we know who's actually in charge, it's whoever is a member of that circle. That wasn't so hard.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#104

Post by mpyne »

Crito wrote: post #82
rjknight wrote: post #42

The problem with management isn’t managers, the problem with management is bad managers. So, on the one hand, we have what we might call the Lord of the Flies narrative - that Github's pseudo-anarchic non-management just enables people's worst traits to come to the surface; it doesn't remove power imbalances, it just hides them and makes it harder to challenge illegitimate use of that power because it's harder to ide…

I fear that having several specialized and limited hierarchies built around the same group of people would create "I have eight different bosses right now." type situations, where a middle of the road employee might have a boss for 'discipline', a boss for 'design', a boss for 'engineering', etc.

Well, it does kind of lead to that situation. But as long as the hierarchies are clearly defined and orthogonal it need not be that bad.

In the military you often find people having to play different roles at different times (we call it "wearing different hats"), and there are various types of hierarchies that might exist simultaneously, and you could be involved in some of those with different roles in each. It can be taken to an extreme (and I want to say there was a Union General in the American Civil War who got famous for that), but it can also help very large organizations function properly in situations where a person has to fill multiple roles.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#105

Post by dragonwriter »

mpyne wrote: post #103
dragonwriter wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company? The circle whose focus is strategic direction. > Who guides the unending governance meetings to decide who the managers will be that day? Unending governance meetings and "decide who the managers will be that day" both seem like signs of a circle with a poor governance process (probably, one that is trying to force things into a non-holarchic structure.)

> > E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company? > The circle whose focus is strategic direction. Sweet. Now we know who's actually in charge, it's whoever is a member of that circle. That wasn't so hard.

The idea that having focus on long-range, broad-scope problems is intimately tied to authority is a typical assumption of traditional heirarchies, but there's no reason it has to be true in holacracies.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#106

Post by rjknight »

gwern wrote: post #79
saraid216 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we have what we might call the Milgram Experiment narrative - that authority positions are naturally corrupting, making belief in good management seem utopian Wait, what the hell? Milgram's experiments, whether or not you find them valid (they're quite problematic on close inspection) had a narrative about proving that normal people were obedient . It has nothing to do with the corruptive influence of power.

He probably just mixed up Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment with Milgram's electroshock experiment. They're often discussed together.

Yeah, I did mix them up. They're in the same "man's inhumanity to man" cluster of neurons in my brain.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#107

Post by kabuks »

I don't know how Github runs, but it sounds nothing like Holacracy. The author is confused (as are many people on this thread).

Six months ago, I switched my company (over 50 full time employees in 3 cities) to Holacracy.

I'm here to tell you that I'm 100% convinced that it's a huge step forward in terms of any organizational system I've come across.

There's nothing 'flat' or 'manager-less' about it. It's a complex and intricate system that leads to greater clarity, less politics, and better distributed decision making.

Accountabilities are clearer, meetings are more efficient, and more voices are heard. Holacracy explicitly avoids design/decide by committee.

If you're running a company with more than 10 employees, I highly recommend you take a serious look at Holacracy. It's the best decision I've made by far, and I'm never going to work for, or start another company without running it this way.

If you're earnestly curious, drop me a note and I'll be happy to talk about it more with you.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#108

Post by mpyne »

dragonwriter wrote: post #105
mpyne wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company? > The circle whose focus is strategic direction. Sweet. Now we know who's actually in charge, it's whoever is a member of that circle. That wasn't so hard.

The idea that having focus on long-range, broad-scope problems is intimately tied to authority is a typical assumption of traditional heirarchies, but there's no reason it has to be true in holacracies.

It has nothing to do with whether you call the direction "strategic", "next quarter" or "tactical". If you have the authority to set the direction at all you're the one (or few) in charge.

We prefer these types of direction to be long-term if only to avoid having a business do its own random walk through the markets, but don't confuse scope with authority.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#109

Post by Zigurd »

The problem at Github isn't a good example of the supposed deficiency of holacratic enterprises.

In the first place, the problem became as serious as it did because it involved Github's management, such as it was. Secondly, the founder involved in the incident was put on leave, and an apology was promptly and unreservedly issued. It is easy to imagine a more hierarchical organization circling the wagons, instead. In the end, Github may be an example of serious problem with a founder that was handled as well as possible.

There are a lot of ways software development does not fit within traditional management structures. For example, if you take traditional project management tools and try to predict a non-trivial software development schedule with them you are going to have a bad time. So we invent new, usually less-structured tools.

You can't do entirely without those structures, but minimization of hierarchy is the logical way to adapt management to the challenge of keeping software development orderly and making a business out of it, if that's your aim. If there is a deeper problem at Github it is likely that they didn't follow some of the other rules of thumb for software development organizations, like "don't hire jerks."

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#110

Post by nomade0 »

nomade0 wrote: post #100
cbracy wrote: post #85

I added an edit here, pointing out that GitHub wasn't actually employing holacracy. That was my (pre-breakfast) sloppiness. My main point still stands, though. And Tom Preston-Werner describes his "management" structure here in pretty great detail so we do have some insight into what was actually going on inside GitHub: http://www.oscon.com/oscon2013/public/schedule/detail/29555

Catherine, you are confusing "Holacracy" for a generic term that means "flat organizations" and "lack of structure". Holacracy® is a specific system with clear rules (available here: http://holacracy.org/constitution ), and is far more structured than what you describe in your article. See for example the structure of my organization running with Holacracy: https://glassfrog.holacracy.org/organizations/5 It's mistake…

I've explained the difference further in a blog post: "Holacracy vs. Hierarchy vs. Flat Orgs" https://medium.com/holacracyone-blog/d1545d5dffa7
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