Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World

by Brian J. Robertson

To facilitate clear and concrete role definitions, the Holacracy constitution defines a role as consisting of three specific elements: a “purpose” to express; possibly one or more “domains” to control; and a set of “accountabilities” to enact. Some roles will have all three of these parts, though often roles will start out with only a purpose or just a single accountability and evolve from there. A purpose tells us why the role exists: what it aims to achieve. A domain (of which there may be several) specifies something the role has the exclusive authority to control on behalf of the organization—in other words, this role’s “property,” which no other role can mess with. And each accountability is an ongoing activity that the role has the authority to perform and is expected to perform or otherwise manage for the organization. This coupling of authority with accountability helps avoid the situation we often see, in which people are held responsible for something they don’t have the authority to actually do.