The Holacracy framework fundamentally redefines how power and responsibility are defined and exerted in the organization. There are too many differences with the conventional management hierarchy to make an exhaustive list.
This page lists a few use cases to help you better understand what types of changes you can expect from Holacracy.
Get out of the weeds – focus on the business
Most relevant to: Founder, CEO
When you start a company, there is plenty to do and not enough manpower to do it all. Founders are deeply involved in all aspects of operations to give the organization its best chances to thrive.
As the company grows so do the operational needs. Many founders find themselves buried in the operational weeds of the business when they really should be paying more attention to the strategic needs of the business.
“Frankly, I wasn’t interested in keeping on having an organization if I couldn’t find some way out of the pressure I was under.“
Author, Getting Things Done
Identify your roles
The Holacracy framework doesn’t rely on traditional job descriptions or positions such as “CEO,” “Director,” and other titles. Instead, it requires that we define Roles around the work, not the people. Roles are functions of the business such as “Finance,” “Sales,” “Legal,” instead of titles.
The responsibilities of a CEO vary wildly depending on the organization — and they evolve as the company grows. Instead of using this title, which conveys a hierarchical position but vague expectations of work, the Holacracy role structure prompts us to define roles that reflect the actual work of the CEO.
Once these roles are defined, all the functions the CEO is actually holding become much clearer to everyone (including to the CEO!).
Delegate the functions you can let go of
With that clarity, it becomes much easier to reflect and decide which functions can be delegated to other people. Furthermore, the flexibility of role definition with Holacracy allows the CEO to further break down their roles in order to delegate only the functions they feel ready to let go of.
Delegate within clear boundaries
Most relevant to: Executives, Managers
For an organization to scale, leaders need to delegate. It’s easier said than done, both due to the leaders’ desire to retain some control and oversight over decisions and to the people under them looking for validation and approval.
“We were starting to notice that decision-making was grinding to a halt. People were involving us in everything.”
Valsplat CO-FOUNDER
Delegate without creating a new “position”
Say you want to delegate some work to a team member. Do you make it a verbal agreement, because it’s not worth getting a new job description drafted by HR? Or is it a big enough change in their scope of work that a new position needs to be created?
Within the Holacracy framework, it’s simpler and more straightforward: if you want to add some responsibilities to someone, simply add clear accountabilities to their existing role, or create a new role entirely and assign them to it using the governance process.
One person may be assigned to several roles, including across different circles (or teams) — an additional role is not necessarily a full time job. And you can later modify that role if needed using the same governance process.
Delegate with clarity and precision
To effectively delegate, you need to be clear on what authority and responsibility you are handing over — including clarity over the ones you are NOT handing over. Authority without clear boundaries is a recipe for someone to be cautious by fear of stepping on others toes, thus hindering their leadership.
Here is a real life example. A business had one role in charge of setting the pricing model for all three business lines of the company — which the founder had assigned to himself due to his experience.
He later decided it was best for each business line to develop their own pricing model, but he wanted a coordinating mechanism to ensure pricing consistency across the business lines.
Through the governance process, he proposed making each business line accountable for defining their own pricing model, but also added a policy constraining each business line to require approval from a Pricing Strategy role that he retained before publishing any update to the pricing model.
The work of creating a pricing model was thus delegated to each business line but he retained the authority to make them official.
Retain control of key functions
Another method to delegate while retaining just the right level of control is to assign someone else to the leadership role of a team (the “Circle Lead” of a “circle”), while still filling key roles within the team.
Say you are particularly good at creating operational processes, but you want to relinquish the leadership of several business lines. You could assign trustworthy colleagues to the Circle Lead role for each business line’s circle, but retain a role within each circle with authority to define operational processes.
Within the Holacracy framework, the same person may be filling multiple roles in multiple circles. Therefore you can easily remain in “big picture” type roles, such as the Circle Lead for the “biggest” circle of the company, while also filling roles within sub-circles. It makes it clear that it’s not the CEO micromanaging a department, but simply the same person filling different roles in different organizational contexts.
Trust but verify
Once you have delegated some functions to other team members, it doesn’t mean you have to hope and pray they will perform as expected.
