[OSList] Open Space and Holacracy

Harrison Owen hhowen at verizon.net
Wed Mar 5 07:53:03 PST 2014


Greg - I suspect we have a case of holacracy  and "Holacracy." The notion of
holacracy (small "h") has been around for a bit and has been discussed by
Ken Wilber and others as a description of the natural, emergent conditions
of an organic system, I might say self organizing system. The H was
capitalized when folks tried to formalize it and make it into an operational
approach to organizations - which is something we do. Zappos and others have
essentially mandated its introduction - which seems to me to be the total
antithesis of what I thought holarchy was all about. So I do believe that in
Open Space we encounter a Holacratic environment... power, decision making,
authority is distributed all over, albeit at any given moment it may be
centralized in a given person, but only for a moment. That is not what I
hear happening at Zappos. I am sure the folks think it is all wonderful, but
I do think they are working much too hard creating a system that can emerge
all by itself. Otherwise known as organizing a self organizing system.  

 

Harrison  

 

Harrison Owen

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www.ho-image.com (Personal Website)

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From: oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org
[mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of Greg Bloom
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2014 8:55 AM
To: OSList at lists.openspacetech.org
Subject: Re: [OSList] Open Space and Holacracy

 

I am just starting to learn about both Open Space and Holacracy, but I
actually think there are some misconceptions in this thread. 

 

Holacracy is *not* a framework in which ruling power is totally distributed
among participants. There's still a head honcho; and at every level below,
there's a group that defines the purpose and exercises authority over its
subsidiary groups. Within that structure, groups are democratic and I
believe self-organizing, etc. But it's very much a hierarchy. More here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/01/15/making-sense-of-zappos-a
nd-holacracy/

 

Despite that, it seems to me that Open Space and Holacracy include similar
notions about the world, but one is exploratory and the other is
operational. Perhaps they could be practiced in a complementary fashion, in
a way that relieves some of the pressure of the hierarchy. I'd love to hear
more comparing and contrast.

 
-- 
. gjb <http://flavors.me/gjb>  .

202.643.3648

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