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Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

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11–20 of 111 posts

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#11
post #6

I wonder what proportion of Zappos' 1500+ employees actually spent 30 minutes reading that email.

Imagine this line 80% in

"Good job that you've made it this far reading the memo. Please send me back an e-mail with your name + banana in the title, and attach an image of a banana or else you're fired. Thank you!"

I wonder how much staff they would have to fire ...

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#13
The really interesting part of this article for me is that they are adopting such an approach even though they are a public company. The previous adopters that I'd heard of were all private, and I never could quite figure out how they intended to handle the compliance requirements that come with being a public company (e.g. to prevent insider trading).

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#14
I have only skimmed the memo, so I may be missing something, but calling this an "ultimatum" and saying things like "adopt holacracy or leave" seems awfully overdramatic. If a CEO says "Hey, we're rearranging the org chart now," and you can't can't bear the thought of working under the new org chart, then unless you're in a position to talk him out of it, your only real option is to quit. Nobody has to mention the option explicitly; it's understood. That's not an "ultimatum," it's what being an employee means.

This guy is explicitly bringing it up because he's offering extra benefits to anyone who chooses to quit. He's being more accommodating than the average CEO, not less.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#15
post #6

I wonder what proportion of Zappos' 1500+ employees actually spent 30 minutes reading that email.

Imagine this line 80% in "Good job that you've made it this far reading the memo. Please send me back an e-mail with your name + banana in the title, and attach an image of a banana or else you're fired. Thank you!" I wonder how much staff they would have to fire ...

I would not respond even if I read that email. Such company would be broken, and this seems like good way out.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#16

The really interesting part of this article for me is that they are adopting such an approach even though they are a public company. The previous adopters that I'd heard of were all private, and I never could quite figure out how they intended to handle the compliance requirements that come with being a public company (e.g. to prevent insider trading).

He is nuts. Do notice he himself is not participating.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#17

The really interesting part of this article for me is that they are adopting such an approach even though they are a public company. The previous adopters that I'd heard of were all private, and I never could quite figure out how they intended to handle the compliance requirements that come with being a public company (e.g. to prevent insider trading).

Zappos is a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon, not a public company itself.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#18
post #3

Similar ideas are expressed in Valve's Corporate Handbook, which describes a company culture where there is no hierarchy, either: https://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes....

There is always a hierarchy. Either it is explicit or it is implicit (which does not mean I'm pro explicit hierarchies)

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#19

A counterpoint to "holacracy", "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" by Joreen: http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

one of the points he makes in the memo is that holocracy doesn't mean that there is no structure. it's just a different structure than the traditional hierarchy.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#20
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,…

    > there will be effectively be no more people managers
I hope they've got some shit-hot HR and legal
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