Part 1: Strategic Communication — Holacracy was good for something else.
Issue #35 Hello there! It's been a while! My sincerest apologies for disappearing for the last year and a bit, it’s been hectic, but I’m glad to be back writing. I’ve committed to writing a 3-part series over the next few weeks – touching on 3 key aspects of the internal business.
In Part 1 we will go over Strategy Communication – Holacracy was good for something else.
In Part 2 I’m hoping to touch on BizOps — The Mercenaries: Seal Team 6, a unique, misunderstood team.
In Part 3 we will tackle culture within companies.
Alright then, shall we begin?
Maybe I should start with a disclaimer. What we will be covering is not academic, I’m not a Strategy Consultant, nor am I even remotely qualified to state anything factual on the topic. This is purely my opinion and relevance is highly subjective. Do take it with a pinch of salt.
For some time now I’ve thought about what makes, not just good strategic communication, but good internal communication as a whole. For organizations to function like the well-oiled machines that they are, they need effective communication both top-down and across functional areas. The essence of communication unto itself is important. How else will people know what to do? More importantly, how would they know what the organization is trying to achieve?
At the core of it, modern organizations are hyper-communication highways with corresponding lines of communication running concurrently often times filled with conjecture. What are we here for? Why are we doing this? Where are we going? How does this affect us? This often results in miscommunication and a certain belief amongst the troops that the why of it, is – for a lack of a better word – uncommunicated.
You see, the what, the where, and the how can be easily explained and reinforced on an everyday cadence through structure, culture, and candor. The why of it is a bit tricky. The why is the thing that marshalls the troops to self-actualization. But the why doesn’t manifest that and certainly does not keep the organization a well-oiled machine.
This gets us to the crux of the matter – Holacracy was good for something else.
Holacracy
Holacracy was designed and distilled by a man called Brian Roberston at Ternary software, a small software agency from Exton, Pennsylvania1. In essence, Holacracy is [was] an organizational structure that dismantles[d] the traditional hierarchy structure by decentralizing management and governance to the collective of humans within that structure. It's more liberationism than communism. It was born from the writings of Arthur Koestler2 about Holarchy3 in his 1967 book The Ghost in the Machine:
“The work attempts to explain humanity's self-destructive tendency in terms of individual and collective functioning, philosophy, and overarching, cyclical political–historical dynamics, peaking in the nuclear weapons arena. . . In an attempt to explain human violence, Koestler criticizes the dominant conceptions of psychology of his time (behaviourism) that postulate that human behaviours are subject to the selection of the fittest. For him this theory echoed the Darwinian conceptions of the evolution of species.”
But, not pondering on Koestler’s writing, let’s evaluate how Robertson manifested his coined Holacracy in an organizational context, which would later be made popular by Zappos and it's late, magnanimous former CEO Tony Hsieh.
Structurally, Robertson set out to dismantle management and governance by introducing new elements that deviated in function from a traditional hierarchy structure. First, the organization itself consists of “HOLONS” – whole parts inside the organism, like atoms, molecules and cells. Which in turn function as in different levels within the organism – higher level holons vs lower level holons.
Holons have the agency to coordinate and form at will, with a set of governmental attributes that play within the whole organism, in this case, the whole organization.
The governance structure is based on 4 attributes baked into an overarching nature of consent:
“
Roles instead of job descriptions: The building blocks of Holacracy's organizational structure are roles. Holacracy distinguishes between roles and the people who fill them, as one individual can hold multiple roles at any given time. A role is not a job description; its definition follows a clear format including a name, a purpose, optional "domains" to control, and accountabilities, which are ongoing activities to perform. Roles are defined by each circle—or team—via a collective governance process, and are updated regularly in order to adapt to the ever-evolving needs of the organization.
Circle structure: Holacracy structures the various roles in an organization in a system of self-organizing (but not self-directed) circles. Circles are organized hierarchically, and each circle is assigned a clear purpose and accountabilities by its broader circle. However, each circle has the authority to self-organize internally to best achieve its goals. Circles conduct their own governance meetings, assign members to fill roles, and take responsibility for carrying out work within their domain of authority. Circles are connected by two roles known as "lead link" and "rep link", which sit in the meetings of both their circle and the broader circle to ensure alignment with the broader organization's mission and strategy.
