Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

fastcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 111 posts

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#2

Post by jcrites »

An summary of the article and the concept that Tony Hsieh wrote:

"We’ve been operating partially under Holacracy and partially under the legacy management hierarchy in parallel for over a year now. Having one foot in one world while having the other foot in the other world has slowed down our transformation towards self-management and self-organization. [W]e haven't made fast enough progress towards self-management, self-organization, and more efficient structures to run our business.

"After many conversations and a lot of feedback about where we are versus our desired state of self-organization, self-management, increased autonomy, and increased efficiency, we are going to take a "rip the bandaid" approach to accelerate progress towards becoming a [self-managing] organization. As of 4/30/15, in order to eliminate the legacy management hierarchy, there will be effectively be no more people managers." He goes onto to describe more about how this will work.

What does Holacracy entail?

"Holacracy is a social technology or system of organizational governance in which authority and decision-making are distributed throughout a holarchy of self-organizing teams rather than being vested at the top of a hierarchy", according to Wikipedia.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#5

Post by dk1138 »

This is a push to up-end the company culture, which is its own steep challenge. Kudos it they can do it.

Management has a role. Business politics is a real thing. Power struggles are not stymied by an egalitarian approach.

Any company will have decision makers at all levels of influence and control. In some situations, managers are those with time and wisdom to be able to sort out what is a regular ask and what is going to be an uphill challenge.

One of my favorite quotes from one of my managers was "I'll finish the fights you start." My autonomy in that role came from reinforcement from a wiser, steadied hand. I believe good people managers have a distinct place in employee growth.

Good people managers create employee groups that generate self-organizational habits, self-manage based on goals, and have increased efficiency. Poor people managers get in the way of this. Good people managers know when to step in to advocate for business importance where inexperienced employees may be able to generate good work product, but not be good advocates (yet!) They also understand longer term missions that may have been disclosed to them, so that they can prioritize correctly.

This prioritization is vital. I don't think the people lead themselves to the verdict that their work/problem is low on the totem pole. Quite the opposite, people own the role they are in and advocate as best they can. Self-organization and self-management require a distinct understanding of the business and where one's work lies in the scheme of things. Without management acting as a buffer, this could create a lot of noise.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#7

Post by mauricemir »

jcrites wrote: post #2

An summary of the article and the concept that Tony Hsieh wrote: "We’ve been operating partially under Holacracy and partially under the legacy management hierarchy in parallel for over a year now. Having one foot in one world while having the other foot in the other world has slowed down our transformation towards self-management and self-organization. [W]e haven't made fast enough progress towards self-management,…

So informal high school cliques vs a Hierarchy - I can guess what the average outcome will be.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#9

Post by golemotron »

jcrites wrote: post #2

An summary of the article and the concept that Tony Hsieh wrote: "We’ve been operating partially under Holacracy and partially under the legacy management hierarchy in parallel for over a year now. Having one foot in one world while having the other foot in the other world has slowed down our transformation towards self-management and self-organization. [W]e haven't made fast enough progress towards self-management,…

> "Holacracy is a social technology or system of organizational governance in which authority and decision-making are distributed throughout a holarchy of self-organizing teams rather than being vested at the top of a hierarchy", according to Wikipedia.

Yet there he is at the top of the hierarchy telling people to do it.

Post reply on HN