Three short accounts of individual Holacracy experiences that will touch your soul :

This article was originally posted at Evolving Organisation.

We’d like to share with you three short accounts of individual Holacracy experiences in a client of ours. This client has only recently adopted Holacracy and its structure and methods are new to its people.

It’s an exciting time to see the shift in mindset as regular staff move into a significantly new paradigm for running a business.

We’ve captured these three gems in an effort to share with you the powerful potential of Holacracy. It’s a truly touching experience to behold. We aim that some of it shines through as we’ve translated it into words.

Hopefully you’ll get a taste of how Holacracy gets things done and empowers people. Its strength being that it works in just about any industry and with people of all levels of experience.

Jack

We are in a meeting room in a Portakabin in an industrial unit in the North of England. The votes have been collected and we are going through them one by one. The first vote is read out.

It’s for Jack, from Billy.

The process we follow is that Billy is then asked why he has voted for Jack. Billy is clear, he says it’s because he trusts Jack. Jack is good at his job and Billy feels he will represent the group well.

At this, Jack smiles and rises in his seat a bit.

The pattern then repeats as the votes are all read out. Jack is chosen by every single person in the room, in every vote. What they each say in turn about Jack builds a consistent picture; he is seen as a gentle but solid force that they all trust.

Jack is a quiet guy but we can all tell he is happy. He purrs with gentle pleasure at having the confidence of his workmates bestowed upon him.

This is not a union election to a workers forum. Jack has been chosen as the “Rep Link” in a system of self-management called Holacracy. The company being managed by role holders in three distinct self-managed circles.

The meeting we are in is for the “Technical Engineering” circle and Jacks’ newly appointed role is to represent this circle in meetings of the General Circle which embraces the other two circles, connecting them. If members of this Technical Engineering circle have a need to change things outside the scope of their circle more widely, then Jack will be the one to raise them and to get them actioned in the General Circle.

This is a big step in Jack’s ability to influence things that matter in the company and we can all tell that Jack is ready for his new responsibility.

Kay

We start another meeting, this time of the third circle, “Production”.

Kay, who organises the company’s purchasing and holds the “Purchasing” role in this circle, is distracted.

Her body may well be downstairs with us but her thoughts are upstairs in the office where there is stacks of work to do.

“Why do I need to have a meeting about it? Why do I bother to document it? I just do it!” She exclaims.

We are all sympathetic. Phones are ringing and supplies need to be ordered. Meetings need to have a clear purpose and the pressure is on.

Part of this meeting process involves raising “tensions”; things that are issues for people. There are two types of meeting that we have within which we can raise tensions:

• “Tactical” meetings for operational issues where we need a fix to get things moving right here and now. And;
• “Governance” meetings where we can change how the company is organised to get the issue sorted by changing the way the company is run.

Right now, we are in a Governance meeting.

Kay has a tension. It’s about the phones. She is annoyed that it’s always her that answers the phone. Helen has the general administration job but she’s often not around. The issue has been a festering bugbear for years. We hear what Kay has to say and within minutes it’s clear that this is a Governance issue, not for this circle but for the circle that encompasses this one — the General Circle.

The circle’s Rep Link agrees to take it to that circle’s next Governance meeting.

Kay can suddenly see that she now has a pathway for resolving problems. One that she has never had before. Kay is beginning to see the value of this meeting on her time and contribution.

How it enables her to ‘stop the machine’ for a moment and consider how she can directly influence making the company run more effectively and more efficiently. She has that ability now and it’s sumptuously empowering.

Dan

As we start another meeting, the first thing we do is all “Check in”. It’s a moment when we go round the table to allow everyone to say what’s on their minds. It’s a way of recognising distractions — and maybe parking them for later — that are preventing us from being fully present in the meeting space.

As we go round, Dan, a machine operator, shares a thought with us which makes us all laugh.

His girlfriend wants a dog and he’s worrying about the cost. He’s OK with having a dog as long as it’s a Rottweiler. She wants a Westie.

At this moment Reg, sitting next to Dan, pipes up “Ever thought of a cross?”.

Immediately the Facilitator asks Reg to hold his thought. The space is for Dan at this moment. The process is rigorous. Cross-talk is not allowed. We are ensuring that each and every person in attendance has time to express what they need and to get focussed.

Meeting formats that allow everyone to talk at once and express their own opinions over each other are recognised as having little or no productive value.

This meeting, as with all Holacracy meetings, is a tightly facilitated process.

This restriction on cross-talk seems like a small point but the power of it is only too clear later when Dan raises a tension about the state of repair of the machines on which they all depend.

He is crafting a proposal for how he’d like to see things done differently, part of which involves the creation of a new role that would be accountable for maintenance.

A key step in the process is the “clarification round” where questions seeking clarity can be asked by the members present.

The rigour of the process, keeping things to one person at a time, shows only too well here.

Reg raises a series of questions about the fire alarm. Reg might be making a fair point but the focus here is on Dan being given space to develop his proposal. All of Reg’s cross-talk is held by the Facilitator.

As a result Dan is able to craft a set of words that captures his tension without interruption. When he is ready he asks for input and gets a useful suggestion.

The fire alarm and another point that came up earlier are not raised again. It is realised that they don’t need to be brought in after all.

What could have been a blind alley of distracting talk has been avoided.

Instead, Dan’s proposal has been developed and is then circulated. It’s approved. Within a matter of minutes Dan’s suggestion has become a new role and a set of accountabilities.

Within a short space of time Dan has succeeded in changing the structure of his business and its on-going operation — all thanks to the power of the Holacracy process holding the meeting.

Originally published at www.evolvingorganisation.com on October 22, 2015.