Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet, it's surprisingly high in protein, and it makes me fart.
Go back to reddit.
kzhahou
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave
91–100 of 111 posts
Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave
#92Without more context than the title and the linked email, it's pretty easy to call Hsieh's move brash or tried-and-futile. But the guy is often regarded as the premier management CEO of his generation, and homogenous culture is strongly enforced in his hiring process. Employees love Hsieh because they're (largely) on the same page, not bc of a reality distortion field. After seeing Hsieh's track record and reading "D…
> But the guy is often regarded as the premier management CEO of his generation
Erm...what? By whom? I only know of the incompetent Tony Hsieh that burned through cash at such a rate that his investors thought it a miracle that Zappos was still around when several large companies started looking to get into the online apparel business at the same time. It is widely rumored within Amazon that Zappos was a few weeks from bankruptcy when they were bought by Amazon, and it is pretty well known within Amazon today that they still aren't profitable. A match made in heaven?
Even if you don't see the same negative picture that I do, by every "track record" objective measure you can think of, he is two orders of magnitude worse of a CEO than Zuckerberg and Larry Page, and still not even in the same league as Elon Musk, or if you want to stick to apparel, Kevin Plank.
It is one thing to take puff pieces seriously, and another thing altogether to take autobiographical puff pieces seriously.
> Employees love Hsieh because they're (largely) on the same page, not bc of a reality distortion field.
His associate-level employees love him because they have a pretty good job that they couldn't get elsewhere. His managers hate him because they view him as incompetent and irresponsible. Everyone I know that works in or with Zappos sees this as a clear power play. He's trying to cut them out of the picture.
Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave
#93Maybe people would be more open to it if the memo didn't sound like L. Ron Hubbard wrote it...
Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave
#94An 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,…
The opposite of formal management and hierarchy isn't "self-management" and "self-organization" but informal power structures and hierarchies. Ultimately, less security and more social pressure and control for the individual. Brave new world of work.
good thing Holacracy is everything except "informal", then.. literally the core idea is that you take the implicit jobs of management and make them explicit & open, and allow them to be claimed by more than just one individual.
Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave
#95I'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.
If you'd like further bait your creeping nausea, do a little research on Holocracy... "Adopting Holacracy isn't cheap or easy. The system has its own set of rules and lingo, and is complicated to implement. The Holacracy parent company, HolacracyOne, helps companies transition by offering consulting services that run from $50,000 to $500,000, depending on how long it takes to achieve self-sufficiency. Even for much s…
I guess startups that get tens of millions right off the bat have to do something with their money.
Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave
#96I'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.
I work for an agency with thousands of employees. It's never like this. People do their work, they seek out the resources they need, and they self organize on short term teams to address issues. Traditional management structure exists to make sure no one is running in the wrong direction and to assess performance. "Just let me do my work" is basically what everyone wants, and a good manager will know/see that and be as hands-off as they can while still ensuring agency objectives are being appropriately accomplished.
Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave
#97Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sounds a little bit like the theory behind some communist parties' organization. Instead of a strict hierarchy, with leadership titles like Chairman or President and such, there are functional working groups or committees ("circles") with possibly intersecting membership. Then people have functional roles in those committees. The idea being that you aren't at a certain "rank" in the organization, but rather you are d…
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "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.
What if the holocracy decides they like hierarchies?
I admit I was thinking while reading the email that it would be rather funny if their ad hoc emergent groups elected managers to manage them, and replicated a hierarchical structure.
Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave
#100An 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.
You have to love invented Jargon that relies on invented Jargon in its definition.