Brian J. Robertson - Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World

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I met Brian Robertson when we shared the stage as presenters at a Conscious Capitalism conference in 2010 in California. When I heard his perspectives on a novel and dynamic way to structure and run an organization, I was enthralled.

At the time I was smarting from some of my own mistakes in this regard, and I was in the middle of a deep dive trying to figure out how to enable my small but eager company to run itself, without me having to play the CEO role. By that time, I knew I wasnt the best player for that play; I was more valuable to my organization as a spokesperson and as keeper of the flame of the GTD methodology popularized by my book Getting Things Done.

We had embarked on the path of attempting to scale our work to serve the growing interest around the world for its content. I knew I couldnt do it by myself, and that someone or something besides me would be required to lead that effort operationally. But entrusting the authority of running the company to a strong personality that might not totally be aligned with our critical DNA was tricky business. I sensed that what we were about as an organization was bigger than any of us individually. But putting someone in charge would mean handing over the reins of a simple but subtle and sophisticated IP that was trying to find its way in the world.

I wanted an organization that didnt need a CEO. At least not in the traditional sense.

Brians message and the Holacracy model rocked my worldif it worked as he suggested it might, this was exactly what I was seeking. I rather quickly decided to go all in with our company and test it out. I needed to discover whether Holacracy worked, as soon as I could. The model seemed so powerful, I figured the only two options were to dismiss or adopteither way, dont mess around.

I did (luckily) have an intuition that exploring Holacracy was going to be a five-year project. And even if Holacracy wasnt a good match for our organizations trajectory, the model made such cognitive sense that it would be worth the researchno matter that our fragile enterprise would be the crucible.

My career has revolved around productivity improvementprimarily for individuals, and subsequently for their organizations. Ive known that when key individuals implement the best practices of Getting Things Done it can have significant ramifications for their whole ecosystem. But when I heard Brian speak about changing a fundamental operating process to achieve the organizational equivalent of mind like water (a metaphor I use for an individuals clarified state, achieved with GTD), I knew this was a frontier worth exploring.

As I write this, we are three-plus years into Holacracy implementation, and it seems my five-year projection may be accurate. To change the operating system of an organization is a daunting endeavor. We had prided ourselves on being a relatively with-it companyflexible, open, transparent But as soon as we implemented some of the Holacracy processes, it became evident that some of our best-intentioned habits and practices would need to be transformed.

The fantastic part of the story is how much positive change occurred for us from the get-go. That positive change continues. Once you have tasted the increased clarity generated by the meeting and communication formats, its hard to dismiss the system. Once you feel how much pressure is relieved when you let go of the necessity to have heroic leaders, to reverse that direction would seem like being thrown back onto a very slippery slope.

As Brian indicates, Holacracy is not a panacea: it wont resolve all of an organizations tensions and dilemmas. But, in my experience, it does provide the most stable ground from which to recognize, frame, and address them.

There are times when many of us would love to prove Holacracy doesnt work. Its easy to blame the process as the perpetrator of our discomforts. But trying to poke a hole in the model is harder than implementing it! And in resolving the tensions that it has brought to the fore, it has also deepened our awareness of its practice and implications.

Whats so wonderful is that the model doesnt care. As a matter of fact, getting rid of it is totally acceptable and allowed, within the model. But youll want to use Holacracy to make that change as elegant as possible!

D AVID A LLEN

November 2014

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

If everyone had to think outside the box, maybe it was the box that needed fixing.

M ALCOLM G LADWELL , What the Dog Saw

I learned my most important business lesson on the day I nearly crashed an airplane. I was a student pilot working toward a private pilots license, and the day had come for my first long-distance solo flight. Id be flying alone to an airport far from home, and with barely twenty hours of actual flight time under my belt I was more than a little nervous. Hundreds of miles lay ahead, and the only companionship I would have once airborne was a well-worn bank of instruments in the cockpit of my little two-seater airplane.

All seemed well just after takeoff, but before long I noticed an unfamiliar light on the instrument panel. Low Voltage, it said. I wasnt sure what that meantthey dont teach new pilots much about the planes mechanics. I tapped the light, hoping it was just a glitch, but nothing changed. Unsure how to respond, I did what seemed natural at the time: I checked every other instrument for anomalies. My airspeed and altitude were good. The navigation aid told me I was perfectly on course. The fuel gauge showed plenty of gas. All these instruments were telling me I had nothing to worry about. So I accepted that consensus and effectively let the other instruments outvote the low-voltage light. I ignored it. It couldnt be too serious if nothing else was amiss, right?

This proved to be a very bad decision. It eventually left me completely lost, in a storm, with no lights and no radio, nearly out of gas, and violating controlled airspace near an international airport. And this near catastrophe started when I outvoted the low-voltage light, which, it turns out, was tuned in to different information than all the other instruments. Even though it was a minority voice, it was one I really needed to listen to at that moment. Dismissing its wisdom just because my other instruments didnt see any trouble was a shortsighted decision that could have cost me my life.

Fortunately I did make it down, shaken but unharmed. And in the months that followed, as I reflected on the decisions I had made that day, I came to an interesting conclusion. I was still making the same mistakenot in my plane, but in the team I was supposed to be leading at work. In fact, the near-fatal error I made in the cockpit is one made on a daily basis in most organizations.

An organization, like a plane, is equipped with sensorsnot lights and gauges, but the human beings who energize its roles and sense reality on its behalf. Too often, an organizations sensor has critical information that is ignored and therefore goes unprocessed. One individual notices something important, but no one else sees it and no channels are available to process that insight into meaningful change. In this way, we often outvote the low-voltage lights of our organizations.