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Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

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Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#51
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would be exactly what he wanted.

And it wouldn't work because 1% of the employees would read the whole email and then tell all their friends to send an email with a banana image attached. On a parallel note, say hello to games in the age of internet.

Different code-word for each recipient?

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#53
post #50
post #28

So does that apply to the CEO as well? Is he going to drop his title?

Holacracy® replaces single, static titles and departments with multiple, dynamic roles and circles. He's probably the "Lead Link" of the "General Company Circle", e.g. https://glassfrog.holacracy.org/circles/25

So his static job title changes from "Chief Executive Officer" to "Lead Link of General Company Circle"? Can someone else step up and replace him as Lead Link? If not, doesn't seem very dynamic.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#54
post #31

I've only worked for small companies. My current company has roughly 30 employees. My eyes glazed over during the 2nd paragraph. Is this what it's like when you have a lot of employees to manage? Sending Half-Hour Emails with Capitalized Words I've never heard of? Holacracy? Glass Frog? Teal Organization? Reinventing Organizations? Huh? Just let me do my work, damn.

Top level executives get bored and feel ineffective and look for things to do. CEOs especially can fall victim to wanting to be "bold" and being obsessed with whatever their idea of being a leader is at the time. They read articles and books which are written for them full of buzzwords and pseudo-science, and use these to justify taking action which they believe firmly will make a big difference, but really amounts to rearranging furniture.

Just read the linked email. It's non-stop buzzwords and references to "the book". This is the talk of a cult member not someone acting rationally. If you didn't know this was a CEO of a successful corporation, and instead you were told it was an internal Scientology memo, would you doubt it?

Self Management may or may not be a good way to run a company (it probably largely depends on the company), but there should be rational, compelling reasons for why it's the way to go. The articles included in the email are just Malcolm Gladwell style pseudoscience meant to lull top level executives into a hypnotic state of euphoria.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#56

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 op…

It does flat out say anyone who doesn't like it will be given an offer. I assume that refers to the offer you get when you first join where they pay you to quit. So the letter does flat out say, join the holocracy, no more management, if you don't like it, we have a retirement offer for you.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#58
post #31

I've only worked for small companies. My current company has roughly 30 employees. My eyes glazed over during the 2nd paragraph. Is this what it's like when you have a lot of employees to manage? Sending Half-Hour Emails with Capitalized Words I've never heard of? Holacracy? Glass Frog? Teal Organization? Reinventing Organizations? Huh? Just let me do my work, damn.

Probably all it means is that some new management fad has come and replaced whatever was the previous fad (six sigma? Lean organizations?).

If you want to a lot of dough, read the books and memorize a few buzzwords, buy a suit and name yourself a consultant.

I doubt anything will actually change below a superficial level, but everybody wants to seem important and the way management does that is by making sweeping changes (we engineers aren't any different, we just want to build impressive and geeking things).

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#59
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is my main concern. I have never studied the concept in detail but I don't see how self-organisation addresses any problem.

well i have worked at a worker coop we (collectively) did have over all control but there where still managers.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#60
In an essay collected in The Hall of Uselessness, Simon Leys quotes a Chinese writer's parable from the first half of the 20th Century, about a government afraid of its people that create a massive volume of laws. It had a blank first page, however, which only the initiated knew how to read. The first three entries were "1. Some cases must be treated with special severity. 2. Some cases must be treated with special lenity. 3. This does not apply in all cases." (Quoted from memory.)

What does it say on the blank first page of the Zappos employee manual?

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