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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

#81

Post by ryanobjc »

coldpie wrote: 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.

Kind of reminds me of... scientology.

Replace sea org with teal organization, and auditing with 'tension meetings' and you got yourself a new cult!

Then again, I'm just jealous since I always wanted to start a cult :-(

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#83

Post by ryanobjc »

corysama wrote: post #78
coldpie wrote: 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.

When it's just you and a couple dozen other people, just letting you do your work is a pretty safe bet. But, when its you and a few hundred or a few thousand highly variable people, just letting you do your work has a strong risk of setting you up for failure. Somebody in that huge mass of people is going to screw up your work by running full speed in the wrong direction. That somebody might be you -not out of incomp…

books about internal corporate communication dont exactly advocate "Dense ideas" at the executive level.

After all, who is going to read a 30 minute long email? Only if you are threatening their jobs (and Tony is!)

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#84

Post by rkuykendall-com »

ph0rque wrote: post #39
gadders wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the holocracy decides they like hierarchies?

Brian: Please, please, please listen! I've got one or two things to say. The Crowd: Tell us! Tell us both of them! Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't NEED to follow ME, You don't NEED to follow ANYBODY! You've got to think for your selves! You're ALL individuals! The Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals! Brian: You're all different! The Crowd: Yes, we ARE all different! Man in crowd: I'm not... The Crowd: S…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjz16xjeBAA

Quote starts at 1:20. One of the funniest movies I've ever seen.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#85

Post by 6d0debc071 »

It might help this email made it easy to visualise quite how the teams are supposed to approach a problem under this new paradigm. As it is, I've read the thing and I have no idea how it's meant to work. It might be a great idea, it might be a terrible one... either way, it's got a lot of buzz words, which is rarely a good sign.

Uncharitably lots of it sounds like giving up on managing - we'll set the strategy and the rest will somehow work itself out.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#87

Post by kbenson »

Whenever I read something that starts a sentence with "Leading scientists believe...", I immediately question my choices that led me to that point, and whether I want to continue reading, which I usually don't.

I'm not sure I've ever read those words outside a critique and found the document they were in worthwhile.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#89

Post by timdellinger »

I applaud his boldness! I think that this will be a test of the strength of Zappos's culture as a driver of human behavior, and a test of how well they've been able to hire and retain only those people who fit in with and drive that culture.

To quote Larry Niven, "Anarchy is the least stable of social structures. It falls apart at a touch."

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

#90

Post by maxxxxx »

angrow wrote: post #75
maxxxxx wrote: post #68

How do salary raises get decided under this system? To me it looks like he wants to have top management, a few superstars, and the rest of the company are totally interchangeable. Does your salary get reduced when you change roles?

Holacracy is not a system for determining salary, or any specific tactical question, in the same way that "Agile" isn't a system for determining what programming language to use. Holacracy just says how an organization can decide how to apportion responsibility and authority. Different organizations reach compensation decisions in a wide variety of ways, no matter their meta-organizational framework. Commonly, salari…

"These are hierarchies of influence, not position, and they’re built from the bottom up. At Morning Star one accumulates authority by demonstrating expertise, helping peers, and adding value. Stop doing those things, and your influence wanes—as will your pay."

Form the company's perspective this is probably a good thing but I think it results in a hyper-competitive situation for the regular employee.

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