The Organization is Not the Tribe

Why Holacracy® Is Not About The People.

Here’s an aspect of Holacracy that many people have a hard time swallowing, but it’s fundamental: Holacracy is not about the people. Holacracy doesn’t try to improve people, or make them more compassionate, or more conscious. Yet precisely by not trying to change people, it provides the conditions for personal development to arise more naturally—or not, when it’s not meant to be.

I consider this one of the most beautiful paradoxes of Holacracy. And it is not an easy one to explain, especially nowadays: in the face of many progressive ideas pushing for improving the organizational culture and promoting “conscious leadership”, Holacracy’s stance goes strongly against the tide!

Fortunately, a few months ago during breakfast at a HolacracyOne partner retreat, Tom made a comment that shed a lot of light on this subject. He differentiated four “spaces” that always coexist but are inevitably fused within conventional organizations, and which the practice of Holacracy helps distinguish:

• Organization space
• Role space
• Tribe space
• Personal space