Governance process: Each circle uses a defined governance process to create and regularly update its own roles and policies. Holacracy specifies a structured process known as "integrative decision making" for proposing changes in governance and amending or objecting to proposals. This is not a consensus-based system, not even a consent-based system, but one that integrates relevant input from all parties and ensures that the proposed changes and objections to those changes are anchored in the roles' needs (and through them, the organization's needs), rather than people's preferences or ego.
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also explained by Brian Robertson in an interivew4
In practice, this structure breaks down for a number of reasons.
Accountability is misconstrued through the decision-making process.
Circle formation and self-governance are too complex to understand
Scale creates chaos in double-linking, which may lead to a lack of cohesion in management.
Humans, humans, humans are driven by incentives. Introducing libertarianism in a capitalistic structure removes all incentives that lead to self-actualization and that cannot be substituted with self-governance.
It failed as an organizational structure, and Zappos ended up scaping it after 3 years. But what if its depth and implementation went too far? what if it was not a governance structure but just merely a method to exert effective and transparent communication of what the organization is trying to achieve? how would that play?
Strategy Communication through Holacracy
One can argue that the intention of intra-communication is meant to be egalitarian. It is meant to rally the troops into a belief system. The essence of what the organization is trying to achieve. How would one communicate that?
When mega-corporations were forming in the 1950s, communication was always directive, top-down, do as you are told and not as you think. But in modern organizations, a sense of inclusiveness in directing the organization has proliferated. Which in modern times has led to organizations having a disjointed mission and strategy, forgetting why they exist, I’ll elude to references to let you come up with your own judgment.
Now, let’s apply this idea to a modern organization. With its roles and structure, both function, and matrix, but abstract it to communication and negate tools and such.
There is a board of directors, C-suite executives, SVPs in the broader Senior Leadership team (S-Team), VPs, Directors, Managers, and Individual Contributors (ICs) that make up the organization in a traditional hierarchy structure.
But as we have established or better come to know – communication these days is no longer directive, top-down. All employees contribute to the overall direction of the organization. How would communication happen then?
Well, the ethos of holacracy exists. The argument is that the hierarchical organization structure should persist but we should adopt a holacracy format of communication.
At the centre we have our mission and our strategy – our why, what we are trying, and how we plan on doing it. It is shared widely and frequently. The individuals at the centre are the core driving force for forming that mission and setting up the organism to drive forward (BoD, C-Suite, S-Team). The rest of the pods are teams, linked together by the core, but are autonomous within the governance structure to drive forward and inter-link cross-functional to achieve said goals.
In the same ethos of Holocracy:
Roles instead of job descriptions: A role is not a job description; its definition follows a clear format including a name, a purpose, optional "domains" to control, and accountabilities, which are ongoing activities to perform. [But roles are defined by the intention of the leaders]
Circle structure: is formed as the traditional functional structure and each circle is assigned a clear purpose and accountabilities by the broader organization. Communication is clear, transparent, and interlinked to other functional areas.
Governance process: Each circle uses a governance and communication process defined by the S-Team.
Operational process: [Communication] processes for aligning team according to operational needs, and requires that each member of a circle fulfill certain duties in order to work efficiently and effectively together. There are also key roles to help organize the [communication] process and workflow of each circle – these have come to be known as Leads [Managers]. Leads are required to maintain effective and transparent communication channels through various forums.
Seeing the organization through the lens of holacracy creates a pervasive understanding of how each functional area plays a key role in achieving the company’s goals. It creates a sense of structure in the chaos of communication and coordination, especially in fast-growing organizations where the structure of roles and responsibilities is ill-defined.
The communication highway is loosely coupled by and also can be tightly coupled when needed, but in its natural state, it is always highly aligned.
This is not to say that sporadic communication is not allowed nor isn't effective, it’s just with strategic communication, intentionality matters – message delivery matters and so does its structure and form.
This is all theory. I postface that implementation might be a bit chaotic and esoteric but the over-achieving nature of Holacratic Communication™ or broader Strategic Communication within an organization should start with documentation, explaining – how we communicate, when we communicate, and what we are trying to achieve by it. It should then follow operating principles and the standardization of the tools by which the company communicates. Intentionality is key, and so is the structure and the governance of such communication.
Take care.