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210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

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Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#141

Post by 1123581321 »

keithpeter wrote: post #128
1123581321 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Providing support and feedback is a role responsibility. There can be as many responsibilities and roles to fulfill them as the team needs. If a circle member has a need for support and they are not getting it, it gets brought up at a tension meeting and quickly resolved (new responsibility assigned, role assigned, person's role changed, whatever's needed.) Edit: I forgot to add that anyone who perceives a person is…

"If a circle member has a need for support and they are not getting it..." How does circle member recognise that they need support? What indicators/who provides feedback? My (limited) experience as a manager was mainly about nurture/support/challenge of colleagues. We could not allow them to fail/fail to 'ask' for support because of implications for clients (we did not sell people shoes).

The tension meeting makes it hard to avoid asking for support because it's so easy for people to bring up small problems as they're noticed and get quick resolution. Also, responsibilities are worded as objectively and measurably as possible (like good KPIs) to increase transparency into how people are doing in their roles. If a circle in an org like yours needs to avoid showing weaknesses to clients and to suss out problems before they're noticeable, they would be able to define those as responsibilities and assign them to the right people.

That said, I think one of the bets holocracy makes is that a group of people with a better understanding of their responsibilities and who receive quicker, clearer feedback will naturally be more proactive about problems. A circle is pretty unlikely to assign themselves the kinds of restrictive processing and reporting that are traditionally used to control interaction with clients in organizations that don't have perfectly reliable people. But in the short term, the control method would probably have more consistent results and that is not acceptable to every organization.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#142

Post by calinet6 »

zeidrich wrote: post #136
calinet6 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very similar in holocracy: the people who are natural leaders will fill the management needs of the organization; it's just more chaotic, less predictable, and not as good. The lack of structure brings out the worst in human behavior. In my experience, it is a horrible system in which to exist. It's highly ignorant of psychology and behavior theory almost intentionally, and it creates far more drama and politics…

Yeah. It's essentially creating a power vacuum. People don't work without structure, ad hoc structures develop. The conjecture is that this is a good thing, that these ad hoc structures are more natural, and you will have natural leaders take lead where appropriate and this will be more effective. But the issue is structure deals with quirks in human behavior. It deals with the emotional side of it, it deals with the…

> The real problem with traditional management structures is that it often breaks down to this sort of system to start with.

This is exactly right. The traditional organization already falls prey to politics and games due to lack of good structure, not due to the idea of structure itself.

You will get a system regardless of whether you intentionally create one or not. It's far better to get the one you intend and can develop, than an uncontrollable chaos.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#143

Post by exelius »

lmg643 wrote: post #94
exelius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea with Zappos is that they're supposed to be such a great place to work that you wouldn't want to leave. And in Zappos' case, I get why they offered severance deals. They were embarking on a radical experiment in organizational structure, and not everyone is going to be on board with it. Rather than having a bunch of people at the water cooler talking shit about the changes, you offer them money to lea…

it's easy to forget that zappos was acquired by amazon. i am interested to what extent sales growth or lack thereof, would be a driver of radical restructuring.

I think that Amazon is content to let Zappos experiment. If Zappos loses customers, statistically most of them will end up at Amazon anyway. Tony Hsieh is pretty out there, and a lot of his ideas sound kind of crazy, but I think Bezos believes in him and is willing to let him try. Even though everyone says "Oh, that won't work" you don't know until you try.

If Zappos can experiment with a new leadership style, maybe it produces desirable results that can be replicated elsewhere. Maybe it fails miserably. What's likely to happen is that there will be things that work and things that don't, and I guarantee Amazon is interested in that. Because of all the things I've heard about Amazon (many of them good), I've never heard that it's a great place to work. Their turnover is high, so maybe they're looking for ways to reduce it while not losing the culture of urgency (though some would say fear) that makes them so good at executing on things.

Of course, if it's a total failure, Bezos will likely fire Tony and trash the entire idea.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#144

Post by kelukelugames »

digikata wrote: post #86
jasonmp85 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read, Semco employees help set their own compensation and hours, something that will not be happening at Zappos (at least not in such a direct fashion). Semco is a workplace democracy, not a holacracy. It isn't a worker cooperative (like certain MONDRAGON group members), so there isn't shared ownership, so it has that in common with Zappos. In a nutshell, the holacracy system will have "circles" of ind…

Wikipedia has Zappos down as being acquired by Amazon in 2009

Yes, Amazon owns Zappos. In Tony's book, he explains that legally Zappos still gets to what Zappos wants.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#145

