RE: Did the Secretary of the Army Correct a Lt. Gen. in Real Time to Convert "Going Through it Lite" to Allergies?
Excellent analysis.
There are a lot of common misconceptions about self-managed-systems.
Click to watch 2 minutes,
The initial example in the TED talk was about a novice pilot who noticed a "low-voltage" warning light.
This warning light was small, and all other indicators were nominal (indicating no problems).
The perceived "danger" was small, since there didn't seem to be a "consensus" of warning lights so the pilot ignored the "low-voltage" indicator.
This turned out to be a critical error in judgement, and the plane nearly crash landed.
This served as a primary impetus to develop the Holocracy framework.
Can a system be designed that gives every warning light a fair hearing?
If you were a small business owner, would you prefer to have PARTNERS or employees?
Many small businesses start out as FAMILY businesses.
Is the threat of capricious firing and capricious pay increases or decreases a CRITICAL aspect of your management style?
Do you think it might perhaps be more productive to give your employee-partners "skin-in-the-game" by giving them a clear scope of autonomy and profit-share?
But what I would care about is rudderless individuals with non-descript positions who get to define their position within the company.
Individuals are not "rudderless" because one of the key functions of Holacracy is a systematic process for practical, actionable "role-description". Think of it as a weekly "to-do-list" that is approved by all relevant stake-holders. Nobody gets to make-up their own "job-description" without submitting it through this streamlined systematic process.
Most jobs involve more than one role, even in a "normal" business. Your job(s) are simply whatever your manger/boss tells you to do. This is often arbitrary and capricious and de-incentivizes people to work efficiently and makes constructive feed-back practically a crime.
Holacratic role-assignment is dynamic and practical. It gives you a checklist that is transparent, everyone can see all other roles and can also see when items are checked off each list.
The "free-rider" problem you described is actually mitigated more effectively with Holacracy than with a traditional FEUDAL-HIERARCHY.
I'd have to give it a lot more thought, from what
I comprehend so far it is very abstract/or/novel.
Is there any working models you can point to?
Companies that self profess this form, or style?
Here's a list of over 100 companies currently using a Holacratic framework.
The best known among them is Zappos.com
The smallest company operating with Holacracy is comprised of 9 people.
And,
I'm still just learning about this Holacracy stuff myself, but it sounds like it might even work on a family scale (specifically for dispute resolution).