The different skill
levels in Holacracy are often compared to the different skill levels
in playing soccer. They may be playing by the same rules, but the
skill expressed by a child just learning how to play soccer will look
substantially than the skill of a highly trained professional.
This is a great
analogy as I can attest having followed my children progress through
soccer from a young age in the weekend community soccer leagues
through middle school and high school. In the beginning they play
what I call swarm soccer. All the kids gather around the ball in a
swarm and kick at the ball until it accidentally goes into one of the
goals. By middle school they have learned the positions and mostly
stay near their assignment. By high school, they have learned when
they can break the position pattern and when to reform back to that
pattern. Each level looks totally different. Holacracy has similar
level of development, from still trying to get consensus or approval
from the boss, to rigidly holding their roles, to flexibly moving
between roles and individual action, etc. I am sure others have
observed other patterns at the various levels.
This individual
focused analogy between Holacracy and Soccer can be expanded to an
analogy at the movement level.
In soccer we start
at the preschool level in local community leagues, sponsored and paid
for by low cost fees to the players and/or community funded. The
teams are coached by parents who may only have a basic understanding
of the rules themselves. This feeds into school and traveling teams
which have a higher level of financial investment and more skilled
coaches which may be a mix of amateur or professional. This feeds
into college with more investment and more skilled professional
coaches and finally feeds into the professional leagues with a high
level of compensations and coaching skill.
At the bottom the
population of players is huge. As you step up each level a large
number of players drop out until at the top you have a very small
number of very skilled players.
The players that
drop out are not lost to the sport. They may continue to play in
community leagues or pick up games. Because of the experience in the
lower levels, they are likely to be fans and supporters of the
players that move up. Thus to have a vibrant competitive top level
you need a huge base to select and feed the talent as well as support
the sport from the sidelines.
Today, Holacracy is
focused at the professional level without much of a base. This is
why it is so difficult to find an organization to do an
implementation with out a highly evolved heroic leader to take the
plunge, sign the constitution and buy into the process of giving up
control and supporting the transformation. There seems to be an
underlying opinion that everyone needs to transform and play
Holacracy at the professional level. That playing at the lower level
is not successful, that it does not bring value. In my opinion, this
is very much a “in the eye of the beholder” judgment. Being
successful is determined by your definition of success.
Many small business
do not have much of a business process, what they have is usually a
random collection of actions that seem to work having tried and
failed many times. There is little coherency with a lot of manual
checks and cross checks that could be eliminate by implementing a
process that generates role and accountability clarity. Implementing
Holacracy, even at the simplest level of mechanically following the
rules, creates enormous value in the eyes of these small business
owners. All without a major transformation in conscious level. Yes,
there are subtle shifts and over time even these organizations become
more susceptible to a major shift.
I see these
businesses as the base level for Holacracy. A potential fertile soil
to feed the growth of the higher transformations all the way up to
the highest professional level. At this grass roots level is where
the real awareness of Holacracy will grow as them more people exposed
to the gut level feeling of some value in Holacracy, the more that
they will tell their friends and encourage more than an intellectual
curiosity. For the past year I have been researching this level by
attending small business expos, networking events, user groups and
business meetups. I get no recognition that something like Holacracy
exists. With a couple minute conversation, I get very positive
reactions.
The need is clearly
there, the value to these organizations is there, the current
structure to get help excludes these 90% of the businesses.
Lets look at the
structures for getting help without a full consultant fee structure.
When the Holacracy
population was first developing and everyone knew everyone else, the
Community of Practice platform was a great tool to discuss issues and
get some help/feedback.
Looking back over
the past year, it seems that activity in that forum has almost
completely dried up. It is being replaced by more open forums on
LinkedIn and Facebook. While the subscription for the CoP may keep
many of the casual observers away, I think that a major part of the
lack of activity, even for those subscribed, is that it suffers from
fragmentation because of the “yet another form I need to keep track
of” syndrome. I know that I am more likely to pay attention and
participate in a forum that consolidates many communities that I am
already participating in into one interface.
Facebook and
LinkedIn support very global communities. Being part of larger
community building services, I believe that they will continue to
provide value for the more globally minded Holacracy practitioners
for a long time.
These forums seem to
focus on announcements of events and blog entries, with some
discussion of specific larger issues. What is missing is the personal
touch. In a more local setting, many more people would be more
willing to ask for help on detailed issues that arise in their
business. People need to sit down face to face with people that they
are familiar with to get to this personal level. This is
particularly true for small business owners.
This is where user
groups and Meetups come in. User groups and Meetups fill the same
role of providing personal face to face community building. Meetup
creates a nice set of tools that is becoming the consolidation point
for different interest groups to fine and interact through the same
interface. There for, I think that the next level into the
grassroots spreading of Holacracy is via Meetup. A Meetup in any
location that has a few practitioners, would be the logical entry
point to building that local support group to help small business
move into Holacracy. The more small businesses that implement a
mechanical interpretation of Holacracy, the more that will be
positioned to need a deeper level of coaching to get the next level
of value.
These initial
implements have to be very low cost, possibly free, if the local
community can enable it. If we look at some of the most successful
services in the world to day, most of them have a free level and a
premium level. I believe that creating the Meetup infrastructure is
the way to get the introductory implementation, which, as the value
of Holacracy is internalized and realized, will enable the transition
to engaging the premium services.
This was the model
that I was pursuing over the past year. I hope to get back to it
sometime in the future to develop it more and try it in the real
world. I put this post here to record my thoughts,
mike
