Holacracy: The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy

by Brian J. Robertson

Holacracy focuses on clearly differentiating individuals from the roles they fill.

The organization’s structure is defined by the roles the organization needs to pursue its purpose, without reference to the particular individuals in the organization. The people come in later, to fill or energize those roles.

With roles defined around what is needed for the organization’s purpose, we can then look at our available talent and ...

Most of us will fill multiple roles qu...

In our personal lives, we are always filling multiple roles; one individual might be a parent, a spouse, a child, a teacher, and a student. Each of these roles comes with different expectations and responsibilities. In the same way...

At HolacracyOne, I fill about thirty roles, among them those I mentioned before: Trainer, P...

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” t...

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 authori...

Accountabilities are phrased beginning with a verb ending in “-ing,” to indicate that they are not single pro...

SAMPLE ROLE DEFINITION Every role can have a purpose, domains, and accountabilities. Role: Marketing Purpose: Lots of buzz about our company and its services Domains: The company’s mailing list and social media accounts Content on the company’s public website Accountabilities: Building relationships with potential customers in target markets defined by the Marketing Strategy role Promoting and highlighting the organization’s services to potential customers via the Web and social media channels Triaging speaking invitations and other PR opportunities sent to the organization, and routing good opportunities to the Spokesperson role

Roles in Holacracy are dynamic, living things that change over time. Unlike traditional job descriptions, which are often vague, theoretical, and soon outdated, Holacracy role definitions are based on the reality of what activities are experienced as useful in the organization, and they stay in sync with that evolving reality.

Holacracy’s governance process allows for the continual clarification and refinement of roles on the basis of actual tensions that arise, rather t...

Let’s say you experience a tension in one of your roles because you were expecting a coworker to perform some function, and she fails to deliver. Holacracy’s rules and processes will force you to face the question: “Is this an explicit a...

When we do engage in a group discussion, we can do so without creating an expectation of consensus, because everyone is crystal clear on which roles have authority to make which decisions. We also know what we can reasonably expect from others and what others can expect from us as we go about our work and exercise authority together.

Organizational clarity creates an authentic distribution of power, freeing each of us to be a good leader when we’re filling a role and need to balance input with expediency, and a good follower when another role owns a decision and shuts down discussion to make a judgment call.

A holarchy, however, looks like a series of nested circles, like cells within organs within organisms. In a holarchy, each part or holon is not subjugated to those above it, but retains autonomy, individual authority, and wholeness.

So we’ve got a holarchy of roles grouped within circles, which are themselves grouped within broader circles, all the way up until the biggest circle contains the entire organization. This circle is called the “Anchor Circle” in the constitution. Every circle and role within the holarchy retains real autonomy and authority as a cohesive, whole entity itself, and also has real responsibilities as a part of a larger entity.

Despite each circle’s fundamental autonomy, its decisions and actions are not fully independent of others. Remember, each circle is a holon—both a self-organizing entity ...

As a part, it shares its environment with the other functions and sub-circles of that broader circle. So a circle that behaves as if it were fully autonomous will harm the system, just as a cell in the...

This structure captures the core shift necessary for Holacracy’s distribution of authority—from a hierarchy of people directing people, to a holarchy of organizational functions assigned to roles and circles. And this is a critical difference: a shift not simply in the type of structure, from hierarchy to holarchy, but in what we’re structuring in the first place. Holacracy moves from structuring the people to structuring the organization’s roles and functions. More specifically, instead of structuring a simple power relationship between people—who can give orders to whom—Holacracy structures where work lives within the overall system, and it elucidates the boundaries between the various entities doing that work.

A circle is not a group of people but a group of roles, and it is also, in a sense, a really big role itself, with a single cohesive purpose to express, some accountabilities to enact, and possibly some domains to control.

The roles a circle contains are a breakdown of what’s needed to express its overall purpose, enact its accountabilities, and control its domains.

A circle has the autonomy and authority to self-organize and to coordinate and integrate the work of all the roles it contains. This self-organization happens in the circle’s governance me...

The work of circles can vary wildly in both type and scale. Some circles implement specific projects; others manage a department or a business line, or perform particular support functions, or deal with overall business operations. Some circles are small and narrowly fo...

