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I don't know if it's a cult. That's why I hedged my whole comment with "maybe I'm imagining this but...". It's too early to say whether it works. There's a say
by a-priori 11y ago
I don't know if it's a cult. That's why I hedged my whole comment with "maybe I'm imagining this but...".
It's too early to say whether it works. There's a saying I'm trying to remember, something about 'you can only see the rocks at low tide'. Almost anything will look wonderful in good times, and it's easy to attribute that success to whatever you're doing at the time. It's not until bad times that its flaws become visible.
Zappos was built to its current state on a hierarchical structure. They haven't yet had its decentralized structure tested in any significant way. If Zappos hits a slump in sales for whatever reason, how will the organization respond? Will Holacracy survive a crisis like that? That's where you'll really see if it's a useful system to govern a company.
- maxxxxx 11y agoIt's interesting that one of the big role models in tech, Steve Jobs, was a total dictator. Exactly the opposite of holocracy.
- panglott 11y agoYep. But hierarchical bureaucracies are also rife with inefficiency and dysfunction. Coordinating the activity of groups of human beings at scale is just a hard problem. It could be that holacracy is effectively not much different than hierarchical bureaucracy, but with different tradeoffs and personalities. Then Zappos has to bear the weight of defending holacracy when it is not demonstrably the case that a traditional management structure would necessarily have done better.
- sageikosa 11y agoOr it could be that it is significantly worse, and that the inertia of the brand keeps the boat moving (albeit slowing?). A shift to a newer model could be seen as a way to reduce headcount and contain costs.