Category: Sociocracy
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Are Holacracy and sociocracy Teal?
First a disclaimer. I don’t really know how a Teal organization1 looks like! What Frederic Laloux does in his book Reinventing Organizations is to use Holacracy to define aspects of Teal.2, 3, 4 Well, is Holacracy Teal then by definition? No, not necessarily! In Holacracy, the power is in the process,5 roles and accountabilities are defined…
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Medborgarlön är en sociokratisk tanke
Miljöpartisterna Annika Lillemets, Valter Mutt, Rickard Persson och Carl Schlyter skriver i Svd Debatt 2015-10-01 att Miljöpartiet vill tillsätta en statlig utredning kring medborgarlön, dvs. att alla medborgare har en garanterad basinkomst. Det är en intressant tanke, inte minst utifrån ett sociokratiskt perspektiv. Medborgarlön lyfts fram som ett viktigt sätt att garantera allas likvärdighet i…
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The phenomenology of sociocracy
Phenomenology is a philosophy, an academic discipline, and a practiced research methodology. It arose from a group of continental philosophers in the early 1900s with Edmund Husserl and has developed into a qualitative research methodology. Unlike other research methodologies, our sense experience, intuition, and feelings do not need to be disregarded. The key is to…
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What if control is inappropriate?
My conclusion after having read Brian Robertson’s new book on Holacracy and Gerard Endenburg’s first book on Sociocracy is that neither Holacracy nor Sociocracy replace Command & Control (C&C). Both use C&C within limits. This triggered feedback from Holacracy people that the Lead Link Role doesn’t manage day-to-day work and doesn’t manage others, but that…
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Traditional vs. Sociocratic vs. Holacratic Command & Control
Adam Pisoni writes in Here’s Why You Should Care About Holacracy: The “leaderless” workplace structure is sweeping companies like Zappos and Medium that “Holacracy is simply the first fully formed alternative to C&C that real companies are using successfully.” I think this is misleading. Sociocracy predates Holacracy® with 30 years. And neither Holacracy nor Sociocracy…
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Holacracy vs. Sociocracy
I have written book reviews of Brian Robertson’s new book on Holacracy and Gerard Endenburg’s first book on Sociocracy. Robertson’s book was published in 2015. Endenburg’s book was originally published in Dutch in 1981. The first English translation was published in 1988, and the Eburon edition, which I have reviewed, in 1998. Here’s my comparison…
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Book Review: Sociocracy
Gerard Endenburg has written two major books on sociocracy, Sociocracy: The organization of decision-making and Sociocracy: As social design. There is a considerable overlap between these two books. This is a review of the first book, which is of particular interest since it includes Gerard Endenburg’s own story of sociocracy. The original edition was published…
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Book Review: Holacracy
Brian J. Robertson has written a book about Holacracy: The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy. Holacracy® is a governance system and a registered trademark owned by HolacracyOne. The word Holacracy is very easy to confuse with holocracy (with an o), which means universal democracy. Robertson’s aim with the system is to “harness the tremendous…
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Zappos and Holacracy
“It’s kind of deliciously ironic that self-management is being decreed from above.” — Jeffrey Pfeffer1 “Holacracy, itself, is too complex, dogmatic, and rigid.” — Bud Caddell2 I’ve previously written about it here. There is always a cost in trying to script people’s behavior. They might decide to withdraw their engagement. I think this is what’s…
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A prerequisite for sociocracy is a socios
A prerequisite for sociocracy is that there is a socios, a group of people who share a common purpose and have a social relationship with each other. No socios! No sociocracy! A key question then is how to turn a demos, a general group of people, into a socios? Throughout history, our ancestors have established…