Lead Links and Rep Links Whenever a circle contains sub-circles, the super-circle and each sub-circle are linked via two special roles, which straddle the boundary between the connected circles, like channels across a cell’s membrane. These roles, called links, take part in the governance and operational processes of both connected circles and allow feedback and tension processing to flow across circle boundaries. The “Lead Link” is appointed by the super-circle to represent its needs in the sub-circle. A lead link holds the perspective and functions needed to align the sub-circle with the purpose, strategy, and needs of its broader context. The other link, called a “Representative Link” or “Rep Link,” is elected by the members of the sub-circle, and represents the sub-circle within its super-circle. This rep link role is quite different from anything we’re used to in a modern organization.

rep link helps make the super-circle a healthy environment for the sub-circle, by carrying key perspectives from the sub-circle to the super-circle’s governance and operations. Rep links bring frontline feedback to the broader context, while guarding the autonomy and sustainability of the sub-circle within that environment. To fulfill their functions, both links may take part in the governance and operations of both connected circles.

Both links would also show up in the Marketing circle’s governance meetings, where both would represent the Social Media circle as a whole, each with a slightly different perspective.

This linking of circles and their contained sub-circles continues throughout the organizational holarchy, one layer at a time, creating bidirectional pathways for alignment and feedback.

The role of lead link serves a key function in every circle, but don’t confuse it with the role of a traditional manager. The lead link is not managing the circle members (who may actually fill roles in many circles anyway, with many different lead links). It is not the lead link’s job to dir...

As a lead link, you are not managing the people; you are representing the circle as a whole and its purpose within the broader environment of the organization. The best metaphor I’ve found for the lead link role is that if the circle is a cell, the lead link is the cell membrane. As lead link, rather than directing the action, you hold the space within which the purpose of the circle...

ROLE DESCRIPTION FOR LEAD LINK Purpose The lead link holds the purpose of the overall circle. Domains Role assignments within the circle Accountabilities Structuring the governance of the circle to express its purpose and enact its accountabilities Assigning partners to the circle’s roles; monitoring the fit; offering feedback to enhance fit; and reassigning roles to other partners when useful for enhancing fit Allocating the circle’s resources across its various projects and/or roles Establishing priorities and strategies for the circle Defining metrics for the circle The lead link also inherits the circle’s domains and accountabilities, but only when they aren’t delegated to another role or process.

all roles created in a Holacracy-powered company have real authority that no one else can trump, and lead link is just another role, with its own authorities and limits.

As the role filler, she has the autonomy to lead her role and choose how she expresses its accountabilities.

The lead link can’t override this; his power extends only to getting the right people into roles, and then to prioritizing work across the whole circle. If there’s a role unfilled in the circle, or a function of the circle that isn’t yet held by any role, then the lead link acts as the catch-all, taking responsibility for anything that might otherwise fall through the cracks—but only until he can create an appropriate role in governance, and then assign someone to fill it.

The role of rep link also serves a key function for every circle, and it’s not just a “second” link, but a different function from the lead link altogether. If the lead link is mostly a membrane around the cell, the rep link is a direct channel from within the core of the cell out through that membrane. He or she provides rapid feedback from the perspective of someone who really knows what’s going on at “street level,” and it’s the rep link’s accountability—not the lead link’s...

Rep links help to free lead links from dealing with the tensions their circle members have about the broader company and its other circles, leaving the lead link more time and energy to focus on moving the circle forward in other ways.

For the purpose of conducting meetings, as we will see in the following chapters, two specific roles must be filled in each circle: the “Facilitator” and the “Secretary.” These roles, as well as that of the rep link, are filled via an election conducted in a circle’s governance meeting, using the “Integrative Election Process” defined in detail in the constitution.

Elected roles are given a term when elected (often one year), but any circle member may call for a new election at any time.

How circle members process tensions depends on each particular tension. Some tensions are best resolved by taking action (operations), while others require changing the pattern or structure by which the circle functions (governance). To facilitate the processing of tensions in different ways, at least two different types of meetings are held regularly within each circle, and each meeting type has its own process and rules of the game.