In my last article on Holacracy, I described the reasons why we as founders decided to adopt a completely different management concept. Today, I'll show you the first steps on how you can easily introduce Holacracy into your organization. To start with, I'll briefly explain what holacracy is and what benefits this type of management can bring to your organization.
Holacracy - what is it?
Holacracy is a management system that transparently distributes responsibility within the organization and gives all members the opportunity to make their own decisions in their area. It does away with direct top-down authority.
Holacracy - what's the point?
I discussed the benefits in detail in the last article. Very briefly, holacracy brings
- Greater satisfaction within the company
- More freedom for employees
- More freedom for the boss
- Better scalability of the company
- Greater agility in the company
- Higher productivity.
The core of holacracy - Do your job and adjust!
Put simply, holacracy consists of two central elements. Roles and monthly meetings in which the roles are adjusted.
Do your job! - Roles as job description
Everyone has probably seen them at some point: A job description. Many probably see it for the first and last time in their job advertisement. Holacracy brings it to life. As a role, it becomes part of daily work and an anchor point for the distribution of tasks and responsibilities. Each person usually has several roles. The roles consist of the following elements:
Purpose: Each role fulfills a very specific purpose.
Responsibilities: These are the duties of each role. They also reflect the expectations of other team members. Naturally also those of a "former" boss. The responsibilities may well comprise 15 to 20 points.
Area of responsibility: These are the rights of each role. Here the role has the say and others have to ask permission for actions in the role's area of responsibility.
Example of a role representation in short form
Role Finances
Task / purpose: To ensure the company's liquidity
Responsibility / expected results of others: Finalize financial statements by the end of March
Authority / area of responsibility: financial budgets. The Finance role must be consulted for expenditure outside of fixed budgets.
The roles can in turn be grouped into departments. In holacracy, these are called circles. The largest circle is the company itself. Of course, the company itself also pursues an overarching purpose, which should also be clearly defined. In the case of Raidboxes, the purpose is to give creative people more freedom.
Adjust! - Monthly governance meetings
As the collected role descriptions are nothing more than a corporate constitution, the meetings for adapting the roles are called "governance meetings". These meetings are used to work through minor and major conflicts (tensions) and incorporate them into the role descriptions.
But don't worry about the extra meeting! These meetings currently last between 30 and 45 minutes. The meetings are tightly moderated. The moderator should always make sure that the set procedure is followed.
Each role can be adapted as long as this does not harm the company.
That pretty much says it all. Of course, entire books can still be written about holacracy. Fortunately, others have already done so, such as Brian J. Robertson, the founder of the Holacracy movement. Personally, I think that Robertson's book "Holacracy" is unfortunately a bit dry and does not do justice to the system. Nevertheless, it is a must-read for the person introducing the system in the company.
"*" indicates required fields
Just do it! - The path to more freedom
Much more exciting than getting into every detail of holacracy is to start with it and try it out!
Testing & starting instead of planning & waiting
This is a basic change management recommendation that has proved absolutely successful for us. The procedure is as follows: First decide on a test phase instead of deciding on a final introduction. It is important not to strictly insist on every detail during the introduction. The overall concept should be adapted to the respective organization. However, the two points above "role document" and "governance meeting" are essential and indispensable.
The recommended approach has the advantage of actually getting started instead of just talking about it. At the same time, it almost always leads to the trial quickly becoming a permanent fixture when the first successes are achieved. A functioning system is easier to supplement than to introduce a system completely.
Step 1 - Define holacracy disciples
There should be one person who has already worked with job descriptions, for example. This person is also the moderator at the meetings and the contact person for questions. This person should have a certain amount of "power" or influence in the organization. In case of doubt, they must defend the concept to existing managers or have the authority to put themselves in front of other employees. This person must also read and work through Robertson's "Holacracy". Moderation experience is an advantage.
Step 2 - Make the decision for holacracy
It is imperative that the top management team makes the decision to conduct a holacracy test. To this end, the holacracy disciple must prepare a briefing and explain the consequences. The most important consequence is that in certain situations the authority to issue instructions is relinquished and replaced by other management elements.
Step 3 - Hold Holacracy Kick Off Workshop
In the kick-off workshop, the concept is explained and introduced to the other team members. In a second part, each team member should begin to write down their roles. 3 to 4 hours should be reserved for the kick-off workshop.
Step 4 - Further elaborate and adapt roles
The roles should be completed and further elaborated before the first governance meeting. Governance meetings should initially take place every two weeks. Circles should work out their roles for themselves. This part is actually the most time-consuming. Over a period of two months, 20 hours per person will probably need to be scheduled. During this time, roles are dropped, added and changed until a final version emerges.
Practical tip
There is a holacracy tool called GlassFrog. Unfortunately, we didn't like the user interface of the tool that much. Since we use Google Docs company-wide, we simply created a "Holacracy Roles" document instead. Our 50 or so different roles are listed there. Google Docs also has the advantage that every team member can enter role changes in suggest mode, which are then discussed and approved in the monthly governance meeting.
Step 5 - Withstand & process tensions
In principle, holacracy has now been implemented. If it weren't for habit and human nature. Habit leads to old managers actually wanting to continue being managers and giving instructions or blocking decisions. Conversely, the new managers (the individual employees) must understand that being a manager does not only mean free decision-making, but also responsibility and, above all, being a role model for others. Here it is important that the holacracy disciple recognizes such undesirable developments and addresses and resolves them accordingly with each individual and in the group.
To properly understand the effect of holacracy, it helps to refer to Tuckman's team phase model. Here, every team goes through forming, storming, norming and performing phases. The last phase of holacracy is the performing phase.
Finished: happy high performance teams
Just like in soccer, at the end of the season, 1. FC Kaiserslautern beat FC Bayern and became German soccer champions. The team worked perfectly, everyone knew what they had to do and in the end they made history.
