HolacracyOne

In Holacracy there are 4 meeting types:

All meetings start with a 'check-in" and close with a 'check-out'.

Tactical meetings: These short daily or weekly meetings serve the operational process. Here work is coordinated. Operational processes are addressed, actions decided, and things get done.

Strategic meetings: These rare meetings have no specific form and process thinking about how to best serve the evolutionary purpose.

Special topic meetings: Held when a topic calls for special attention. These meetings also have no specific form.

Governance meetings: These meetings are restricted to roles, and collaboration; not the rough and tumble of getting work done. The latter are for tactical meetings. Governance meetings are held generally every month. They follow strict process to ensure everybone’s voice is heard and that no one can dominate decision-making. A facilitator guides the proceeding via the following process:

1. Present proposal
2. Clarifying questions
3. Reaction round
4. Amend and clarify
5. Objection round
6. Integration

The process might sound formal and needs to get used to, but people who use it report they find it deeply liberating and dramatically efficient.

HolacracyOne has set up a company-wide Role Marketplace in order to make trading roles easy. On the company’s intranet is a file where colleagues can “rate” every role they currently fill, using a scale of -3 to +3:

• If they find the role energizing (+) or draining (-).
• If they find their talents aligned (+) or not (-) with this role.
• If they find their current skills and knowledge conducive to (+) or limiting in (-) this role.

Using the same scale of -3 to +3, people can also signal their interest in roles currently filled by other people. The marketplace thus helps people wanting to offload or pick up roles.

HolacracyOne is a training, consulting, and research company dedicated to spreading a new organizational model, “holcacray”, originally developed by Brian Robertson and his team at Ternary Software, a Philadelphia-based start-up. After transferring Ternary to new leadership, Robertson co-founded HolacracyOne.

During the recruitment process, teammates check if

• the person is “fit for organization” i.e. Is this person in resonance and energized by the evolutionary purpose, intrinsically motivated and comfortable with complex ever changing environment.

• If yes, they check if the candidate is “fit for role”.

HolacracyOne has set up a company-wide Role Market Place in order to make trading roles easy (in holacratic language, this is an “app;” it’s not part of the basic operating system). On the company’s intranet is a file where colleagues can “rate” every role they currently fill, using a scale of -3 to +3:

Using the same scale of -3 to +3, people can also signal their interest in roles currently filled by other people. The market place helps people wanting to offload or pick up roles.

During these meetings, colleagues discuss how much time and energy, at that moment in their lives, they want to commit to the organization’s purpose. The rationale behind this regular meeting is for each person to make a conscious choice about how much time and energy they are willing to commit. At the same time, the meeting practice gives all colleagues a conscious way of holding and recognizing that as humans, everyone has multiple endeavors that interest and enliven them, and that each person is choosing how much time and energy they want to give to any particular purpose^[1].

Once a year, colleagues at HolacracyOne fill out a survey for all their colleagues, consisting of only two questions:

• “This person contributes (much) more or (much) less than me.” (On a scale of -3 to +3)
• “This person has a good basis to evaluate me.” (On a scale of 1 to 5)

A simple algorithm crunches through the answers and groups colleagues into a few salary buckets. The more experienced, knowledgeable, and hard-working people land in the higher buckets that earn bigger salaries; the more junior, less experienced colleagues naturally gravitate toward buckets with lower salaries.^[2]