Holacracy: The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy

by Brian J. Robertson

I learned early on that if the boss didn’t share my frustration and I couldn’t convince him relatively quickly, I might as well forget it. The information I was sensing was not going to have much impact.

The human capacity to sense dissonance in the present moment and see the potential for change strikes me as one of our most extraordinary gifts—our restless, never-satisfied, creative spirit that keeps us always reaching beyond where we are.

Each tension human beings sense is a signpost telling us how the organization could evolve to better express its purpose.

The underlying structure, systems, and culture of a modern corporation do not allow for the rapid processing and responsiveness necessary to fully harness the power of every human sensor, no matter what I did as a leader. So I began searching for a better way.

This governance process distributes authority and clarifies expectations throughout an organization, and is driven by those doing its work and sensing tensions along the way.

Governance generates organizational clarity, then continually evolves it to integrate the team’s latest learnings and fit its changing realities.

Operations is about getting work done—identifying outcomes to achieve, making specific decisions, allocating resources, taking actions, and coordinating those actions with others. Governance is about how we work—the pattern of how we organize, as distinct from the specific decisions we make within that pattern. It is a meta-level approach to the business. Governance is about the structure of the organization’s work, and the authorities and expectations that go along with it.