In my previous career as a leader, I hadn't heard of Holacracy but I was looking for ways to inspire and empower my teams. Partly for the benefits for everyone in my teams but also to take workload off my shoulders so that I could play to my greatest strengths rather than being stretched across too many tasks and functions. I instinctively implemented structures to my weekly and fortnightly meetings, I created transparency around key metrics and defined informal roles for different team members to energise (the team were invited to energise roles but could decline if the role didn't align with their sense of purpose or strengths). 

My experiences may not be exactly the kind of information you are looking for but without realising, the processes I put into place were very aligned with Holacracy. Since I became a Holacracy Coach, I do find that the whole system can be overwhelming for some people to adjust to. My experience of introducing bitesize principles of Holacracy, without labelling them as a whole system shift was very successful. My teams achieved increased turnover and profits but more importantly for me, staff retention went up, morale was great and I felt that I had made a big difference to empowerment and wellbeing.

I hope these kind of anecdotes are useful! I'm also thinking that [@mention:449833773855673974] would be a great person for you to chat to!

Thanks for the insight into your experience, Sally.

I'd love to chat with you in realtime, if you are willing to share more of your journey. Can we meet over Google Hangouts? You can reach me directly: bkh@briankhaney.com.

And I'll connect with Karim, too.

Thanks for working on this book, Brian. I can share my point of view.

What I was hoping to gain from operating as a Holacracy was to able to protect the organization from the influence of self-interested agendas and to be able to allow freedom to operate (which I highly value, as a long-time self-employed person) with assurance that the team is working towards the true purpose. Our project requires major investment to get started (it is an environmental technology) and therefore we knew from the beginning that we would need to involve professional investors who we feared would corrupt our environmental agenda. 

How it has worked out so far is that Holacracy has revealed the personal development weaknesses in our own leadership team. Despite our mutual commitment to it, we don't have the capacity to do it. 

I am now going back to my tool of choice, leadership development. Of course since I have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I see how when leaders mature, they naturally want to share power and they will find ways to do it, Holacracy or other ways. 

Hi Angela,

Thank you for your comment, and sorry for my late reply.

If I can paraphrase your motivation to implement Holacracy, it sounds like you were trying to vaccinate your organization against cancerous infection from external stakeholders that might not share your vision. Is that a fair re-statement?

I'm curious. What leadership qualities are you looking to develop? Do you see these qualities as still compatible with using Holacracy in your organization?

Brian K Haney posted:

 

If I can paraphrase your motivation to implement Holacracy, it sounds like you were trying to vaccinate your organization against cancerous infection from external stakeholders that might not share your vision. Is that a fair re-statement?

I'm curious. What leadership qualities are you looking to develop? Do you see these qualities as still compatible with using Holacracy in your organization?

Hi Brian, Yes, your paraphrasing is reasonable, although I would add that it applied also to future internal stakeholders as investors would likely become board members. 

As for leadership qualities, it is actually leadership maturity that is needed, which means a range of qualities, and more importantly, the confidence and perspective to see our own strengths and weaknesses and the willingness to develop and/or delegate. I am convinced that a stable SD-Yellow/Teal/ Systemic/4.5/Co-Creator level (a rough approximation as these are not equivalent) is required for at least the Anchor Circle Lead Link. 

Another motivation that was very important to us initially was the opportunity to manifest a higher intelligence system in a commercial organization ...if you know what I mean