Holacracy : A Change of Position in the Exercise of Power
In most companies, the same issues keep coming back. Whether they are collaborators or managers, human beings put up with the effects of a (cruel) lack of evolution in the functioning of so-called modern organizations. Collaborators suffer as much as bosses from this fossilized situation. But a new system coming directly from the United States offers modification of the system through a change of position in the exercise of power. This system is Holacracy.
Frustrated collaborators
The difficulties felt by the collaborator within an organization are bountiful and similar regardless of the company. He regularly feels tensions (from the Latin verb tendere = the action of stretching) about the process of the activities in his department. This can go from poor communication between colleagues to wide-spread disorganization creating blockages in the work. In response to this detrimental situation, the collaborator has 2 choices: either he decides to talk with his superior in front of the coffee machine or in his office; in this case, the superior can listen to the tension and add it to the top of an already huge pile of affairs to address. Or the collaborator refuses to talk and sinks into the abyss of resignation.
Powerless managers
If the collaborator suffers from a lack of consideration within his company, the manager can suffer from a sort of powerlessness regarding the state of his organization or department. It’s a common feeling when one feels the necessity to develop the work but does not have any alternatives to do so. The manager may understand quite well the tensions of his collaborators but finds himself quickly obligated to put them in the queue. It was not so bad in the time of Taylor because the world was more static. Since then, the environment has changed, and the consequences of such a burden are heavy: frustration, depression, burn-out and to the extreme, suicides.
An innovational technology in the service of organizations
Now 7 years old, Holacracy represents a set of rules which define the structure of the governance, its concepts, processes, the rights and duties of people in their roles, etc. All this is written in a Holacracy Constitution. The innovative technology of Holacracy enables organizations to constantly adjust to the evolution of the environment and the human being. It changes radically the managers’ and collaborators’ positions so that they can interact with the internal functioning of their company.
With Holacracy, each has its role!
Thanks to Holacracy, the managerial position opens up as well as that of the collaborator. By means of this new system, each is an entrepreneur in its role; each collaborator becomes the manager and the leader of his own perimeter with work/expectations defined by purpose/accountabilities. Likewise the manager, who usually spends 50% of his time managing the “top”, is relieved of this position. Thanks to the governance concept, it is now a work place where, for each person, roles, purposes, accountabilities, and domains of action are defined and evolve with precision as needed. No more chiefs or ego domination. All the members are at the same level of equivalence in the service of the organization. The model of pyramidal hierarchy is now replaced by a dynamic model focused on work and fluidity. In other words, Holacracy may represent tomorrow’s company.