You can lean on Holacracy’s rules of cooperation — such as the duty of transparency — and rely on the regular tactical meetings to get visibility into how your colleagues are performing.
Give managers a framework to lead without micromanaging
Most relevant to: CEO, Executives, Managers
As your company grows and you add layers of managers to your org chart, managers can easily become a weak link of the organization. Not because they are incompetent, but 1) managing teams is hard! 2) Poor management can undermine a team made of otherwise-competent workers, and 3) that impact is often times not immediately visible.
Said differently, manager have a lot of weight on their shoulders and often get little guidance.
Holacracy is a management framework — you might also see it as a toolbox — that will support your managers in several ways. Here is a non-exhaustive list:
Redefining the “manager” role: the Circle Lead
Holacracy redefines the role of “manager.” Part of the problem managers face is that the definition of their role is too nebulous.
The Holacracy framework structures the organization in a hierarchy of Roles and Circles (see Holacracy’s Organizational Structure). Each circle has a role called the Circle Lead that is typically assigned to managers when a company adopts Holacracy. The Circle Lead role holds similar function to a manager but is also different. Here are some key differences:
| Activity | Manager | Circle Lead |
|---|---|---|
| Assign people to roles and monitor performance | YES | YES |
| Provide feedback | YES | YES |
| Set strategy and priorities for the team | YES | YES |
| Allocate resources within the team | YES | YES |
| Remove people from roles in the team | YES | YES |
| Hire and fire people on the team | YES | NO |
| Determine employee compensation | YES | NO |
| Tell team members what to work on | YES | NO (request from roles instead) |
| Tell team members how to do their work | YES | NO |
As you can see, the Circle Lead role has a more limited scope of authority than a traditional manager. The Circle Lead does not handle the employment contract, it is focused on the work of the circle.
The Circle Lead also cannot micromanage exactly what work employees take on, or how they do it. That is ultimately up to the employee, in their role, to make that determination. However, the Circle Lead has other options: they can modify the roles themselves to clarify or change what they is expected from employees (note that anyone on the team can propose such modifications).
Does the Circle Lead contribute to the work?
Managers typically also participate to the work of the team in many ways: making sure everybody has what they need, facilitating communication, organizing the work, etc. and all sorts of things that are usually a bit unclear. Can team members expect the same from a Circle Lead?
In a nutshell, no. The Circle Lead is only here to execute those core management functions highlighted in the table above. For any other operational work within the team, other roles need to be defined.
The person in the Circle Lead role may also fill other roles within the circles — in fact, this is usually the case. These other roles need to be defined just like any other role filled by other team members.
So when they do some work, the person in the Circle Lead role is not doing that work in their capacity as Circle Lead, but in their capacity as another regular role they fill. And these roles have accountabilities just like any other, which any team members can request work from.
Other management “tools” available
The shift from manager to Circle Lead significantly reframes how managers approach their work. Within the Holacracy framework, they have constraints guiding them in the right direction and other tools they can rely on:
Adding clarity
The inability to micromanage forces Circle Leads to use different (healthier) levers to get what they need: mainly by adding clarity.
- Clarify expectations: by clarifying the roles through the governance process, they can help team members better understand what is expected of them.
- Clarify the strategy: they set the strategy of the circle to help team members choose the most valuable things to work on, and prioritize accordingly.
Enforce the “rules of cooperation”
Circle Leads can (and should) lean on the Rules of Cooperation. They allow anyone, including Circle Leads, to expect several basic behaviors to gain visibility into team members’ work and decisions, among other things.
- The “duty of transparency” allows the Circle Lead to request what people are working on, what is their next step on any given project, how they are prioritizing it, and why.
- The “duty of processing” allows the Circle Lead to expect that team members will prioritize responding to their request even over executing on their work (particularly useful in a virtual setting).
Leverage tactical meetings
The tactical meeting is an important management tool: it’s an efficient meeting process to triage the issues of the week and get updates on what everyone is working on.
Tactical meetings are useful to all team members, but they are particularly useful for Circle Leads to get a snapshot of where everybody is at in their work.
