At Zappos, all the roles, responsibilities and policies of the organization are stored in software known as “Glass Frog.” In his recent memorandum to staff, CEO Tony Hsieh writes: “We will continue using Holacracy’s systems and processes for prioritization and resource allocation, so it’ll be extremely important for all of us to keep Glass Frog up to date.”. So you’re looking around at where you’re at today and what are all the other opportunities that exist. By providing your email, you agree to the Quartz Privacy Policy. You might be working on multiple different types of work throughout any given day. We’ve definitely been going through that dip and that’s a time investment, a productivity investment, that we’re making in the future of Zappos, the future innovation, the future ability for our organization to thrive. Ethan Bernstein, Assistant Professor of Leadership in Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School, thanks for joining us. Edit the proposal later to be prepared before the meeting. So in this sense, I think it can be misleading to claim either 'Holacracy is flat' or 'Holacracy is hierarchical'; the hierarchy that Holacracy uses is not one of people directing other people, but one of organizational functions defining boundaries around sub-functions; and once defined, the exercise of power has little to do with the structural holarchy one way or another. CURT NICKISCH: OK, I’m still not totally clear. JOHN BUNCH: So I think when we think about traditional organizations, obviously there’s a job ladder.
Faced with such language, one has to wonder whether a resident lawyer would sometimes come in handy. One can understand why, as the Wall Street Journal suggests, it might take “five extra hours of meetings a week as workers unshackled from their former bosses organize themselves into circles and learn the vocabulary of Holacracy.”. There is a safety in knowing there’s somebody whose job it is to go to bat for us, to develop us, to shield us, and when they fall short or when we do in our work, it’s easy to blame them. He may choose not to do so, but his power is still there.
Hsieh doesn’t believe in vulnerability for himself (“vulnerability implies you’re insecure about something,” he explained to Quartz) and has reorganized his company under a system, Holacracy, that has been criticized for putting a disproportionate focus on process. “In the beginning, you feel that the human element is lost completely,” Jamie Naughton, Hsieh’s chief of staff, previously told Quartz. Your proposal will be available to select for the next Governance agenda, but you don’t have to add it to the list if you aren’t ready. It also sounds a little– can I say Darwinistic? Hsieh is a follower of Laloux, a New Age thinker who describes “the next stage of human consciousness, the one we are just starting to transition into. If you want a raise, what do you do? Or they’re taking over the decisions about how best to apply resources and what they should be doing with their time because they maybe feel like they know it better.