Talking about Holacracy is always cool, but the implementation process at a structural level is not so much. Holacracy aims to streamline decision-making processes and clearly define responsibilities within the company, so that we never have to ask: “Who is in charge of doing this?”

Just as when we are making our way through the jungle, we may come across a few obstacles that we do not expect and that may involve deviating from the straight path to get moving forward.

Following this analogy, the top-down approach would be equivalent to descending in a helicopter, opening a clearing in the jungle and then widening the paths to connect with the nearest cities. On the other hand, the bottom-up approach would mean starting from each of the cities in question until you reach a meeting point in the middle of the jungle.

When you have a flat structure, with no silos and minimal hierarchy, as is the case at Keepler, the most appropriate approach might be the first one. However, we opted for a Lean approach (experiment, learn and in the next iteration apply what you learn) but bottom-up, starting with our circle (which in Holacracy is the equivalent of a team in traditional organizations, except that the leader distributes his authority, has a specific purpose, is focused on delivering tasks and its structure evolves as you learn) and, like Dr Jeckyll, we apply the injection before anyone else.

So, let’s put on our explorer’s hat and try to see what problems we have encountered both when injecting the formula into ourselves as well as subsequently into our colleagues and what steps we have taken to clear the way. In this part we will walk through the first few days of the journey to see what the first difficulties are.

What is this Holacracy thing?

When Holacracy lands in your life it’s like when they plug information into Johnny Mnemonic: You feel a bit beaten up by many new concepts. We have found that it is such a barrage that it takes time to assimilate them one by one. We encountered this problem ourselves and it took us several weeks of filming to get used to the dynamics of the sessions, their usefulness and how to make them even more effective. The lesson learned was that it is necessary to explain in a previous session the most important concepts (roles, sessions, tensions, etc.) without going too deep so that this flood of information is not so huge.

What is a role?

The main stumbling block we encounter is that people do not understand exactly what a role is. The best way to explain it is to use a simple analogy. In your job you may have the role of firefighter, with a series of responsibilities (those that make up the position itself), policies (laws, work method, protocols), domain (jurisdiction) and purpose (to make the population safe from fires); however, you get home and play the role of parent, where being the same person you also have a series of responsibilities, policies, domain and purpose totally different from the previous ones. However, you play both roles perfectly; in Holacracy the behaviour is similar. Similarly, when a role gets older, leaves home and gets independent, it becomes a sub-circle: Although it belongs to the family, it is totally autonomous to make its own decisions and will only share with its parents some decisions that it considers affect them

Are there also tensions?

The term tension is always thorny because in our minds it has negative connotations, and when we defined it we needed to emphasise what this term reflects in Holacracy: The difference between the current situation and the desired one, and that it is the driving force for actions in both tactical and governance sessions. Once that nuance was understood, they began to express themselves correctly.

So far we have completed the first stages: we have laid the foundations and the most important concepts in order to have the tools for the rest of the way. It is very important to cover these stages with patience, because otherwise we will have major problems when we arrive and they will be more difficult to remedy.

We will now have a look at the rest of the problems we have encountered and the roadmap for the whole process.

Before regaining strength to continue our journey through the jungle, let’s see how we can face the next stages and review the whole process, in order to avoid unwanted surprises, because the jungle is dangerous and it is better to be prepared.

Tactical sessions

The main obstacle is that the purpose of the tactical sessions was not properly understood, they were too formal and there was a lack of a place to talk and discuss freely. This is NOT the purpose of the tactical session, just as it is not to seek consensus, but to execute the necessary actions so that the work of the circle (or in other words, area or department) can be carried out smoothly and without invalidating other forums. As soon as the focus was put on execution, the sessions began to be productive.

Governance sessions

In the governance sessions, which is where the structure, accountabilities and policies of the circle are reviewed, the main problem we encountered was the complexity of the integrative decision-making process, which is used in part of the session where proposals are processed. This process tries to integrate objections into proposals following a very formal process (submit proposal, clarifications, reactions, objections and integration). This was deeply invasive and people felt limited and constrained. Therefore, we relaxed the system but kept the main idea: if there are valid objections, they should be integrated into the proposal. In this way, more consensus was sought and people felt much more comfortable to express their opinion in a proposal to change the structure or policies of the circle.

So how do we do it then?

Once we have become expert trackers, the method to get our way in the jungle successfully would go through the following stages:

1. Deliver an introductory session clarifying especially the key concepts (tension, roles, purpose of the sessions and purpose of Holacracy itself) and let people soak them in for a few days.
2. Have a first session to define the roles based on the usual tasks of the area or team where we implement the framework.
3. Assign the roles to people in the team, preferably those who volunteer, or designate them after asking them if they agree to play the role.
4. Hold a first tactical session with someone expert in the roles of facilitator and secretary, very dogmatic and explaining each step. In our case, as we mentioned in the first instalment, we first became experts by testing on ourselves and experimenting with the framework and then applied it in other circles, learning along the process and following a Lean approach.
5. Establish the cadence of tactical sessions (usually every week, but it depends on the team and their availability) and start practising, keeping the experts as facilitator and secretary.
6. Conduct ad hoc governance sessions when corrections to the structure are needed, ideally in asynchronous mode so as not to impact the circle members’ schedule. These will also be facilitated by the experts.
7. At a sufficient point of maturity, hand over the baton so that they start doing the facilitation themselves, attending the tactical sessions but only providing support when needed.
8. Once the team is facilitating sessions with virtually no supervision, let them fly solo and request asynchronous support, which would imply that we have reached the end of the road.

The two most important conclusions of this journey of exploration and implementation of Holacracy that we have undertaken would be:

• Be flexible. It is important to emphasise that if we follow the framework to the letter, according to the experience we have had, we have to modulate the message a lot. As we mentioned before, sometimes it is better to be flexible and take a detour because we will arrive at the end of the road too, and it is convenient to adjust to the speed of the people who are building it.
• Prepare properly for the journey. Holacracy is a fairly rigid framework that requires a lot of knowledge to figure out how to implement it in a way that understands that it is ultimately a means, not an end, and to do it in a way that is productive. If we don’t have the right training, we may not be able to get to the end of the road.

And so much for our journey through the Holacracy jungle. We hope you found it enlightening and hope to see you on board again soon.

Image: Unsplash | Tobias Mrzyk