Better yet, the Circle Lead doesn’t have to facilitate these meetings. Each circle has an elected Facilitator to run them, and the Facilitator has a defined process to rely on to do so — no need to reinvent the wheel.
Full transparency into who is responsible for what
Most relevant to: Everyone, especially Employees
When is the last time you consulted your colleagues’ job descriptions to know what you can expect of them? Most likely never. Job descriptions are HR artifacts with little utility in everyday work.
In reality, people often wear several hats and the real work they’re doing evolve faster than the organizational chart gets updated.
What if you had a real map of “who does what”?
It’s exactly what the Holacracy role structure is intended to be: a real map of the roles within the company, and who is assigned to them.
The roles are defined using a standard format used across the organization and are fully transparent to anyone in the company.
No need to ask your manager who you need to talk to, you can consult the same list of roles as your manager does.
Example of an organization’s structure of roles and circles
Using a Holacracy support software, you can browse the organization’s structure, search keywords, and open any role or circle to see its exact definition.
Example of a role and what it means
Purpose:
An attractive website that converts interest into sales
Domain(s):
- The company’s website
Accountabilities:
- Developing and maintaining the company’s website
- Maintaining an up-to-date list of our widgets on the online store
- Integrating the online store to our production back-end to reflect accurate stock
Example of a “Website Manager” role
In the example above, the role definition tells us that we can expect the Website Manager to work toward an attractive website that converts interest into sales (the Purpose).
The role definition also tells us the specific activities we can expect from that role: they are the Accountabilities.
Lastly, it specifies that this role has a Domain over the company’s website. It means this role has exclusive control over the company’s website and no other role is allowed to modify the website without the Website Manager’s permission. Not even the CEO.
Roles are not clear enough? Change them!
If you browse your company’s roles and circles and still find yourself confused, it may be that they could be defined more clearly.
Say you’re wondering which role is accountable for responding to requests on social media and you can’t find any role responsible for it. Simply make a role responsible for it!
No need to wait for a manager to fix it. The Holacracy framework includes a governance process that you can use to propose modifying roles or even creating new roles.
More autonomy within clear boundaries
Most relevant to: Employees
Is your boss overbearing, limiting your autonomy and creativity for how to get work done? Or is your boss too hands off, expecting you to be autonomous but leaving you unsure of what you’re really allowed to do to get the work done?
The Holacracy framework aims to strike a balance between autonomy and guardrails. Everybody knows they’re not 100% free to do anything they want — even if your boss says you have “full autonomy” to work however you like, you know there are some boundaries of some sort somewhere. If they’re not clear, you’re left wondering what they are and you will spend energy figuring them out.
How Holacracy protects your autonomy
The Holacracy framework defines several “rules of engagement” for how we work together that radically protect your autonomy — and they are the same for everyone. Here are a few examples.
- Authority to act: by default, you have the authority to take any action you think makes sense to execute your role’s work. You don’t need anyone’s approval before acting, even though you’re welcome to ask for advice or feedback before making a decision should you wish to. (Rule included in Module 4)
- Authority to interpret your role: someone asks you to do something and, looking at your role’s definition, you’re not convinced it’s actually your job to do it. Who gets to determine whether something fits your role (and is therefore your job to do)? The answer is: you. The person filling the role gets to interpret what its purpose or accountabilities mean. (Rule included in Module 4)
- Work cannot be “assigned” to you: neither the Circle Lead nor any other role in the organization can simply direct you to work on something. Projects and actions may be requested from your role, but not assigned without your consent. When you receive such a request, before simply saying “yes” you want to check 2 things:
1) Does the requested action/project fit your role? i.e. would it serve your role’s purpose or one of its accountabilities to do it?
2) If yes: in your judgement, does it make sense to work on the requested action/project, or do you think it’s just not a good idea?
If you answer yes to both of these questions, then you have to accept the action/project. If not, you can reject it. (Rule included in Module 2)
The rules of Holacracy protect your autonomy in various other ways but these 3 rules are fundamental in defining a different way of thinking about the work of your role. You are not a worker doing as you’re told, you’re expected to lead your role: use judgement and discernment in what work you choose to engage in, and how.
