[Originally written as a response to the article by Harrison Monarth here: tinyurl.com/kacjgkb ]
Mr. Monarth. Disclosure: I am a Holacracy practitioner and coach. I agree with your point about how biological “dominance hierarchy” (aka “pecking order”) is nigh unto impossible to eliminate whenever humans group together. I believe you are quite accurate when you describe how that can undermine the kind of “radically flat” organizational endeavors typically undertaken because individuals can’t help but be concerned with power, status, likability and, any perceived threats to such. I think you nail it when you say some “mechanism needs to be put in place to ensure that everyone can maintain and optimize the tenets of fairness, trust and transparency so the entire organization can move forward.”
I diverge from your perspective because I know from my experience with Holacracy that it is designed precisely to provide the mechanism you rightly call for. Holacracy runs directly in opposition to the tendency towards shadow power hierarchy that ineluctably emerges in flat organizations by making a very clear and explicitly defined system of power and distribution of decision making. If that weren’t enough, it restricts this holarchy along functional, rather than status lines. This allows the human status hierarchy to co-exist in-parallel and differentiated from the functional structure of the organization.
There continues to exist an interplay between the two as humans fill roles throughout the holarchy and attempt to influence one another using good old fashion status and power. However, the clearly defined roles and procedures channel these unavoidable human energies through a dynamically evolving good-enough-for-now structure.
Missing something so obvious about Holacracy when even cursorily researched has me believe your piece is not meant as an accurate report about Holacracy, but rather an opportunity for you to share your perspectives on human status and power hierarchy, which are spot on.
I believe it would be a disservice to the readers of HBR to not set the record straight (to the extent that it can be done through a comment on an article) regarding how Holacracy actually plays out in the real world with real human beings trying to get something useful done together while bound to the biological nature of human dynamics.
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