Holacracy

[alanjjohnstone]

Greek “holon”, meaning a whole that is also part of a larger whole.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/shoe-firm-zappos-gets-a-reboot–with-no-managers-and-no-job-titles-9069451.html

i wasn't sure whether to post this in the existing co-op thread or not to show capitalism will produce alternative models of management as long as they do not challenge ownership (or control). I shall be awaiting the flood of "radical" capitalists into co-ops promoting this as the end of "bossism".

Zappos, the biggest on-line shoe company with 1500 employees is replacing its traditional management structure with one where there are no managers or job titles, staff is self governened in circles where they choose and perform their own tasks. 

 

Though each circle operates semi-autonomously, and those within the circles hold no explicit rank, under a holacracy employees work according to detailed guidelines laid out in Robertson’s 20-page “Holacracy Constitution”. In a recent blog post, Alexia Bowers of HolacracyOne explained, “Holacracy isn’t a thing, like a democracy, but a practice, like yoga … Companies don’t become holacracies, they follow its teachings.” “The easiest way to explain it is in the context of a city,” said Gonzales-Black. “Research shows that every time the size of a city doubles, innovation or productivity per resident increases by 15 per cent. But when companies get bigger, innovation or productivity per employee generally goes down. So we’re trying to figure out how to structure Zappos more like a city, and less like a bureaucratic corporation. In a city, people and businesses are self-organising. We’re trying to do the same thing by switching… to holacracy, which enables employees to act more like entrepreneurs and self-direct their work instead of reporting to a manager who tells them what to do.”

 

Californian New Age meets Japanese Team Work? Self-exploitation taken to its zenith?

[alanjjohnstone]

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/57fd1a96-7e46-11e3-b409-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2qiWtIulT And then there is Social Physics“Social physics helps us understand how ideas flow from person to person . . . and ends up shaping the norms, productivity and creative output of our companies, cities and societies,” writes Pentland. “Just as the goal of traditional physics is to understand how the flow of energy translates into change in motion, social physics seems to understand how the flow of ideas and information translates into changes in behaviour.” Bank of America decided to change its system to enable staff to hang out together over coffee and swap ideas in an unstructured way. Almost immediately there was a dramatic improvement in performance. “The average call-handle time decreased sharply, which means that the employees were much more productive,” Pentland writes in his forthcoming book Social Physics. “So the call centre management staff converted the break structure of all their call centres to this new system and forecast a $15m per year productivity increase.”I wonder if they will say the same when unions and strikes are the subject of coffee time discussions?

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