Holacracy and Delegation — Not Only Luck

When we tell people to do their jobs, we get workers. When we trust people to get the job done, we get leaders. – @simonsinek
— Mark Kilens (@MarkKilens) January 6, 2014

It’s becoming increasingly common for startups to adopt principles from holacracy and establish extremely flat structures without the traditional layers of managers found in software companies.

Popular in this realm is Valve, with their employee handbook. I have been working on adapting that handbook to our company. Zappos is another classic example. Ev Williams is a fan too.

Joel of Buffer is also leading the way in transparent and flat startup management. I love this post where he talks about delegation as though he has to fire himself a little over and over again, meaning he has to give up control in order to scale. Simon Sinek said the same thing in the quote above.

I’ve also written about delegation before. The biggest thing an entrepreneur can do to delegate is to find a startup integrator.

Just as traditional software firms are being disrupted by SaaS and continuous improvement delivery models for products, I think elements of holacracy will disrupt the very nature of how efficient organizations are able to run.

This is a topic I’m reading about a lot lately and am interested to hear your thoughts.

Have you considered incorporating elements of holacracy into your business? What information can you share about holacracy?

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