People and Holacracy: Four Necessities for Success
Holacracy is the new rage when it comes to organizational structure. It’s a relatively radical new approach that distributes power, tries to remove hierarchy in favor of self-organizing teams, and strives to make organizations leaner and more adaptable. Holacracy proponents argue the world moves too quickly for the stolid organizational structures and procedures of the past. Companies need to be nimble and make decisions that can be implemented and iterated on quickly. Holacracy tries to support this reality by removing the more rigid aspects of organizational structure that most of us recognize in an attempt to make working for the organization more efficient, productive, and even more meaningful.
Personal skepticism aside about the need for leadership, direction, and whether hierarchy can ever really be eliminated (I don’t have personal experience working in a holacratic organization) I do acknowledge that holacracy is an exciting development for much of the knowledge work world and may be extremely beneficial when thoroughly adopted. For an organization to really thrive in a holacratic structure, though, I think there are some pretty crucial psychological characteristics employees need to develop. In fact these psychological characteristics apply in any organization that offers even a modicum of autonomy in terms of how you do your work. Autonomy in your job can be an incredibly motivating characteristic but only if you have the skills to take advantage of it.
I humbly submit the following four ideas for consideration as vital to succeeding in any organization where the employees have a high level of autonomy (holacratic or otherwise):
Self-leadership
People with high self-leadership are able to take action on the things they know they need to do even when they don’t necessarily feel like doing it. In an organizational structure where there is no direct feedback coming from a superior it places the onus for figuring out what to do and then making sure it gets done on the individual employee. Employees with high self-leadership can guide their own behavior with a minimum of oversight. Self-leadership can take many different forms, from behavioral strategies like self-reward or self-punishment, to finding enjoyment in the work itself, to structuring your environment to support your work intentions, and a host of other techniques.
Personal productivity
The whole point of adopting a holacratic structure is to make the organization more capable of getting things done (which, ironically, is also why more rigid structures were originally created, too). Regardless of structure, an organization is only going to be as productive as the individuals who make it up. Ideally holacracy cuts through the red tape and bureaucracy that often blocks personal productivity. Employees with a relentless drive toward completion and a high level of self-leadership are going to become even more valuable members of the team.
Tolerance for ambiguity
Managers often remove ambiguity for employees by assigning work and giving feedback. Holacracy removes this which means you need to be much better at being okay with ambiguity. Entrepreneurs have generally accepted this as part of the experience of getting into that line of work whereas the world of steady full-time employment has usually minimized it (i.e. job descriptions, performance evaluations, etc.). That divide is being closed as being an employee becomes more like being an entrepreneur. Fluid situations that are constantly changing are by their very nature ambiguous. Removing that ambiguity may feel nice and secure in the moment but in practicality is nearly impossible. Instead, employees have to get better at reconciling the complexity they perceive on a daily basis with the desire to have discrete projects and make visible progress. It’s still possible to do both of these things, but the path to completion is likely to be much more winding than it used to be.
Psychological capital
Organizations usually have a good handle on their economic and physical capital. It’s relatively easy to see and wrap your arms around those concepts. Even social capital, the relationships among the members of an organization, can be observed and noted. However, quite possibly the most important type of capital to the success of any organization is psychological capital — the extent to which its members have Resilience, Efficacy, Optimism, and Hope. Without this an organization has nothing. It seems to me that holacracy eliminates the productive layer that can act as a buffer between employees with low PsyCap and their impact on the organization. For better or worse, PsyCap will have a greater impact on the holacratic organization. Luckily, it appears that PsyCap can be taught, enhanced, and developed.
Coincidentally (or maybe not) these are the same characteristics I’ve been homing in on for my research on independent workers and entrepreneurs. We know that the ranks of the independent are growing and if we begin to include the employees of holacratic organizations then the number of people who need development in these characteristics is growing even quicker than I first thought.
Do you work in an organization that has adopted a holacratic structure? What has your experience been? More generally, where does autonomy feel like more of a curse than a blessing in your job (regardless of whether it’s within a holacratic organization or not)?
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