Holacracy Community of Practice Archive, 2015-2019 Community Holacracy Web Site
Posted in Practicing Holacracy • By Alexey Ilyichev • 02/16/2016

Partners availability

Hi!

Lead Link of our circle is concerned that some Partners aren't available when they are supposed to. Like Sales person isn't answering incoming calls in the morning. And in general — we feel like it takes too long to get information when it's needed quick.

In a traditional organisation we could oblige people to stay in the office during the workday. But what can we do in Holacracy to resolve this tension? To me that sounds like a governance issue, but I can't think of a good proposal to make here. Can anybody please help? Have anyone run into similar situation before? What did you do?

6 Replies
Margaux
02/16/2016

This question is complex so I am not going to cover it all but here are some questions to begin with:

First question: what is the agreement between coworkers and the organization? Is their something explicite like a work contract or something?

Then, second question: what role is dealing with partner issues and this type of contracts? Do you have a role for that? If answer is no, then you must define it in governance.

Alexey Ilyichev
02/16/2016
Margaux posted:

First question: what is the agreement between coworkers and the organization? Is their something explicite like a work contract or something?

There are contracts, of course, but the working hours are not specified in it.

Margaux posted:

Then, second question: what role is dealing with partner issues and this type of contracts? Do you have a role for that? If answer is no, then you must define it in governance.

Currently we have no role for that. Could you please explain, what would this role be accountable for?

Christel Hofman
02/17/2016

This is an interesting topic. We resolved it with peer evaluations. We decided in the governance meeting upon a procedure how to do this evaluation and what to do with the results.  I don't know if this is according to the holacracy rules, but it works. Does this help you?

Alexey Ilyichev
02/17/2016
Christel Hofman posted:

This is an interesting topic. We resolved it with peer evaluations. We decided in the governance meeting upon a procedure how to do this evaluation and what to do with the results.  I don't know if this is according to the holacracy rules, but it works. Does this help you?

That sounds interesting. Can you share more details?

1) What's that evaluation procedure?

2) What exactly do you do with the results?

3) How does it fit within governance?

Christel Hofman
02/18/2016

We made our own evaluation procedure. We have a peer evaluation every 3 months. In small groups (can be a circle)  we give each other feedback (what went good, can be improved). The individual makes his / her own self-reflection and compares it in the group with the feedback from the other circle members. And tells the group what he / she will do with it and how it fits with the self-relfection. The individual can make projects and write in Glassfrog or capture it in an other way

Alexey Ilyichev
02/18/2016

Christel,

thanks for explanation. I think it might solve the problem for us, though maybe it will take some time.