Post by mrich »

nostrademons wrote: post #73
logicalmind wrote: post #22

I work at a company that was in bad shape during the financial crisis. A temporary CEO was put in charge. Ultimately, a number of companies were merged to create one company that could survive. In the end, one of the CEO's of the merged companies became the CEO of the final company. His first act as CEO was to offer everyone in the company a tenure-based package to leave the company. I don't know the full numbers, bu…

People work at a company for a variety of reasons. Some want or need the money. Some really believe in the company's mission. Some like the people they'll be working with. Some want to develop skills for their next move. Some want the brand name or status. Over time, the company will accrete people of all sorts of different motivations. What a buy-out does is take money out of the equation. It makes it so that everyo…

I don't see how the usual buyout amount would be able to take the money out of the equation. "Low performers" who don't have good chances in the job market surely will stay, since their earning potential is greater than what you reasonably offer them in a buyout. The likelihood that the skilled employees will take the money, knowing they will get another job immediately, is much higher.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#146

Post by keithpeter »

1123581321 wrote: post #141
keithpeter wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If a circle member has a need for support and they are not getting it..." How does circle member recognise that they need support? What indicators/who provides feedback? My (limited) experience as a manager was mainly about nurture/support/challenge of colleagues. We could not allow them to fail/fail to 'ask' for support because of implications for clients (we did not sell people shoes).

The tension meeting makes it hard to avoid asking for support because it's so easy for people to bring up small problems as they're noticed and get quick resolution. Also, responsibilities are worded as objectively and measurably as possible (like good KPIs) to increase transparency into how people are doing in their roles. If a circle in an org like yours needs to avoid showing weaknesses to clients and to suss out…

"I think one of the bets holocracy makes is that a group of people with a better understanding of their responsibilities and who receive quicker, clearer feedback will naturally be more proactive about problems."

Who provides the feedback? Based on what credentials? Explain why that person not a manager.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#147

Post by psychometry »

jackmaney wrote: post #46
logicalmind wrote: post #22

I work at a company that was in bad shape during the financial crisis. A temporary CEO was put in charge. Ultimately, a number of companies were merged to create one company that could survive. In the end, one of the CEO's of the merged companies became the CEO of the final company. His first act as CEO was to offer everyone in the company a tenure-based package to leave the company. I don't know the full numbers, bu…

> It was unclear what his intentions were. To determine loyalty to the company, possibly. Corporate loyalty has been dead for many, many years.

Loyalty runs both ways. Employees aren't going to want to stay loyal to a company in this mess of a capitalist economy.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#148

Post by gjm11 »

jmtame wrote: post #118
calinet6 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very similar in holocracy: the people who are natural leaders will fill the management needs of the organization; it's just more chaotic, less predictable, and not as good. The lack of structure brings out the worst in human behavior. In my experience, it is a horrible system in which to exist. It's highly ignorant of psychology and behavior theory almost intentionally, and it creates far more drama and politics…

Are you speaking from experience? It seems that if you completely do away with job titles, the politics would go away right?

> if you completely do away with job titles, the politics would go away

For anyone who finds this plausible, it might be enlightening to contemplate (1) the first "hacker koan" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_koan and (2) this classic XKCD cartoonhttps://xkcd.com/592/ .

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#149

Post by cthalupa »

detaro wrote: post #132
jmtame wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you speaking from experience? It seems that if you completely do away with job titles, the politics would go away right?

Politics isn't tied to job titles. There still are people with different amounts of influence that try to influence others for their own goals. FWIW, Jeri Ellsworth (who was hired to do hardware stuff, didn't do well there and was fired in the end) described office politics at Valve "like back in high school". Not saying that it can't work, but it also is not without its flaws.

I wasn't aware of who Jeri Ellsworth was, but a cursory look says that she was fired by Valve.

Were her comments before or after she was fired? I'm not sure that if it was after, we can necessarily count on it being objective. I've heard plenty of people make comments that aren't exactly the most accurate after they've been fired.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#150

Post by rifung »

sliverstorm wrote: post #103
Spooky23 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised the number of people taking the deal isn't higher. If I need religious zeal, I'll go join a religion.

There's plenty of reasons to stick around that aren't religious zeal.

There certainly are but are there that many reasons that are good enough to make someone stick around instead of taking 3 months pay while not having to work?

I imagine most developers could find a job with similar pay in a month or maybe one and a half, so the reasons would have to be strong enough that you'd give up an extra 10% in salary, or even being able to take a 3 month long vacation.

On the other hand, if they recently had to move to Vegas I wonder how hard it is to find work there and I can totally see people not wanting to move again so quickly.

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