4 ms·

Zappos has quietly backed away from holacracy

36 points by donmcc 7y ago

BoiledCabbage 7y ago
More interesting to me is the second half of their article, and them having every team track profit and losses and be held accountable for being profitable to an external customer or another internal team. And the talked tackled the "R&D problem" by having R&D teams find a "sponsor" who would benefit from their eventual work. Really curious how it'll work out. Do you end up with more efficiency by making every team compete in an internal marketplace and have to address customer needs to stay profitable? Or do teams find ways to carve out mini-monolopies and moats just like in the outside world and live off the fat of inefficiency.
- singron 7y ago
  Large companies start to look like authoritarian centrally planned economies on the inside. Sometimes the central planning saves effort, but it often means the fittest for the business isn't always what survives. Internal charge backs makes it look more like capatilism and gives everyone more incentive to optimize their unit in a way that's more financial and less political. Of course, it's still fake money and there are a lot of overheads accounting for every little thing.
- vsskanth 7y ago
  I've worked in a company before where all R&D teams need to be sponsored by other product teams. I don't have any opinions for or against this approach. Just my observations Pros: * R&D teams don't veer off into random tangents and are focused on delivering something useful * More accountability and a closer connection to their end customer (internal or external) Cons: * you end up with more management layers and a lot more meetings to convince teams to fund you * getting budget to maintain stuff is difficult to sponsor * Empire building and a lot of infighting between competing teams * product teams won't fund longer-term projects and moonshot experiments so you have to create a separate product team just for that
mc32 7y ago
Ah... I have memories of “disruptive” managers lauding this approach to management whole kit and kaboodle. I derided it as reminiscent of soviet-style of management by collectives and committees. The manager saw that in a bad light. Guess I lacked team spirit as it were.
- richliss 7y ago
  In Adam Curtis documentary "All watched over by machines of loving grace" there's a part about the communes in the 1960's and how they all descended into lord of the flies style bullying with alpha personalities. Teal management ideas are absolutely at risk of the same problem. I remember people pushing Teal in agile meetups a few years ago and all of those people would have been the alphas inside those communes. Management helps protects the quiet types.
  - Matticus_Rex 7y ago
    I see this show up in the broader Teal movement, definitely, but not really in Holacracy. The reliance on process rather than "Teal principles" holds space for people who don't demand it, and holds those alphas to the process as well.

36 points by donmcc 7y ago

More interesting to me is the second half of their article, and them having every team track profit and losses and be held accountable for being profitable to an external customer or another internal team. And the talked tackled the "R&D problem" by having R&D teams find a "sponsor" who would benefit from their eventual work. Really curious how it'll work out. Do you end up with more efficiency by making every team compete in an internal marketplace and have to address customer needs to stay profitable? Or do teams find ways to carve out mini-monolopies and moats just like in the outside world and live off the fat of inefficiency.

singron 7y ago
Large companies start to look like authoritarian centrally planned economies on the inside. Sometimes the central planning saves effort, but it often means the fittest for the business isn't always what survives. Internal charge backs makes it look more like capatilism and gives everyone more incentive to optimize their unit in a way that's more financial and less political. Of course, it's still fake money and there are a lot of overheads accounting for every little thing.
vsskanth 7y ago
I've worked in a company before where all R&D teams need to be sponsored by other product teams. I don't have any opinions for or against this approach. Just my observations Pros: * R&D teams don't veer off into random tangents and are focused on delivering something useful * More accountability and a closer connection to their end customer (internal or external) Cons: * you end up with more management layers and a lot more meetings to convince teams to fund you * getting budget to maintain stuff is difficult to sponsor * Empire building and a lot of infighting between competing teams * product teams won't fund longer-term projects and moonshot experiments so you have to create a separate product team just for that

mc32 7y ago

Ah... I have memories of “disruptive” managers lauding this approach to management whole kit and kaboodle. I derided it as reminiscent of soviet-style of management by collectives and committees. The manager saw that in a bad light. Guess I lacked team spirit as it were.

richliss 7y ago
In Adam Curtis documentary "All watched over by machines of loving grace" there's a part about the communes in the 1960's and how they all descended into lord of the flies style bullying with alpha personalities. Teal management ideas are absolutely at risk of the same problem. I remember people pushing Teal in agile meetups a few years ago and all of those people would have been the alphas inside those communes. Management helps protects the quiet types.
- Matticus_Rex 7y ago
  I see this show up in the broader Teal movement, definitely, but not really in Holacracy. The reliance on process rather than "Teal principles" holds space for people who don't demand it, and holds those alphas to the process as well.