How Holacracy places boundaries around your autonomy
At the same time as your autonomy is protected within the Holacracy framework, boundaries or constraints to that autonomy can easily be put in place. They give you a frame within which you have freedom to operate.
Here are examples of constraints to your autonomy.
- You don’t have authority to spend money without first getting permission through the proper channel. Module 4 of the Holacracy constitution defines a default process for spending authorization, or your organization may have defined its own unique process through governance.
- You don’t have authority to impact a Domain defined on another role without first getting permission from that role. For example, if the Website Manager role has a Domain over “the company’s website,” you cannot simply edit the website at will. You need to get the Website Manager’s permission first. (Rule included in Module 4)
- You must follow the Circle Lead’s prioritization. Among the various actions and projects you have on your plate, the Circle Lead may request a relative prioritization (e.g. project A is higher priority than project B, C, and D). You are expected to align with that prioritization. (Rule included in Module 2)
- If you decline a request to take an action or project even though it fits your role, you must explain why you think it’s a bad idea to do it, or you must suggest something else you could do to meet the requester’s need. (Rule included in Module 2)
Some of these constraints are generic and relevant in any situations, while some others depend on the context and the specific governance your organization has created. Either way, they equally create boundaries to your autonomy.
Propose changes in your team using a clear process
Most relevant to: Employees, Everyone
In most organizations, the manager decides how to structure a team: what roles are needed, what are they responsible for, and who is the best fit for each role. When a team member wants to change the team’s structure, they may suggest the idea to their manager, but the manager is the one making the decision.
This arrangement makes sense because the team needs to be organized with cohesion. However it also creates problems: with only one person able to make structural changes to the team, it radically limits the number of “sensors” available to identify issues that need to be addressed. Managers quickly become bottlenecks for processing needed changes, however competent they may be.
A structured process for everyone to propose changes
The Holacracy framework includes a decentralized governance process that replaces the manager’s authority to structure the team.
With this process, anyone is able to propose changes to the structure of the team itself — including the manager — to address issues they’re experiencing in their everyday work. These changes may include creating new roles or modifying existing ones, such as adding accountabilities to colleagues’ roles (or even to the manager themselves), or creating and modifying operational rules (“Policies“) for all roles to follow.
Changes proposed through the governance process don’t require the manager’s approval, so the manager is not a bottleneck anymore. However, we still need a mechanism to ensure the changes are not going to create more harm than good. This “safety check” is performed by all team members individually — including the manager — who all have an opportunity to raise “objections” to any proposed change. An objection is a reason someone identifies for why the proposed change would cause harm to the team, or move it backwards in some way.
You can learn more about the governance meeting process here: Governance Meeting Process
Example 1: Splitting a role
Here is an example of the type of change someone may propose through the governance process.
Purpose:
An attractive website that converts interest into sales
Accountabilities:
- Developing and maintaining the company’s website
- Maintaining an up-to-date list of our widgets on the online store
- Integrating the online store to our production back-end to reflect accurate stock
Proposer:
“I propose that we remove the ‘online store’ accountabilities from my Website Manager role, and move them to a new role dedicated to managing the store.”
Purpose:
An attractive website that converts interest into sales
Accountabilities:
- Developing and maintaining the company’s website
Purpose:
Customers can purchase all our widgets online
Accountabilities:
- Maintaining an up-to-date list of our widgets on the online store
- Integrating the online store to our production back-end to reflect accurate stock
Example 2: Create a rule for the team
Here is another example of a change proposed through the governance process to solve an issue experienced by several teams based on the actions of another.
Proposer:
“I propose creating a Policy to ensure that internal software updates by IT are only rolled out after the system documentation is updated, so the various teams have it available when they encounter issues.”
Documented internal software updates
Internal software updates may not be rolled out until the internal documentation for using those software is updated accordingly and made available to all teams impacted by the update.
If your company adopts the Holacracy framework and its governance process, you too can propose changes to your team’s roles and policies. It is up to you whether you engage in the governance of your team, but the Holacracy framework will guarantee that it’s an available option when you need it.
Did we pique your interest?
Here are some next steps.