Claiming Authority at Work

Repeat after me: Holacracy practice is not consensus-based management. It distributes authority to circles and roles throughout an organization.

I know this, at least conceptually. But recently, I got to experience what it really means.

I’m a new partner at HolacracyOne (or “H1”) — which is not only a Holacracy-powered company, but the one behind the framework — and almost all of my roles are in the Marketing circle. One of those roles is Social Media Manager. The circle had this policy in place that gave any partner or contractor the authority post on H1’s social media channels. It’s a policy that not many companies would dare even consider. But that’s part of what’s so cool about Holacracy practice: the default assumption is that people are adults and can be trusted to fulfill their roles’ purposes in whatever manner they see fit.

For years, this policy has served the company well. But as the new role-filler for Social Media Manager with a more active strategy, I started to feel a tension. Any role could post any content? To any channel? At any time?! This definitely didn’t always mesh with the strategy I envisioned.

I stewed on this tension for a while. I was a new partner, and processing my tensions — especially ones that felt big and would require a big change — was scary to me.

Finally, I crafted a proposal in GlassFrog. I logged my tension and the role I was sensing it from. I proposed giving Social Media Manager a domain over all social media accounts. I updated the policy on posting to social media to require any partner to notify the Social Media Manager at least 48 hours before their post is scheduled to go out. I felt powerful.

And nervous.

Shortly after submitting my proposal and receiving some “no objections” from other circle members, Heather, a role-filler for GlassFrog Customer Support, noted a conflict. This proposal would prevent her role from quickly responding to customers on Twitter, or using social media to inform customers of any app downtime.

Not good! I retracted the proposal and added an exception to the policy.

But then Rebecca, who coaches at a lot of our trainings, let me know that this change would likely stop her from posting pics and cool stories from trainings to H1’s Twitter. She had no objection to the proposal, but wanted to let me know of this impact.

Yikes, that was NOT a consequence I wanted. If anything, I wanted to see more content shared from events!

I retracted the proposal again. More unintended consequences appeared. So I kept revising.

Finally, I had the domain I wanted with the revised policy and several exceptions.

Throughout this process, I had been over-designing. I was so nervous about claiming authority over these social media accounts that I kept trying to appease and find consensus. I didn’t need to do that. But that type of thinking is so ingrained in typical organizational life that it’s hard to see it in yourself and break free.

Finally, Olivier (another awesome Holacracy coach) and Rebecca helped me see that I didn’t need to have this complicated policy with all of these exceptions passed through governance to solve my tension. I could simply propose a domain on the social media accounts and ditch the policy entirely. Then, any time I wanted to grant other roles power over social media accounts (or take it away) through a policy on the domain (rather than the circle), I could. That happens outside of governance — and at my discretion as the role-filler with that domain.

Wow.

This was a huge breakthrough for me. It helped me to more deeply understand how Holacracy practice distributes authority. It’s one thing to know it conceptually, and something else entirely to experience it firsthand. The next time I feel a tension around not having adequate authority, I hope I’ll be less likely to fall into consensus-seeking mode. And if not, I’m thankful to have Holacracy coaches helping me unlearn my bad habits!